Wednesday 18 January 2012

Mountain base project Pt3

The project is just about done now. I left it at the end of part two just about looking like a base but otherwise you needed alot of imagination to see the finished job.
The three big jobs I had left was to paint it, add the snow and do the railings.
 The painting was straight forward with a base coat of a mid grey, all washed in raw umber. Once that was dry I dry brushed with progressively lighter tones of grey with a last dusting of white. I also painted the ground work to look like mud so if I missed any areas with the snow it still looked good.
The railings ended up being worth it but each 30cm of railings was made up of about 65 pieces so patience was the word- it took me about one hour a foot to complete!
base coat added. Raw umber wash improves the look- sort of!
before the snow
a good shot of the railings
The snow is snow flakes from Deluxe Materials. I painted diluted PVA glue on all the areas I want the snow and then sprinkle the flakes all over the board. To help seal it and make it tough, I then spray it with very watered down PVA glue with some surgical spirit added to help it mix with the snow. I keep going with the process until I am happy with the look. It means the board is very wet so leave it to dry for a good 24 hours. Once it is dry you should have hard snow. If you have missed some areas then just repeat the above process.



















 The cable car was finished as well with me building a steel support structure from plasticard. I have added some icicles to this but the photos haven't worked so you will just have to imagine them or come and see them at Salute this year at the Crooked Dice game.










 You can see how the cable car works in the above picture. A wooden dowel painted black is pushed into a hole in the villains lair and then it is supported by the steel structure at the other end. The cable car then rests on top of the cable so it can be moved during the game. The car has movable doors so you can get figures inside it so it should catch the eye during a game.


That is just about it for this project. I still have to work on the interior design for the lair but I am coming to the conclusion that this isn't my strongest skill but hopefully it will look suitably 60's in style.
Once I have delivered it to Karl at Crooked dice, the next time I will see it will be at this years Salute. I understand the figures are being painted by Kevin Dalimore so the whole thing should look terrific.

4 comments:

  1. Wow. Reminds me a bit of one of the bases in Goldeneye.

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  2. looks great, another killer dio David, can't wait until you start on my next one!!! the snow looks perfect on this dio...Sammy

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  3. such great work, really inspiring :)

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