The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Rocky outcropping or Bondo disaster?

Been hard at work on the base for this guy today. It's been an interesting time so far.

First I stopped by Home Depot to pick up some of their expanded polystrene foam housing insulation. You can get about 10 feet of this stuff for which isn't all that bad considering I could probably make an entire board out of it.

I cut a circular cylinder out of the foam that was about the same size as a large 60mm base, then cut out the 'rocky' parts. A bit of sanding later and I had the general shape of the base that I had illustrated earlier. As before, I'm trying to make it look like the earth is buckling upward beneath the weirdboy where he is floating.

Housing insulation foam by itself is not a worthy base material. It melts when you spray it, and it is relatively fragile - two things I hate. With that in mind, I took a trip down to my garage and cracked open a can of Bondo, an automotive repair putty. I slopped that stuff on the base after I had mixed it up and with a couple sticks started working it over the foam in an effort to both fully coat it and encase it in the rock-hard stuff. It was messy work - bondo sticks to prety much everything, even the tools you use while you try to work. These were my results:

 

I needed a decent texture for the top of these supposed 'rocks' so I mixed up a batch of Apoxie Sculpt - it's a gray, two-part epoxy that comes fairly cheap and can be smoothed into a lot of different shapes. I put a thin layer of apoxiesculpt over the tops of these rocks and some of the problem areas on the sides and grabbed a flat bladed sculpting tool and just starting having at it. After haphazardly gouging a couple lines all over the surface in a feeble attempt to give it some sort of rocky texture, I came up with something passable.

I will be the first to admit it's not all that phenomal. It's also fairly hard to photograph, as some of the pink bondo goop that needs to be removed from the base is blending in and making the edges hard to distinguish. Still, it's not bad for a first try.

My photos are rubbish right now because I've been rearranging a lot of the lights in my room and I don't have my tripod right now. Still, you get the idea.

I ordered a box of night gobbo fanatics this afternoon because apparently every store within driving distance has decided they don't want to stock any. Until then, I'll probably be entertaining myself with a bit of sculpting on the actual model, much as I hate to do it.