The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Smoking is hazardous

So I've decided these guys are one of the first projects I want to catch up and finish off over the summer. I glued some sand and ballast down onto their bases for terrain, and before I prime them and paint 'em, I'm trying to figure out my options for smoke.

The left is steel wool, and the right is a cotton swab. Truthfully, I'm not too pleased with the appearance of either. The steel wool holds its shape reasonably well, but it's hard to pull apart and has a very dense look to it. The cotton's a bit better at looking wispy, but I think I'd have to use some sort of spray adhesive to get it to stay put well enough to paint. Neither smoke idea looks good enough that I want to really consider leaving it. The third option is to sculpt some sort of flames coming out of the nozzles, but I'm not too thrilled about the idea as I am poor at sculpting and painting fire would give me a headache. Alternatively, I could leave them smoke-less, but that feels like a bit of a cop-out.

I have seen things like armorcast's smoke bitz that are intended to give the same effect, but whatever I add needs to be able to fit around the wire that's holding the stormboyz up in the air. Plus, a metal smoke bit sticking out the back would seriously unbalance these guys, and I've gone to great pains to get them to sit stable.

On the bright side, I've figured out a nice recipe for a dark grey/blue military scheme that I'm going to be painting on all of their cloth and uniform parts, using primarily the citadel washes. Hopefully, once I sort the smoke out, I'll be able to get these guys painted and done with.