Saturday, March 17, 2012

All Your Base...


I know several readers have been anxiously waiting to see what my plan is for basing the dark eldar army.  Here's some eye candy for you.  The purple dude is my clawed fiend.  I used the new fantasy crypt fiend with vargheist head from the same sprue.




Here's a based khymera.  I decided to go ahead with a blasted city base theme with a neutral palette that doesn't take attention away from the model.  Each base has a couple patches of static grass if you look closely.


Here's a test grotesque.  The base bits are a combination of plastic ruins, GW rocks, GW shale, GF9 rocks, and sand.  I think the wide variety of particle sizes gives character to the bases.


The bases were sprayed black, then medium grey, and dove grey to create a directional light effect.  You can see on the right side of the base where it's lightest fading to the left where the shadows and darker areas are.  Everything was then given very light washes of black and dark brown.  Highlights were added by brush and wet palette with the color tapioca.


None of these models are fully completed, I still consider them all WIP.  Each gun's gems will be painted a color depending on the weapon.  Green for poison, blue for darklight, purple for heat lances.  The grotesque still needs his water effect "gut bubble" and the beasts still need some minor detailing.  I'd like to get tattoos on the fleshy critters also and glyphs on the kabalite armors.

That's all for now, I hope you like the basing scheme.  I don't have anything lined up for next week, but I'm going to try for more practice with the army if I can get in a game, painting if I can't.

8 comments:

  1. Heyo, looks great. Bases are my biggest gap from a hobby standpoint, so neat to hear the procedures and thought processes regarding staging and directionality. I see there is another layer of something under the smaller figuere bases: is that a washer (assuming for weight/tipping prevention)? If so, what size?

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  2. Thanks Ghostin.

    You know you asked me the same question about washers a year ago? LOL. I remember writing about it and found your question when looking back. There's a pic of the washers here:

    http://synaps3.blogspot.com/2011/08/grey-knights-daboyz-gt-2011-project_18.html

    Every tyranid, GK, and DE non-vehicle model has one on the base. It started with hormagaunts since they're so front heavy. I got so addicted to the extra weight and balance that I put them on every model now. I also use a paint bottle with a magnet glued on it to hold the models while I paint. That way my fingers never tough the model or base so I don't have to worry about fingerprints or rubbing paint off.

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  3. Your dark eldar look amazing and the bases neutral colour really adds to the overall effect. Im sure you have heared that a,million times but truely amazing work.

    I may have to steal your basing ideas if i ever get better at painting.

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  4. Great choice for basing this army, the bright colors really stand out over those dark bases. It's gotta take a little bit of time to do such a basing time. Really can't wait to see more, and really can't wait to finish basing my own army.

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  5. Very nice! Very nice indeed!

    You've chosen a solid concept for the bases and your implementation is flawless. Very nice.

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  6. They are looking great! I love the basing on them and the clawed one in particular is quite stunning. I have a quick question: The "GW rocks and GW shale" is that a discontinued item or does the "GW" represent something else? I went on Games-workshop's website and couldn't find them.

    Thanks!

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  7. Thanks for the kind words guys.

    @ Flanagan ~ Those items come in the 40k basing kit from GW as seen here:http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat470007a&prodId=prod1400002a

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