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or female sculpts hair, or from my not-very-experienced-attempts at sculpting fire, find a tool that the greenstuff will stick well to, then poke it and pull it away, creating that flame look that you want, and after it dries, break off any parts that got too thin etc.

hey bub, i really dig what you're doing with the base! one thing a lot of minis and sculpts these days lack is a story! and my have you got one there- i say keep it up, looks great, and once someone starts looking at it in person, they're going to read through it as though it were a book, joyfully analyzing each little tidbit!

you are one of my inspirations for the hobby, jamsessionein, this whole project is so amazing :-D

I gave it another go this morning. Results are better than last nights, but I don't know if I should leave it or not. What do you guys think?

I would hold back on the extra minis. Less is more.

If you insist on putting them on please only loose pin them so that you can have the diorama with or without exrtra orks.

The guardsmen on the other hand add to the model.

Finally while the above Stormboy looks well done painting flames and flying models is always difficult . It may well detract from the overall quality. I would be inclined to put your rather good Stormboyz on normal bases for normal gaming. They would be a delightful part of your army, but a very mediocre addition to your Gargant.

You have produced a near perfect model. I doubt the Forgeworld kit will be any better. You cant improve on perfection you can only risk mucking it up. If you keep on adding sooner or later you will. Time to stop (though DO add the Big Red Button missing in the grotpit).

Works for me!

Seriously, I am in awe over this whole project.

Amazing stuff!

Those flames look fine. Take your time with green stuff and be sure to only mix up and try to sculpt as much as you can do in an hour or so. Also, be sure to keep your tools lubricated, with vaseline, water or spit (seriously), so they don't stick to the gs. A few of these guys won't detract from the total awesomeness that is the gargant, it's going to already be a huge focal point, having some stuff going on around it is going to enhance the diorama, not detract.

So, that guy that's being squished by the stompa kept losing his hand. A lot. Probably because the old one was too thin I couldn't even pin it. This eventually led to the hand falling off and going missing.

I've since dug through my parts and replaced it with the one other human right hand bit I had, which happens to be holding a grenade. I pinned this one properly, I'll greenstuff around the wrist just a bit to close the seam.

I think it changes the dynamics interestingly. Humie gettin' squished has a grenade? Will he be able to set it off?





And I pinned the Stormboyz back in for the time being. They don't look awful, but if the fire turns out looking stupid with paint on I can always remove them.

I don't think the fire looks too bad at all. It does look a tad thick - which may have something to do with how short the flame burst is compared to its width - but not horrifically so or anything. I like the grenade too, and it looks like the guardsmen is struggling to bring his arm in and pull the pin with his teeth. Works for me.

Also, love the pose on the stormboy to the 'front' of the diorama, with the knife. Very nice.

- Boss Salvage

Went ahead and tried to fix the tail end of the guy swooping in with the knife on the guardsmen a bit more, so it's no longer too huge or blocky.



I don't mind having that much of the pin showing at this point, really.

Tomorrow, I'll be painting test panels for practice and to see what effects I like best. 

This conversion/diorama cured me of multiple fatal diseases. It is now my desktop and I have a shrine burning with incense as we speak. It is a beacon of light and hope.

Personally I'd only add a bunch of Stormboyz (or any other models) to the base if they're dramatically related to the Stompa in some way, e.g. launching themselves from the Stompa, protecting it from an anti-armour close combat attack or whatever. Enemy models running away would be fine, for example. The thing to avoid is anyone thinking 'hey why are those extra models there?' - it should be immediately obvious that they're there for a good reason.

Whatever you do with them, I think those GS flames look fine. But you won't know for sure until you paint them - in theory a base coat of dark red, then heavilty drybrushed through red, orange and yellow should look good.

So, I feel at this point I should mention that my choice of basing material might not have been a great idea - in future, I'll try and base properly, rather than finding a wood-putty paste in my garage and using that. The general reason is evident once you look at primed pictures of the base - the overall appearance is a bit 'muddy'.









Even though this has been left to dry for a very long time, some spots appear very slick and shiny, and some appear smooth - apparently areas where I may have skimped a bit on the surface sand and gravel detail. The only way I can figure out working with those spots is painting them up a bit muddy, I guess - particularly the footprint area. I did try and go light on the primer, but Citadel's new Chaos Black is a bit finicky. I think the ruins will look fine, but some of the open, bare patches that are supposed to be dirt look a bit screwy.

I'm open to ideas as to how to paint this. I don't know if flat-out drybrushing it terrain colors will do with the 'muddy' spots.

Ack! DO NOT SPRAY YOUR STOMPA WITH CITADEL! EEEK! Seriously, do not use any GW hobby spray paint, including their "Purity Seal" matte and gloss varnishes. Repeatedly people have posted over the internet the last several months with tales of woe when using GW spray paints despite explicitly following the directions on the can. It's happened with both older cans and the "new formula", with some folks even reporting that not only was the spray botched but it also ate through and damaged the plastic underneath.

Instead, try Krylon, Testors or Armory's sprays. I personally use a mix of Gunze Sanyo "Mr. Primer" (really good stuff, but very expensive and hard to find), Krylon Ultra Flat (white, black and Kamo!) and various Testors Model Master military colors. It's also very important not to spray when it's humid out. As humidity can seriously screw up a spray job, the lower the humidity the better. Cold and heat can also affect the spray, so be sure to spray within the tolerances listed (usually between 55 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit).

Anyhow, terrors of spray paint aside, none of that is actually still sticky? Just glossy looking, right? (which sometimes happens). If so, I really would not worry about how muddy it looks. Once you start painting everything, there is plenty of detail to make it look more like dirt and drybrushing will go over fine on the flatter spots. If you still think it looks too muddy, you can always put patches of burnt out grass (ie: grey or yellow colored static grass/turf) or even green toned grass/turf. You could probably even get away with not putting any grass/turf at all as blasted out dirt is going to look similar after the first light rain. Enjoy!

Listen to Nyarly!

Do yourself a favor?find someone handy with an airbrush to prime that monster model. I can't imagine that a capable airbrush artist would refuse to help you out with such an awesome model. And like Nyarly said, watch the temperature?if you live somewhere cold, wait until spring or at least heat up the garage and do it in there!

Regarding the mud, start by using a thinned paint slightly lighter than the darkest color you want, then hit it with a brown wash all over. After that drybrush on lighter and lighter shades of thinned brown, working your way up to the areas of highest relief, washing over with a thinned brown ink in-between the paint layers to keep the texture visible.

After a fair bit of deliberation, I've decided to go with the current appearance. A few extra hours to dry helped improve the look a bit, though I don't think I'll be using Citadel's black sprays ever again. I was feeling a bit adventurous, so I began the tedious process of drybrushing the dirt and soil areas with Scorched Brown, and it started to look a bit better. I'm not going to post pictures until I get the entire coat of scorched brown down properly, but I'm going to brave out what I have there.

I think you have happened across a bit of serendipity in my opinion.

You may not have intended the muddy look for the base, but I think the muddy dirt is a sigh of fresh air for the realism of this piece.
In the third picture in the post above, you notice some dirt clinging to surfaces that dry soil wouldnt normally clicng to without it first being wet at some point. I think that the paint scheme could benefit from a muddy to a muddy with some dried mud effect done to it.

Wars in rain and mud. The conditions could not be more bleak unless it is in subzero winters.

Posted By Hellfury on 01/01/2007 9:45 PM
I think you have happened across a bit of serendipity in my opinion.  You may not have intended the muddy look for the base, but I think the muddy dirt is a sigh of fresh air for the realism of this piece.

I agree with Hellfury.  Keep the "muddy" look and run with it.  You'll need to use some gloss finish on the parts that are still "wet" from rain or runoff or whatever, but it could really look nice if you take the time to do it right.  I mean, you're making a Stompa, right?  What better place to stomp than in the mud?

The desperate struggle within the confines of war...your diorama screams getting down and dirty. You've captured the Ork 'feel' even more than GW has. This thread should be stickied to never go off into oblivion. Fantastic piece. I can only imagine how good your armies look.

Hey Jamsessionein,

First of all I'd like to thank you for creating a post that has been a highlight in 2006 for not only me, but the Dakkaites in general I guess. Marvelous work! I've not before witnessed such inspired converting.

As to the base, I think the first coat and drybrush looks great.  So great even, that I'd refreign from doing too much more. You allready have a detailed and intreiging diorama, but the centrepiece is the Stompa itself; making the base too busy in colours would distract. A bit of redish drybrushing in the sandy areas would be OK, as well as a light grey or even bone color to highlight and drybrush the areas you marked in grey. The buildings? I'd avoid metalics, just go with grey tones. As I said, reserve the accents in colour and contrast for the Stompa.

Everything you did thusfar has added to the whole. So I don't think anything you'll do will do from now on will in any way make this a less then perfect project. Keep us informed please, you make Dakka a very good place to be.

Thanx and greetings, Cilithan  

Incredible work.

May I suggest hitting the muddy areas with a touch of gloss varnish to make it look wet and shiny?

This is amazing. theres just no other way to describe it.

I think that it would add some more character to the scenery (not that it really needs more) if you put some of those imperial propaganda posters on the buildings. I'm not sure if your at that stage in painting yet but I think it would look really cool. keep up the good work!

Man.

I just got back from some airbrushing adventures, and wow. That is one fickle beast to use, eh? Getting the mixture just right so that it comes out properly is more art than science, I think - I made a proper mess of pretty much everything I sprayed near, including the board, which I then tried to clean up.

Anyhow, I'd started by drybrushing the buildings with a blackened fortress gray in the hopes I'd see something fruitful, but it was too inconsistent and wasn't making me all that happy - the 'gradienting' I wanted between the gray, concrete-dusted areas and the soil/mud was far too harsh with just drybrushing.

So, I whipped out the airbrush, and after a lot (and I mean a lot of trial and error) got it to spit out a reasonable darkish gray color.

SOME FREE ADVICE: ETHANOL AIRBRUSH THINNER AND VALLEJO PAINTS DO NOT A HAPPY AIRBRUSH MAKE - it seemed to clump all of the pigment in the vallejo paint up, which subsequently jammed my airbrush up all nice. It took me a few tries to figure out what the hell was going on before I decided that the bottle of thinner I bought maybe wasn't helping me, and switched back to water. Blissful water. I'll never take you for granted in airbrushing again, even if you do dry slower.

It's odd, too, because on my test sprays earlier with a vallejo flesh color the thinner worked wonderfully, but it flat-out globbed the greys up.

So, of course, having a working airbrush I proceeded to go totally overboard on spraying the grays down. This was mostly because I got a bit over-triumphant and started spraying areas I know I shouldn't have touched with grays.

The good news, for what it's worth, is that I came to my senses shortly after, re-loaded the airbrush with scorched brown, and proceeded to use a wide-angle nozzle to roll the greys back a bit into the rubble piles.











Now, I'm not going to lie - the browns and the greys are a bit harsh together at the moment because you're basically looking at completely unhighlighted soil on the ground - it still needs drybrushing to brighten it up properly, save for the muddy areas, which will bring it more in line with the brightness of the grey areas. I'm also going to drybrush all of the grey areas with a lighter shade to hopefully pop out the details a bit, and I'm thinking I may do a black ink wash over all of it as well - there's actually a bit of GW's roughcoat spray on the buildings at this point, as I put it on shortly before the initial black priming, which should help add a bit of surface detail.

I've not yet figured out what I'm doing with those busted-up floor tiles in terms of color.

Advice or recommendations appreciated, in any case. Think I've ruined it yet? It's got a ways to go, in all fairness.

This is a photoshopped color test, just to see what you guys think of this general idea. Please note that this is just me messing around with the top image in photoshop, but I think it looks good enough to pursue?

ORIGINAL:


Color test:

Looking excellent! Feel free to detail that base up as much as you want too. Keep it up and paint in as much as you want (or are willing) to do. Take a look at the stuff IPMS and other regular modlers do when creating dioramas: they strive for as much realism and detail on the base as possible, as it will only accentuate the awesomeness that is your stompy stompa of super stomping stompiness!

I think you should definitely drop a black ink on those grey ruined areas, the airsbrush appears to have pretty much just blasted those areas fully with a lighter grey, so you really didn't get any additional texture (at least not that I can tell from the pictures).

As for the ground color, I personally like the darker color, so IMO any ground highlights should go to more of an orangish hue than a greyish one as you portray in your photoshopped image.

did I already mention that your skill is really depressing. inspirational, but depressing. where did you get that picture in your signature?

Anung: The picture from my signature came from a free warhammer 40k comic teaser. I will try and find it for you, as I can't seem to locate it at the moment.

Yakface: I gave it a try, read on.

Played around with it a bit more. I drybrushed beastial brown onto the base, and it looked really bad at first, so I went back and went over it a bit with rotted flesh.. I also hit the ground up with an unusual substance - I found some 'old english' dark wood wax/stain/shiner whatever the heck it was and ran it through there. It made the ground look a bit wet and evened out the browns a bit, which was nice. I felt the buildings were a bit too bright to begin with, so I mixed up an unusual concoction of black ink, future floor cleaner, vallejo matte finish, and water - it worked surprisingly well in the airbrush to 'smoke' everything and darken the colors up without obscuring them. I then went back and drybrushed the color I'd originally based them with around the edges to try and bring out the surface details. I tried to leave them darker towards the bottom, which I think shows nicely in the little comparison animation above.











The base's overall color direction has probably gone a bit more orange than I was intending on with the drybrushing, but I don't think it looks bad, not yet. I want to keep that footprint with the grot in it a really deep earthy color, as it makes it look more 'sunk-in' the ground, if you know what I mean. The grot hasn't gotten paint on him yet, but he will shortly, I imagine.

I'm not sure what details to pick out on the buildings or in what colors yet, and I still haven't figured out what to do with the tiles - I tried a variety of colors in photoshop as a test, but nothing looked right.

Advice is, as always, appreciated.

Hehehe,

you keep amazing me with your brilliance (and the moving pictures). I'd say work on the details now! I can't wait to see the guardsmen and the squished and stomped grot in technicolor.

One thing that strikes me in the Older-Newer pictures, is that the building on the left looks darker in the older picture, that gives a sense of shade which is actually quite cewl. Maybe give the 'shady' areas another dark ink wash.

Keep us posted, marvelous work!

Cilithan out...

As for what details to pick out and paint, here are my votes:

On the actual Stompa base, the sunken half-barrel should be painted (I vote a deep green), the broken girders should be either painted metal or black with a metal drybrush (the same with the broken girders spread about the entire base). Also the sandbags and the broken IG weapons should be painted plus, of course, the guardsman.

On the ruins, I definitely feel that the "floor" pieces that come in the Cities of Death kit look very metal to me. You have a couple of those plates sticking out on the ruin in the top right, and part of one as the second story floor on the ruin in the bottom left. I think both of those should be painted black with a metal drybrush.

Also, I do believe that most, if not all of the details on the ruins (like the statues and skulls) should be picked out and painted unless you're trying to represent that explosions and debris have blasted away the paint/color from these walls.

Obviously you don't want to go overboard on these little details, but I really find that painting the few things in the base that look like they should be a different color suddenly makes the whole base look "finished".

For the tiles, I think as long as you paint them uniformly (since right now they're a mix of colors thanks to the airbrush) they'll look fine. Of course, you also probably want to highlight the edges of each tile with a lighter grey to make them match the look of the rest of the ruin.

It's looking awesome dude.  I'm sorry I don't have much else to say - you seem to have a good handle on it and I don't think I need to repeat the advice of other posters. 

It's great.  Keep up the good work!