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When I got back into the Hobby some years ago, I decided I would need a Projekt for the General Motivation. So I was looking for something playable with diverse miniatures, a small amount of Minis nieder and a Design to which Incould easily add various other Elements. Soon I found the game of The drowned earth. My strategy was to build a full table of Terrain before buying Minis. This way it should be easy to motivate myself for getting the minis done afterwards. When trying tl find out more about the options of terrain building I became fascinated by the possibilities of mdf buildings. Searching for a terrain fitting to the three dimensional movements of The drowned earth I decided that the Venice line of ttcombat is a perfect match. Then buildings were designed to be played with carnevale. A game with very fast movements, a lot of climbing, jumping and of course water. Some guys Look like Assassins from a popular game. This makes the perfect baseline for a drowned earth table. I will give Photos and ideal of different parts of the Projekt and share some more ideas. And I will be grateful for more Tipps and ideas for the Projekt.

This is a great realistic sculpt of a Komodo Dragon, sculpted by our own @TaleSpinner. I included it in my Lost World Project WIP here: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/69308-lost-world-project-glitterwolf-paints-coldblooded-creatures-and-conquistadores/&page=150&tab=comments#comment-1836397 I used UV Resin Gel from Greenstuffworld to create the water ( my first try for deeper and clear water), made the base with Vallejo Desert Sand Paste, Cork and some milliput. Added some fish and seacucumbers/seaweed from Procreate and Milliput, one fish is from Mastercrafted Miniatures and the other two were made with the UV Gel and a Tinyworld Mold. The Komodo Dragon is an awesome sculpt, it paints itself! I looked at reference pics of the real thing. Enjoy.

Okay, I just joined the forums so I'll be posting my "backlog" of finished minis. This is one I did for a contest earlier this year.

WIP Thread here I finally finished this dragon. I took a lot longer for the base because I got a little carried away, but I'm really super happy with how it came out. To begin, this was a request from my mother in law to take inspiration from a set of china she has. Here's the plate In the end though I'm really happy with how the dragon come out and took lots of pictures: I'm going to do my best next time to rein in the base a bit, but I'm super happy with how this came out.

Awesome random encounter, paraphrased: DM describes a green, toad-like beastie. It-- Me: "Is that a GREEN SLAAD?" DM: "Well, roll a Knowledge: the Planes..." Me: "No, no, I mean does it look like THIS?" [reveals recently-painted Green Slaad] The Rogue: "Isn't this like a miniature painter's dream? Having just the right mini for a completely random encounter?" Me: HUGE HAPPY SMILE.

I'm painting a mini with a light source, and decided to rebase the beastie with some water effects, probably epoxy resin. I'll probably try to make the water at least slightly rough, creating interest for the eye. I woke up in a cold sweat this morning realizing that the light source should be reflected (or possibly just highlighted) in/on the water. My initial thought was to: lightly (heh) color the bottom of the pool as if it were dry and lit by the light source pour and texture the water highlight the water by drybrushing from the light source out. My concern about this is that if the viewer looks toward the light, the surfaces of any wavelets will be highlighted on the opposite side from the POV. In other words, the viewer will see the undersides or backsides of any highlights through the translucent wavelets, and this might not look the way the viewer expects. Has anyone done this? I looked around for a few examples but although there are plenty of doing wave effects (froth and foam), I haven't found any yet that look like translucent glare.

Translucent blue 77310, Water Weird, Dark Heaven Bones sculpted by Bob Ridolfi.

This was a quick and fun paint...

Finished Cthulhu on Saturday, I think I'm learning to overcome my fear of highlighting too far, I still didn't go as light as people said I should. Some say you can go practically to white, but I am very hesitant to try that. I think I've made progress though. C&C welcome! Soft Lighting--- Harsh Lighting, to show detail---- And WIP thread if anyone is interested...

Howdy, Something stirs at the waters edge... Kev! P.S. Gurgle...

Hi Guys, Just a quick update from my Do-To List. Pretty straight foward, light base coat, heavy wash, dry brush highlights. Let me know what you think :)

Entering this guy into a local Con's painting competition in the Open Category.

Something that's missing from my gaming terrain collection are bodies of water, so I thought I'd better make some. Unlike roads, a river can't really just start or stop in the middle of the board, so I'll need enough pieces to cover about a two and a half metre length, enough to go from end to end of my table. This is the test piece, trying out methods and colours. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, but I feel that it's lacking something and I'm not quite sure what it is. Perhaps it's that everything is quite even in height, so there's no drama of composition. The base is 3mm MDF, sealed with black spray primer, and the banks were built up with Das air-drying clay. The rocks are just bits of gravel. The grass is several colours of sawdust flock, and the taller vegetation is foam clump foliage. The water itself is just three or four coats of acrylic gloss medium brushed over paint, with various depths indicated by lighter or darker tones. I didn't want a perfectly smooth surface, so it's just been brushed with a narrowish brush to indicate the flow of the water. I haven't added any indications of the direction of flow, such as ripple trails off the rocks, because I want to be able to flip the modules end-for-end to maximise flexibility of use. The ends are 100mm wide, and this piece is about 350mm long.

So I finished my D20 Rainbow Dragon Challenge as given by @Cyradis, @Sirithiliel and @Pezler the Polychromatic. Challenge is here for those who want to join. http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/76666-the-seers-and-a-wizard-present-a-random-rainbow-dragon-challenge/ My WIP http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/76689-glitterwolf-has-accepted-the-d20-rainbow-dragon-quest/ And finally my Dragon! I choose Ebonwrath and made him a Fairy Dragon with Butterfly wings. He just landed near a wild river to smell the flowers..

Standby for massive dump in 3... 2... 1... Chopping this up into a few pieces for easy posting/consumption. Where I've been: Video games (Xumenicus#1118, if you're on Battle.net), bought a new house, running a fly fishing tournament for a treehugger non-profit, part-running my treehugger fly fishing non-profit local chapter, some other random stuff, and yeah -- here we are. I promise to paint more. Seriously. I just need to paint and sculpt more. I also need to fish more. And game more. I guess this is a thing: Apparently, I need deadlines in order to get anything done. This time around, since I couldn't make it to RC2017 (travel budget blown on BlizzCon), I aimed for a couple different challenges over at Massive Voodoo: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2017/07/mv-challenge-2017.html Objective: Make a water-themed base. No central miniature, no real focus -- just a base. And it has to be mostly water. Disclaimer: I'm not at all confident, or consider myself proficient with clear resin. I wasn't sure how good/bad/terrible this piece would turn out, so I didn't spend days painting this. It's got a few rough layers of highlights, a few rough layers of shadows, and basically I just wanted to turn something in, have fun doing it, and not stress about being good enough to win. The MV crowd is amazing -- I was just trying to get closer to touching the sun. :) Supply List: Wood, coping saw, cyano super glue, wire, green stuff, sculpting tools, paint, brushes, old brushes, Ease Release 200 Mold Release Agent, plastic Solo cups, nitrile gloves, popsicles sticks (fox mixing resin), Castin' Craft® Clear Polyester Casting Resin, small sheet of plasticard, duct tape, Tree House Studio Clear Acrylic High Gloss Coating spray, sandpaper (100, 200, 400, 600, 1000 grit), Woodland Scenics Lichen, Woodland Scenics Water Effects, fly tying thread, level for leveling the curing area I did a few sketches one night so I could figure out what to do, and this is where I ended up. I thought about doing a waterfall, or something cooler, but I was kind of in a time crunch, and only had 3 weeks, especially since things are still calming down from moving. [pic_00] Picked out a piece of wood from my scrap pile... [pic_01] Went to work with a coping saw until I had a pleasing, interesting shape... [pic_02] Learning from past mistakes with trying to get green stuff to adhere to wood, I opted to seal the wood this time. I used cyano, and 2 old brushes. It actually works really well as a wood sealer ( http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/cyanoacrylate-everything-you-need-to-know/ ), but you need to be extra careful due to the amount being used -- more of a chance to glue yourself to something, glue to project to something, and the fumes will sneak up on you real quick, and burn your eyes or nose. Fair warning. Be careful. [pic_03] I opted to use green stuff for the project. That's where my comfort zone still is, even though I'm trying to work more with Beesputty and ZBrush. The bit of twisted copper wire there is to support an additional column. Do an image search for "limestone underwater caves", and you'll see where I'm going with this. [pic_04] More... [pic_05] A little more... [pic_06] Starting the tree. Do a search on "limestone cliffs trees roots", and you'll see where I'm headed even more. [pic_07]

I was wondering if anyone has used gel medium for making water effects and how it went? I'm making a diorama and need to do water effects but the base doesn't really allow for me to pour resin. I'm making a little stream and need to figure out the best way to do this. Or if there are any other easy ways to do water effects would also be appreciated.

http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2017/07/mv-challenge-2017.html?m=1 Peace and blessings, brothers and sisters. The crew at Massive Voodoo have let loose their call for their 2017 Challenge. The crew at Massive Voodoo set out challenges to their viewers in order to push our abilities past our comfort zone. This year they have two (2) Challenges for us! 1. Create a base using water effects. 2. Paint a Disney Infinity character. There are limitations in this challenge - like on the basing Challenge: the goal is to create a base with a water effect, not to focus on a figure. They said we can use a small animal to accent the base, and Reaper has some awesome Familiars we can use. Also, Infinity Challenge is one figure, not multiple, which allows us to focus doing our best on one figure. Full details can be found by clicking on the link. I heard that little voice too: "I cannot win this! Why should I even try?" Well shut the front door little-voice-in-my-head! I know I have much to learn and improve in my own Art, which is why this is a Challenge. We cannot lose: we win just by pushing past our comfort zone and learning more about our beloved hobby. :D I said it before and I will keep repeating it: I believe in you. I see the awesome work you all do, and you believe in me too. That love helps me believe in myself and makes me want to work harder to push past my own limits. Plus we get to paint a character from the Disney franchise - which includes Marvel and Star Wars! I didn't even consider painting these as well as playing with them! ( Don't judge too harshly. Elsa kicks butt.) For a full list of characters available, check 'em out here: http://www.portalcharacters.com/disney-infinity/figures.asp You can find them individually and inexpensively on eBay. Now, if you will excuse me: I have some Reaper Familiars to peruse. :D May your efforts be rewarded and blessed!

Used Tamiya clear blue to coat the Water Weird and Reaper paints for the well and highlights.

So, I wanted to try my Tamiya clear blue on one of the Bones translucent blue elementals and I chose the Water Weird. So far, so good but I'm not sure how to finish it off from here. I'm thinking of trying to get a curly-wave-white-foam effect at the extremities but I'm not sure. What do you think hive mind?

My elementals. I'm going to need to redo a few pics for inspiration gallery submission, but good for now. These have only been cropped, unlike most of my pics. WIP

So I decided to do some elementals real quick. I gave them base coat of matte medium - primer for earth, because base coat. Then I attempted the yellow-ning. First it looked good, so I tried to add a little more, mixed with orange tint, and ugh. I think I'd recommend doing outsides red, and then use a yellow ink w/medium as "dry" brush to pick out details. It won't look right, but a lot of the translucents really seem to be table ready.

I really like these elementals' pose and sculpting. So much more imposing and dynamic compared to most other elementals I have seen. Picking flowers... There are many more pictures at my blog Water Elemental was done as follows: first, an undercoat of clear matte varnish. This is key! I used Army Painter Anti Shine spray. Then some vallejo blue ink and when dry several light drybrushings with progressively lighter shades of pale blue up to almost pure white. Then some ancient citadel turquoise glaze here and there, all topped off with gloss varnish. I did some color shade variations all over this one, but I think maybe the gloss varnish fuffs it up so this can't really be seen in the pictures. Fire Elemental was done as follows: First the undercoat of clear matte varnish. Then several abortive attempts with yellow ink which did just not work until I abandoned that idea and undercoated it with three coats of opaque white. After that successive layers of heavy to light drybrush with bright yello - golden yellow -dark pink - dark red brown and finally black. It is important to let the colours dry a bit between coats to avoid tearing off the layer below when drybrushing. Finish with dotting in some blues for the eyes. When painting fire like this, it looks pretty terrible up to the dark red brown layer. Suddenly, it looks pretty sweet indeed. Earth Elemental was done as follows: black undercoart, then heavy drybrushed coat of dark green gray, followed by lighter coats of yellow sand and light grey white. A stone combo that I think works so much better than just shades of grey, grey and grey. I probably should have varied it more with different types and colours of rock represented. but I just could not be bothered as I just wanted it done at this point. I need my Bones 3 shipment to complete the set! When O when will it arrive? Wherefore art thou mine Large Air Elemental? 77311: Large Water Elemental Reaper Bones translucent blue from the second Bones KS unknown sculptor, as it is uncredited in the Reapermini.com listing. 77082: Large Fire Elemental Reaper Bones translucent orange from the first Bones KS sculpted by Julie Guthrie 77185: Large Earth Elemental Reaper Bones from the first Bones KS Sculpted by Kevin Williams all in Bonesium PVC 60mm Reaper display base .

One little trick I picked up quite some time ago was to make a nail polish water bath. One can swirl together different colors, then apply it to a model to get interesting affects. I'd tried it on a couple of sprues of Bones material, but never was inspired to actually use the technique. This last weekend, I was shopping with the family and wandered into Hot Topic, where they had several interesting nail polishes. And so, I bought three different bottles, but I'll be using only one of them here, a red and black mottled polish in clear. Let's start with the basics. A completely unwashed, unprimed Gnomic, and a quick shot of the actual nail polish. The polish was dropped into the water bath by putting a lot of excess liquid on the nail brush. For the water bath itself, I am using an old lunch meat container. It's silly, but the lunch meat comes in a little bag, packaged in these little containers. It's my standard every day work lunch, so I've got a lot of them. Ruining one will not matter to me. The polish itself, I was a bit disappointed in. I was hoping for pink flakes in a black base color polish, but it turns out the polish base is clear, and it is pink and black flakes. Oh well, have to roll with that then. Now, when the drop is put in, it'll either sink to the bottom, where it becomes useless, or float on top of the water and start expanding. It sort of flows out over the surface, in almost a 2D explosion. I think the top surface then rapidly dries, but for a while at least, the polish is sandwiched between the upper dry layer and the water underneath. Here's where the magic happens. In an open part of the water, I dip the model piece down, then bring it up underneath the puddle of polish floating on the surface. It will wrap itself around the part, forming a film of sorts. I then set the part aside and work on another. I'd coated most of the parts, and decided that I didn't have enough variety in color. Really, I probably could have used an old toothbrush to splatter paint over the figure and get just as decent a look. However, since I planned from the beginning to make this a WIP/Technique thread, I wanted something that shows off the technique a little better. Since I have a small collection of dollar store polishes for just such a purpose, I grabbed a red one. Same process as the mottled polish, but when it spreads out, it makes just a small to large puddle. It To the rescue, a toothpick! I already had one that I was using to clean out the little clear polish puddles that were left floating. Another was pressed into service and used to swirl the red (now pinkish) puddle into something more streaky. This took a little work to get just right, but I was left with little streaks of color over the CAV. It turned a bit more purple/pink than red. I also tried a little bit of white, but I didn't like it nearly as much. The results are below, drying on top of the now empty water bath container. The plan forward is to brush off any poorly adhered film, and to remove any film where it has bridged a gap. I'll soon paint the crew's windows, and pick out a few little details here and there, but the "base" coloring in nail polish is complete. From decision to actually do this to the state you see above was about 45 minutes. If I had remembered how to do this a little better, it could have been less time and a little better placement of the coloring.

Hey, another WIP I'll start then most likely ignore for months. I finished Platypod, or so I thought. Then I took pictures and decided, nope. Needs more blending and highlights. See Frumitty and Shoamita to follow I've had quite a few questions about how I created the river on my spring exchange's base. I'll do my best to take their base from start to finish including all my mistakes (cause I'll make them) and how I fixed them. Pictures of the base concept to follow Comments, questions, suggestions always welcome.

Okay, prototype number one completed. Time for another. THE SINKING KEEP So after reviewing the previous thread other ideas I decided I really want to make the keep. I found the six-inch cork round and roughed in the water and then cut away the cork where I had drawn water in the picture. Then after finding an appropriately sized tube to create the tower, I transferred the shape of the tower sticking out of the water using a stencil I made from the drawing. Then i outlined the cut tube on to the cork and cut away the inside edge to seat the tower piece. After tweaking the cut and the fit it in the cut space I added to a small bit of elevated ground to either side. Here's what I have so far... The cork elevations are just super glued at the moment. But once I shape the slopes of them I will seal the cork with glue. Stay tuned.