Hi guys,

Thought I'd start a thread giving people ideas for what to use in basing and how to use it, and invite the rest of you experienced "basers" to give your ideas too....both the mundane and the bizarre!!!

Here I go, some interesting tips I've had and come up with are:

1. Use slivers of wood cut from an old stump or log with a chainsaw. If you do them thin enough (2-4mm or so) you can break them up by hand and the resulting fracture pieces make for interesting rocky outcrops or ice edges. Using a chainsaw for the cuts also means the top surface will have interesting circular indentations in it

2. Using cork placemats, break em up by hand or even cut them into circular sections, granulate them into their basic pieces or dig into it with a modeling tool of some sort, then just glue the stuff on your base arranged how you like. It's alway good to use it to build up the height using cork because it's light and has an interesting texture. You can then glue sand in and around it for added realism

3. Sand - you don't have to buy it, go raid a sand pit or the beach and bring some home. Put it into a bucket and then run a hose through it for a bit until the water goes clear. Make sure you mix the sand up with your hand as you go. This makes the sand easier to use as it takes away that annoying dust you get over your minis if you use straight sand or dirty sand. If there are course bits in it, then just run it through a household mesh collander (strainer thingy for rice and pasta) this will separate the materials into two sections, both equally useful

4. Gluing the sand - here's some of Zords advice, but adapted to me.....for sand just smear the base with either pva (slow drying and can be peeled off easy later if you have the patience) or cheappass superglue, make sure you dont' put the glue on anything you don't want, so care is NECESSARY here. Then dip the base or use a spoon and pour the sand over the base. If you use superglue, be generous with the sand as the superglue will seep through the sand and make it thicker and deeper than standard pva. Let it sit for a bit and then tip the excess off.

5. Gluing stoney ground - this is in reverse of gluing sand, I discovered it from trying to glue rocks in place and it just looking stupid and unnatural....pour the gravel onto the base and arrange it how you want, or just let it fall and sit how you like it. DON"T MOVE IT VERY MUCH or the shape and stones will fall off. Now - pour superglue over the top and allow it to seep in. Make sure it goes in deep, not just surface. Carefully place it on a flat surface THAT CAN BE BLEMISHED (not a kitchen bence or something) and allow it to dry. Voila! Nice realistic gravellly looking thingys bitsors....

6. When using sand or gravel or flock or anything else that you have to prepare or buy, apply it to the base while holding it over the top of an empty container - preferably not a cardboard box as boxes have holes and it's hard to get it all back out. Then you can retrieve the excess later. Make sure you don't mix all the stuff together because it's better to keep each basing material separate.

7. When gluing stuff to the base, unless you want it that way, ALWAYS try to make it go all the way to the edges of the base, not over or under, unless that's the effect you want that you've tried and tested and like. I say don't go under because it just looks lazy and messy, and don't take it over because it just looks sloppy and weird. If you take it to the edge and neat, as well as as close to the feet/robe/tentacles/appendage/bit stuck to the base as possible, it looks more natural. But don't stack stuff to high at the feet as it makes it look like they are sinking into the base.....and I'm sure you don't want that - all the time. Now this is a bit of a guide, and the more experienced modellers out there will have tried and tested techniques for over edging/under edging, so look around if you want to try this, and be very sure you know what effect you'll get before attempting to base that model you want to look so purty....

8. Go to the modelling shop and get some flock, static grass, long grass strands, and some clumpy stuff if you want. I don't recommend making it coz it's bloody hard! Sebastian mentioned the other day he uses coconut fibres off the coconut itself, that's a cool idea for realistic looking fibres. Some people also say use shaving brush strands from a shaving brush. Cool idea, these have a suitably old grassy look to them. I've played around with many brush fibres, and you need to make sure the colour and thickness is right before using them. Too thick looks weird, wrong colour is nearly impossible to successfully recolour....easily...If you want a bit of work and mess, go ahead! I'm trying to make it easier for you..... We all like easy....

9. Sebastians real grass technique! Pull and twist and abuse it with tweezers, and then cutting the strands at various lengths. Spend time on it, don't just cut it all at the same length - last time I looked at clump grass, I didn't see any weird "Stop growing at this height" effect, but it was all organically random....look at real stuff before shaping your own. Try and use tweezers to tear the fibres off instead of cutting them, coz cutting them actually make the ends look squared if you look close. But be careful with tweezers too coz you can make em look "Short and curly"

10. Garden variety chip bark, or even ironbark or similar type of bark - glue it to the base, douse it with some strengthening glue like superglue - "real"ise it with some patches of sand and stuff, and voila! cool base effect, similar to slate if done right

11. Look around your hardware store, at broken appliances/toys/cheapass toy and bits shops/bargain bins - everywhere you go to see if you can see interesting and small bits for bases and converting stuff too! Some of my best converting bits have come from cheap shops or sale toys. I just found 3mm rare earth magnets at the warehouse - disguised as a kids toy! I got about 30 for around $5 which isn't too bad.

12. While you're down looking for bark, look at interesting twigs and sticks and stones and other bits of detritus. A project I'm going to do in the near future will be an urban rubble base made by gluing a huge pile of straight out garden debris to a base, and then mixing in bits of mechanical stuff.....it'll look pretty cool painted up, and it won't look like it came from the garden!

13. Putty - all sorts. You can bulk the height of a base using greenstuff or selleys kneadatite or whatever, you can do the same using spakfilla. You can make plaster of paris/spakfilla sheets in lids of jars and then break them up for concrete looking stuff. Mix the putty with sand and the then cast it for interesting looking bits and bobs, or just blob it onto a flat surface and peel it off later. INTERESTING TEXTURES!

14. Cardboard, usefull for all sorts of stuff and cheap....you can build the base up and then use card to make a floor. Then strengthen the card with a nice application of superglue. Cutting card which has been superglued creates a different effect to cutting non-superglued stuff....try it! Experiment!

15. Fly screen can be used for mesh textures....

16. Save plastic offcuts and sprue, and if you can run it through an old hand mincer (GW hint) what a cool idea! Wish I had one though....heheheh!

17. Sprue off model aircraft and stuff - it's ROUND! good for conversions and basing and stuff AND....if you have a friend or friends into model aircraft and teh like - FREE!!! I have a huge box full I may never use all of....I'm a very happy guy!!! lol

I dunno....there's more but I can't think of them all now....come on guys - join the hint page!!!!

Very interesting, should help me alot!

Good basing is a skill in itself. Here's a few things that work for me:

Leaves. If you want a fallen leaf effect, try dried herbs. A more realistic affect is achieved if you mix a few different types - parsely, thyme and such like. Make every thing smell like herbs, so seal over the top with glue/paint. I like to dry brush over the top with greens and browns to get a decomposing look.

Rubble. A great source rubble for urban bases is bbq fat absorption gravel or kitty litter. Really quite cheap (in fact I find the cheapest stuff the best). It's full of random sized jagged pieces that look just like rubble.

Razor wire. Try decorations from discount stores. You have to look past the happy shiney bits!. Here's some Christmas wrappping decoration that has had decorative stuff pulled off and then curled around a modelling knife handle (anything the right shape will do).:

Before:


After:


I know it's not on a base but you get the idea - undercoat black, dry brush scroched brown, vermin fur (orangey brown) then very tiny highlights of orange. Dab on some bolt gun metal and something shinier and you have excellent razor wire. Remember when you are doing wire obstacles to make it look loose and uneven.

Shell casings Nothing too revolutionary - just cut up pieces of plastic rod (lollipop sticks are good). Scatter them around the base or if you want them to look like they come from the model (esp. Orks!) randomly pile them around the feet of the figure to their front. Undercoat black, then dry brush tin bits and a tiny bit of gold highlight - a chestnut ink wash can help as well. Here's a couple of pics to illustrate:




Happy basing...

this sounds really strange but your the hair on your bum makes the base with some Pva painted red looks really good if you want a warped chaos effect

gravel is an old favorite of mine for bases

train shops are the best base material shops you can find!

just an idea off the top of my head, perhaps paint on a round base a red background with a purple swirl. then for the sides have a stone looking base to pretend that your creatures are comming out of a warp or somthin. Someone care to expand please cause i think im onto somthin

Oh and it had to be an ork getting stabbed not a space marine.... (mutters to himself) always the case bah!

^^^ Classic wishwizard there!

On a more contributory note, I find that including more than one basing material on a base - when done right - can look very realisitic. i.e. sand and rocks with different sized patches of static grass, flock and woodland turf. See the second link below for an example of what I am talking about.

Two excellent guides/tutorials can be found here:

http://www.brushthralls.com/Bases2/index.php

http://www.brushthralls.com/HordesBasing/index.php

Some really good ideas there guys.

One of the first things I used on my bases was dirt out of my garden. I did this at the time because I was broke, but I ended up using it to base an entire army to good effect. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the army before I sold it. I think EmpireGuard might be using it on some of the bases in his zoo project.

Excellent info. Another thing I sometimes use is plastic fish aquarium plants. Sure, many are too big, but look around and you'll find some good materials for your foresty bases (eg. wood elves or catachans).

You can make many many "rocky" textures using just cork and various grits of sand. If you use cork placemats or cork noticeboards, you can get a cracked concrete effect by using the flat side as well as breaking up the edges, looks great for urban type scenes.

Static grass is a lot more realistic than green flock, and comes in a variety of colours. combined with other grassy things, like brush bristles or something similar for reeds, looks great.

The key to making a good base is to actually LOOK at the ground in the real world. It's a similar thing to how kiddy drawings differ from artwork; kids draw what they *think* things *ought* to look like, artists draw what is actually there. This applies to pretty much everything, but if you want realistic bases, look at reference photos. Muddy, shelled ground? WW1 photos. Snow? Snow photographs. Pay attention to the little details and your bases will look great. No battle was ever fought on a fluoro green cricket pitch.

Somebody didn't watch the Ashes then. Although it wasn't really a battle. More slaughter than fighting. Doesn't the term "battle" imply there was resistance from the opposing side? Ahh well.

My tip would be when painting the sand/ground cover, a really interesting effect can be made (only really works on larger boards, or larger bases) by stippling different shades of ground cover. Works well for browns. If you have a Tomb King army, or are making sand-swept terrain - instead of gluing on the sand to the building, and then painting it all - getting the actual colour of sand you want, and then gluing it down works. I can't explain it well enough, but heres an awesome guide;

http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/extras%20-...stic%20sand.htm

Mods

Unpin the Painting competition and pin this thread i think its great and some great advice

This might sound a little random but my IG army is urban based. I spent ages trying to find a suitably random basing material for them until I finally had a great idea.

All I did was clean my modelling table (doesn't happen very often) and all put all the little offcuts, shaving, clipped of bits, filings etc in a bag instead of throwing it all out. I mixed in some cut up sprue (which I paint as redbrick) and some random techy looking bits into the bag as well and I have an awsome urban rubble basing material. Here's a pic:

Do the metal parts disperse well through the mix? Do you just dip the models in the mix or pour the mix over the bases?

Crushed Granite

Has a much better texture than sand for basing as it has a variety of different sizes from the dust (which is a better scale to represent sand) to larger particles. Also works well as urban rubble.

Crushed Sea Shells

Flat surfaces mixed with jaggered surfaces, a variety of particle sizes and a range of textures make this good to represent urban rubble.

Painting

I usually drybrush up through at least three colours then add small patches of inks and other neutral colours (not to bright just so it doesn't look like a flat colour) to create a more interesting base.

Static Grass

Patches look good, a mix of multiple shades on the one base can also look interesting.

Colour Selection

I personally like bases to contrast with the main colours of the army.

My favourite source of sand for basing is the fine "banks" of sand, stones and grit that build up in the gutters of bitumen/blue-metal roads. You get a wide range of sizes and textures along with lots of little bits of crushed granite, etc. A couple of handfuls will do an entire army. Gold!

Plaguelord Baldric there is plastic, metal, resin, wood and all sorts of other stuff in there. I just superglue some intresting big bits on first and then use a watered down pva mix to attach the rest. I always give my bases a second coat of pva and I've never had a problem with any of the stuff coming off.

Also thought of a couple of other things:

Mud/Water effects: If you can't be bothered going and buying some resin or the GW stuff just use what I use, Sellys Araldyte. It's the 2 part glue that you find near the superglues in supermarkets and it works a treat. Can't rememeber cost but for convenience it's fantastic. It's also very easy to use.

Lichen/Moss trails: Everyone has some green flock lying around and almost no one uses it. I use it on my empire bases to make small trails of moss/lichen on my otherwise grey bases. Just adds a little intrest to the bases and looks great.

For a uniform sized gravel check out the heaps around ant nests. Depending on the size of the ant will determine the size of the grains in the pile.
I have also done something similar to what blue cypher has done. I have a plastic chinese food container with gravel, some cheap flock, fine sand, coloured sand (the grains are larger than the fine stuff), wood shavings, the waste from my casting attempts with plaster and also the sweepings from my painting desk. A second thin coat of PVA over the top of everything locks it all in place.

More for the 'meta' game, collect basing material (sand) when on holiday. It's so cool that my Wych archite is standing on a rock from Abu Simbel in Egypt, and Tony's Thousand Sons are based with crushed limestone from the Valley of the Kings.

Urban bases - two old wargame chits stuck down w. superglue, trim edges roughly with wirecutters, rubble made from sprue cut up w. same wirecutters, dab of brown flock.

Stone bases - same old wargame chits, now four to a base, trim with cutters or with toe-nail clippers to get curved edge, gouge roughly with file/pointy object, black undercoat, drybrush shadow grey, light Swolf grey

Rocky - Wine bottle cork, it's already round, just cut roughly to shape, seal with PVA.

Big rocky outcrop - mix up Selley's kneadatite, squish flat onto plastic, lay another bit of plastic on top (plastic bags are perfect for this), roll flat with rolling pin. Wait till it sets then break up with hammer or pliers, lay bits roughly onto one another, drop flock or sane in the cracks.

Wooden planks - score the surface of the base with something sharp, create wood-grain patterns, paint brown and ink.

For the real jungle look - $2 shop plants, pull off the fronds stick into base.


Latest creations, chunks of sprue to build up the base, bit of chuppa chup stick for pipe, squish kneadatite over the top and press down with plastic sheet scored to look like tiles. Stick bits from the work bench into the kneadatite before it dries. photos tomorrow.
Cheers,
Steve

My Eldar have made use of poppy seeds. Yep, thats right, poppy seeds. It's cheap to buy, quick to do, just paint glue on to the base and dip, and requires no painting/drybrushing whatsoever as it's already naturally highlighted.

I've even been told by one astute opponent it's handy coz if you get hungry you can just lick the base...

Here's a shot of the Urban base up close, check out the thread on my rats for more bases like this
Cheers,
Steve

Some would call that theft...

If you check out landscape suppliers, they'll quite often either give you a bucket of sand, or sell you one cheap.

Just an alternative for those who would rather not break the law for their hobby...

Thought all you guys might like to see one of my bases made using some of these cool ideas!





And together:



How's that appear? I've got an old rhino in the mix, and it's sitting that way to make it look like it's melting and sliding down deeper, I'll build up around it a bit to make it look like it's melting. Or it looks like an eruption of stone, magma and ... stuff ... occurred and buried it, whatever, i couldn't do it the other way around otherwise it's hard to work out what it is. Or to work on later.

This one was made using a CD as the base.

Looking very kickin'. How big is a CD? just wondering if it is scale.

We're talkin for a defiler though....about 120mm diameter.

And that is the corner of an old rhino too....just for size comparison.

Oh, coolio. Looks awsome. Hope to meet inon the battle field one day.

A cd is about 5 inches in diameter.

Just a smidge off the size of a large blast template.

for my nid army i use roadside gravel as boulders. this is great for several reasons, one that is comes in many shapes and sizes to fit any size of base and also more importantly it, like slate is to-scale with the models in that it does not look out of place on a base.
i have also found that using partially weathered sea shells creates a really alien looking rock formation.
cheers
aidan

On the base I just posted, I'm using Tapioca starch balls and map pin heads cut to shape for lava bubbles. Just chop em up with a pair of cutters, glue them in place, and then give them a few layers of PVA to make it look like a lava flow. EASY!

Tapioca starch balls and poppy seeds?! This thread is making me hungry!

Tapioca starch balls for lava bubbles, poppy seeds for gravel, cinamon sticks for bark, mixed herbs for detritus and fallen leaves....what next? OH! Salt and sugar and baking soda for snow and ice!

I'm sure we could use cloves and seasoning and other such kitchen items for something!!!!



Hmmm....chili seeds, they could work as...as....gibbers! Right name? Flat stones, like the Gibber Desert? Have I got that right?

We can even use food coloring in our painting and stuff if we wanna go crazy!!!!

Actually chili seeds aren't a bad idea at all! I could see them painted up in an muted fuschia-type colour and used in oddly-angled clumps as desert canyon terrain suitable for Tau, etc. Kinda like an alien take on low-lying cactus. Cool!

I know. That's why I said it.

Dont forget for woodland bases that you dont have two sculpt your own twigs the ones from the garden work really well. If it still has bark and a little lichen on it thats even better.