What's up guys, welcome back!
Hope you've got your sgian dubh's ready, today we're going to look at how to make the base
for this angry little bagpiper.
First off we need a plinth, now you don't need anything fancy, I actually used the lid
off a bottle of shampoo.
It works really well.
If we check it next to the miniature you can see it's going to be a pretty good size, the
model is fairly small so we should keep the plinth quite dinky too, you don't want to
swamp it in a giant base.
Have a look around your house for some plastic lids that would make for good bases you'll
be surprised how many you'll find that are suitable.
Next up we're going to need some Milliput, this is just the standard stuff, you can get
it from most hobby stores, but there's a link in the description if you want to pick some
up.
In addition, we'll need some paper.
Just like green stuff, Milliput comes in two parts, and you're going to need an equal amount
of each of them.
I cut a bit off each roll and then make them into a ball so I can easily judge which one
is bigger.
Here we can see I need a bit more of the yellowy green stuff, so I'll just cut a little more
and add it to the ball.
And yep, that looks about right.
Alright, so once you have you're two balls in hand, just mash them together for a few
minutes until you get them evenly mixed.
You'll know it's ready when you stop seeing any little streaks of grey in the putty.
Once it's mixed, set it aside and start filling your lid with crumpled bits of paper.
This is just to fill the space a bit so you don't need to use as much milliput.
Make sure the paper is quite tightly packed and doesn't have space to move, you can give
it a shake to check that you can't hear any paper rattling around.
Alright, so once you're happy, grab your milliput and just stuff it into the bottom of the lid,
covering up all that paper.
Press it down a bit with your fingers and use a sculpting tool to get rid of the excess
milliput that's overhanging around the edge.
After about 3 or 4 hours and it will have set rock hard.
One of the good things about Milliput is that once it's set, you can sand it.
So here I have a few different grades of sand paper and I'm going to use them to level out
the bottom of the plinth.
Starting with a heavy grain then moving down to a finer grain to smooth it out.
Don't forget to do the sides so you get a neat finish.
Check it sits level on the table before moving on.
If it's a bit wobbly you'll need to do some more sanding.
This is going to create a lot of dust so make sure you give your plinth a bit of a wipe
to clean off the surface.
Alright, so now that we've finished prepping the plinth we can move on to actually building
our little scene.
We'll going to start off with some cork.
I'm using quite a thin sheet here.
You can get this in most hobby shops, it comes in various thicknesses, but my preference
is to build up a few layers of thin sheets, rather than just using one thick piece of
cork.
That way you can create a nice effect where the cork is sort of shifting position between
each layer.
Just rip a piece of cork from the sheet, roughly the size of your plinth, then we're going
to pull bits off the edge until it's a little smaller than the width of the base, that'll
let us create a small border around the edge of our scene, making a nice frame for it.
I'd avoid using a knife for this, you want the edge to be all ragged with quite a natural
and organic look to it, and a knife is going to make it way too uniform, so it's much better
to rip it with your fingers.
Double check it's going to sit ok on the base and once you're happy, we'll do the same thing
again with another piece of cork.
Just ripping it to a similar size.
But this time, we'll let some of the cork overlap, here and there, so it creates an
interesting look around the edges.
To attach this to the base we'll first score the top of the plinth with a hobby knife.
This just helps to give our glue something to grip to.
Be careful that you don't cut all the way across, remember we want to create a little
border around the cork so you don't want any gouges showing near the edge.
Alright, so now we'll apply some thick super glue to the cork, and you can use a stick
or a paperclip or something to help spread the glue around on the surface.
Then we'll just stick it onto the plinth, making sure it sits nice in the middle there.
Hopefully without glueing it to your fingers.
If you have some you can use an activator spray to help speed up the drying time of
the glue.
This stuff acts as a catalyst and basically makes the glue bond instantly.
It's pretty useful, I can recommend getting some.
Alright, so once that's in place we'll do the same thing for the other bit of cork.
Again we can use the activator spray to speed things up a bit.
We're going to use some more cork now.
The idea here is to create a little path that the bagpiper is going to be walking along
so I want to build up the sides slightly so that the path is a slightly sunken as if it's
been walked on for some time.
To do that we'll rip a couple bits of cork and just glue them on top close to either
side.
Giving us something like this.
There you can see the cool layers effect you get from using a few bits of cork, instead
of a single piece.
Now, we want this to look like natural dirt, so we're going to have to cover up the cork
with a more realistic texture.
To do that we'll first create a texture paste. First using some of this Perfect plastic putty,
and then about the same amount of pva glue.
To that we'll add a few different grains of sand, this little tub has a bunch of different
sand in it, but we'll also add some of this too, it's just a bit of a bigger grain.
Then we're just going to mix that together with an old lollipop stick. If it's too thick
you can add a bit more pva glue, there's no ideal consistency for this, you just want
something that's fairly workable and that's going to stick onto the cork.
The putty gives it a bit more substance, if you use the pva on it's own it tends to look
a bit too much like you've just glued some sand on top. So this mix tends to give you
a better effect.
Once it's mixed, use the stick to spread it onto the cork.
If you have a bit of trouble and find it doesn't really want to come off the stick then just
add some more pva glue into the mix that'll make it a bit more workable.
So yeah, keep putting the stuff onto the cork, you can use your fingers to moosh it onto
the surface if you like, it's a messy process but it's going to give you a really good effect
so it's worth the hassle.
You can buy premade texture pastes, valejo has quite a lot of decent ones, but I prefer
to just make my own, that way I have more control over what's actually going on there.
Once you have the cork well covered, clean off your little border, I'm using a sculpting
tool to get rid of any excess gunk, then I use a wet bit of toilet paper just to finish
it.
You can actually mask this area off before you apply the paste so you don't need to clean
it, but to be honest for the amount of time you spend doing the masking, you may as well
just not bother and do this clean up at the end. It works out about the same.
But it's up to you which you prefer.
Once it's all cleaned up just set it aside and let it dry, it should take a few hours.
But you might want to leave it drying over night just to make sure.
Anyway, once it dried I primed it with some GW Chaos Black and then I sprayed it from
above at about a 60 degree angle with some Tamiya Super fine white.
And I only sprayed from one direction.
I didn't turn the base while I was spraying the white.
That creates this preshading effect where the details are dark on one side and bright
on the other.
We'll be using this to our advantage when we paint it.
To find out the secret behind that, tune in next Friday to see the full, unique painting
process.
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