Terrain from spare parts: Building a dead tree

Today I want to continue with my articles about how you can make terrain out of chunk or spare parts. This time I will show you, how you can make a dead tree (the one you can see on the left side) completely from chunk.

What you will need for this:
- Paper towel
- A twig or dried flower stem
- Something for a base (e.g. a washer)
- Glue
- Sand/Earth
- Static grass/flock (completely optional)

Twigs

Paper towel

Camcorder and stuff - My setup for testing

Camcorder and accessories

As promised I shot some pictures of the camera and stuff I received yesterday. The camcorder is a Sony HDR-CX220E and is, although very tiny and not very expensive, able to record the things in full hd. The tripod is also a rather cheap one from a special from Aldi (a discounter here in germany). And I had to get myself a smartcard, because the cam was delivered without one. And last I had to get myself a pocket to safely store the camera. You can't believe what our cats are capable of in matters of destruction. All necessary cables (HDMI and USB) where part of the camera so I can start testing with a setup so that's it.

HowTo: Photobucket

Everytime I made some photos I cursed because without the right equipment the pictures often get somewhat blurry, oversatureated or shiny. Therefore I searched for an easy way to build me place where I can make my pictures. Prices for professional equipment ranges from 40€ to open end and I didn't want to spent my money on something like this (the money saved could be invested in paints/miniatures or a nice evening with my wife). The best solution for low budget I found (in different places) seems to be the photobucket:

Photo bucket at no cost

Airbrush finally arrived

Finally my airbrush set arrived yesterday so I set up my workspace (which you can see here) with my new equipment and started some basic experiments. But after the first minutes I noticed that the trigger and the needle are sluggish. So I disassembled the whole pistol and cleaned and checked everything. After that everything seems to be working fine.

Thanks to the great bunch of tutorials for airbrushing! One of the series I relally like is the beginner seriers from Chung:



My first victims will be some of the miniatures of the very old game Starquest (in english its Space Crusade). I hope I can show you some of the achievements in the near future.


Perhaps I will make a post about my setup when I know what I'm doing ;)


So long,
Paradox0n

Basing experiments

Today is the "Tag der Arbeit" (roughly translated as "Labor Day") and while I am still waiting for my airbrush and my wife has to write for university, I tried some different basing stuff:

1. Using cork as basing material
2.  Using pigments for the first time

Both materials I never used before and since everyone is talking about how neat this pigment stuff is, I asked my wife if I can use some of her pastels to rub of powder for pigmenting my new corkbases. I will not do a tutorial for this, because I am myself just a beginner and trying out different things, but the first results are very promising. Sadly to say, the lighting swallowed most of the brown and green pigments I used:

Corkbases with pigments

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome but need to experiment a little more. At the moment I can only say that pigments seem to give a more natural look than just washing the base.