Hobby Dungeon

So far I used the dining table in our living room for the hobby. This is not ideal for various reasons (setting everything up, stowing it away, working with resin, etc.). In May I asked my landlord if there is a spare room in the basement which I could use as a workshop... and he said "yes, there another room that is empty" and so I came to my dedicated hobby dungeon.

It took me some time to clean it up and arrange it properly. It is just 1m wide and it was a little challenging to set everything up in a way that I can store (and get to) everything and to have sufficient seating space at the desk. I have it in use now for almost two weeks and I am more than happy. I have enough space space to sit comfortably to build, convert and paint. All the tools and paints are in arms reach and I can leave everything when I am done for the day without having to worry that the kids might eat a hobby knife or sniff some resin dust.

The dedicated hobby space also allows me to finally look into airbrushing, something that simply wasn't possible in our living room.

Nurgle Heldrake - Blight Drake – Coversion WIP: Brownstuff = Greatstuff

I finally got my hands on the Brown/Aluminium Putty by P3. It is indeed like Greenstuff: all you need to do is kneading the two components together until they are mixed up evenly (and the putty gets a brown-metallic look) and then you are good to go.

The difference to Greenstuff is noticeable right away. The Brownstuff is firmer and not as sticky, this way you can start even with some more finer modeling right away. I sculpted the carapace shape with the pluggers and it stayed... more or less. The Brownstuff has a "memory effect", but it is not as drastic as with Greenstuff, and the readjustments are easy to do. What is also easy (and fun) to do with the Brownstuff: corrosion.
Even though this was more or less a test I am very happy with the result, and assume that the next segment is going to be even crisper.

I am not sure if I can replicate this very specific look of the original carapace 100%, but I am confident that it will be close. Once the Blight Drake is painted and all the rust and weather effects are applied it will look consistent for sure.

Plague Zombies - Hollow Bases

Before starting the mass production of the Plague Zombies I have to build 70 hollow bases first. Yes, I could just have bought some more of the scenic bases I got for my Plague Bearers, but this would have been too costly. So I went the cheap way and turned a bunch of old 28mm round bases into hollow bases for creating the swampy subsoil.

Creating hollow bases isn't too complicated.

1. Take a standard base and drill small holes on the outer edge of the upper base part. Make sure that distance between each hole isn't too big (I drilled around 20 holes per base)

2. Take a hobby knife and cut out the top part of the base. The drilled holes will help you not damaging the rim (it might dent or even break when you put pressure on the base)

3. Glue the base rim on 0,5mm thick plasticard (with proper plastic glue with solvent that melts the plastic). This will give it support and stability.

4. Carefully remove the remaining plastic flesh with a hobby knife and sand paper.

5. Cut away overhanging plasticard and sand the base carefully to remove irregularities.

Remarks
1. You can glue the base on the plasticard right away and then start drilling and cutting. Actually, this way you will have the support from the plasticard right from the get-go.

2. For the clean up part you can use a Dremel or similar electric tool to remove the remaining plastic pieces. It is much faster as you sand/melt the plastic away, but you also have to be careful to not damage the rim.

Granted, it took me a couple of hours to get the 70 hollow bases done, but figuring out how to do them in a efficient way was a lot of fun, and in the very end it was much cheaper than buying blank ones.