Basing Complete

Look at all the pretties! I finished the bases for my first set of constructs last night. With only a handful of models in my Hoffman crew, I decided to pay much more attention to bases than I will with the 30 Grey Knights I still have to paint for the NOVA Open. I tend to enjoy building and converting models much more than I do painting them. It's a great opportunity to let my inner engineer out to play. I get to hack, slash and cobble together masterpieces and monstrosities whose only limit is the depth of my junk boxes. My inner artist isn't nearly as well developed; he still likes to play with crayons. With metal models that mostly only have one pose, the bases are the biggest way I can see to personalize them.

I followed Kennedy's advice to mix white glue into my paint to achieve a liquidy look. It was a drastic improvement over paint alone, but I may still sneak some gloss on the nuclear waste to make it extra shiny. Once I got the metal grates in place I realized that I had to redo the fresh streams of goo on the Hunter to make them large enough to be seen through the grate.

This Watcher is a flyer so I left all the grating off. He's going to need the extra glossy surface the most because the entire purpose of this guy is to show off my sludge.

One bonus of mixing glue with the paint is the fun structures you can make with it.  I made an actual bubble in my Guardian's toxic waste using a pet medicine syringe. I mixed up a blob of about 80% elmer's glue/ 20% paint and let it sit for 5 minutes to thicken. I put some of the paint/glue on the base, then filled the syringe with air and blew a bubble in it.  The 5 minutes wasn't quite enough setting time because the bubble kept popping, but I determinedly blew more until eventually one held til it dried. After drying the bubble deflated, but the bottom portion retained its shape. I'm pround of the effects I created and can't wait to get some games in.