Using real spiders

Heyho,

Alex is still working on the base for his Olfo and we thought a little spider is missing to complete the scene. As it turned out nature is still the best modeler...

Maybe you have seen several tutorials creating spider webs e.g. the great tutorial from massivevoodoo.com using crackle medium. Alex took a more pragmatic way and just used real spider webs and attached them to his base. Real spider webs are ultra-thin and ultra-durable and most people have them as a near endless resource ;-). On this base we wanted to go a step further. The idea of a little spider hanging over Olfos head was born and we thought about using one of the little spiders produced by GW. Unfortunatly those spiders are too big and look like a plastic toy. Therefore we decided to use a small REAL spider:

Alex primed the spider with Dark Sea Blue from Vallejo which is one of our favorite colors today (regards to Ben Komets!) which turned out to be really fiddly.

We created some glue strings to attach the spider to the base using UHU Flinke Flasche (german brand) as those strings look a little bit more fresh than old spider webs.

Alex attached the spider to the base directly over Olfos head.

And here we have the final result of the arachno-tutorial.

If you want to see more of Alex fantastic miniatures then go to his coolminiornot.com album and ultimately give him some ratings of 10 :-).

Regards,

Grumbler
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WIP-Week 33

Heyho,

as we do regular painting sessions in my basement I decided to show you not only things from myself but stuff done by my buddies. So, here we go...
A gnom Alex is working on at the moment

and the corresponding base:

Klaus started a new miniature (top secret manufacturer ;-))after he got a final pin at the Games Day with his duell (I have no picture of the duell at hand...):

Finally we have some necrons that Marc is working on. They are in a really early stage though.

Regards,

Grumbler
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Creating icicles

Heyho,

it is true I have not posted for month (or even years?) now. I got two children, finished my PhD-thesis, started a new job and bought a house. I think those are a valid number of excuses :-). But here we go again and I hope I have the opportunity to re-enter the realms of miniatures, brushes and lots of paints.

To get into it I selected my old TAU-force and thought about how to overhaul them that is give them the BÄM!-effect (invented and copyrighted to massivevoodoo.com all rights reserved).

Battle damage? Ok, ok for sure they will get some battle damage but lets go a little step further. Their color scheme calls for a winter scheme and therefore I thought it would be best to add snow and icicles to all of them (a lot of snow and icicles). Even so much snow and icicles that it would eventually not make sense at all but looks cool at least.

Ok, we have done snow in the past using wood glue and crushed glass. Here I additionally used snow paste and combined it with the crushed glass. I got the snow paste from my local hardware store (even bought two different products) which seemed to be more or less the same that is a grained white paste that dries out with a very matt finish.

Lets zoom to that base. I think it looks really cool although the images do not show the glitter effect of the glass very well.

Massivevoodoo has a god-like Imperial Sentinel which shows the use of icicles in perfection (post with sentinel). Oh lord I need that too and not only on one vehicle but every trooper and tank I have in my whole army. Unfortunately I was not able to get any acrylic glass rods (Plexi Glas in Germany) at my hardware store or local hobby stores.

Therefore I used the poor mans alternative that is a hot glue pistol

I fixed a board to my work bench and applied the hot glue from below to the board. I slowly applied a dot and pulled the glue downwards moving up again to apply the next dot and so forth.

The glue dries really fast and you can remove the icicles after a few minutes and cut them to your needs.

I hope this is a worthy comeback to the hobby. Have fun with your hot glue pistol. I will post a review of the acrylic glas method as proposed by Roman (Massivevoodoo icicles tut) as soon as I get some Plexi Glas :-).

Regards,

Grumbler
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