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Hi All,

So here is the challenge. I have a zombie dragon that as you all know is a very expensive model. I decided to make a scene with this one, and I never did water effects before and being of typical tinkering nature decided "what the hell, I can do it", have run into a situation as typical of this sort of tinkering. So to give it a shot, I used Hot Glue, cuz as all naive hobbyists know its flowy and liquidy, but forget that it sets very quickly and to cover a large area you are going to get a nice ugly striped stringy effect very unlike water.

So I then snagged my wife's "BASIC's Acrylic Paint" while she wasn't looking and mixed it 60/40 paint/water. and covered the lumpy mess with it hoping that the liquidity of it would settle in the gaps and help "blur" the mess and give it a more subtle wavy look, which would be stellar. Well I did one coat and ok, it got rid of the stringy bits, but not the main lumpyness, so I did another and it seems to have yet to solve my problem.

Now if I keep doing this I'm sure it will EVENTUALLY work, but eventually is a few days off (takes all bloody day for that crap to dry). So I have come to the tinkerers who have been tinkering for a while longer to give their advise on the situation. What would you do and why? I have posted some pictures below of the situation.

Thanks,
~Dave

Honestly I would either:

1- pull the dragon off and pick the glue off his feet and make a new base with actual water effects. I would think hot glue would pick off pretty easy.

-OR-

2- get some real water effects and color it so its not clear that way it'll hide the hot glue underneath, then fill in the areas with a few layers of it.

Next time I would wait on the water until the base and model is painted, in this case though I think it was good you didn't. Good luck

Answer 1: Paint it in charcoals, oranges and reds over the yellow - river of lava type stuff.

Answer 2: Paint it in bright and muted greens, or greenbrowns, as some sort of toxic sludge.

Answer 3: Straight earthy browns as a mudslide.

I think what you've got currently actually looks great, as a thick sludge of some kind, be it the lava or waste, and fits better with the aesthetic of the dragon.

Maybe some glowy toxic warpstone sludge, meaning you could try to do some OSL on the underside of the dragon (lit in green from below)

If you really do want to try to recover it, try filling the gaps with basic PVA glue. Let set 100%, it'll be smooth.

Alternatives:
1. Real water-effect
2. Clear resin (a bit more permanent, take heed!)
3. turn your awesome surface into 1 of the aforementioned scenes (lava, sludge, etc.)
4. Paint a scene on a flat surface without a cool surface, then cover with clear glass (or plexiglass).

2¢

I would remove him from he base and clean the base off. Then use Skull crafts toxic green water effects for a real zombie effect. Just my 2 cents. Good Luck

Hi All,

Thanks for the quick responses. Per feedback here is what I have decided to try and we shall see what the results are in the morning.

First:
Could not remove model due to paint around feet etc ruining the detail there, and its already formed nice "waves" around the feet exactly like water flowing over it that could be painted to a neat effect. Not to mention the probability of having to reglue joints ruining that detail. Lesson for next time I suppose.

So what I did:
Changed Acrylic Paint Ratio to 75/25 paint/water and layered it on thickly. As it sits wet it looks really nice, but experience from earlier tells me it will show ridges as it dries.

What Im going to do:
Paint it sludgy. That pipe coming out of that crummy wall could totally be spilling a 1/3 mud 1/3 water 1/3 sewage. Ill toss in some skulls and some "chunky bits".

I never thought of doing the lighting effects before. I think Im going to give that a shot, why not, from the way I'm looking at it this is a $70 experiment in modeling, why not experiment in the painting as well. For the lighting effects I was thinking I needed a mid sized fluffy brush and do super dry brushing on the undersides of the dragon and get more coloration the closer the parts are to the source. The lighting of course being the last application of color.


@Thare1774:
You said you wouldn't do water effects until after the model and base is painted and done. Why?

@All: can you mix food coloring with the GW water effects to get say red or green water? What about swirling it in for a vortex effect? I guess what sort of consistency is the stuff? I've never played with it before.

@Great White: Skullcrafts looks like they have some bad ass basing stuff, but Im not seeing any water effects on their web site. The Steampunk kit looks gnarly though.

@drcrook- most of the time when I do watereffects they are slightly translucent so it looks like water or dirty water. To get that effect i paint the area I'm planning on putting water effects with Brown or whatever color. That way if you can see to the bottom its not just plastic and looks real. Also you can't paint the dragon foot if its under the water before painting it. If you had done a more translucent water it would look better if the areas of themodel underwater were painted. For water of any color I just add a few drops of artists ink in any combination until I get the color I want. It keeps it semi clear and water like without watering it down too much. Realistically even the dirtiest water is translucent, when it isn't that way on models it can just look solid and non liquid. if you're planning on painting the water effects every time then by all means pour before you paint. But if you do start wanting more clearish dirty water you'll want to paint before pouring.

DrCrook wrote:@Great White: Skullcrafts looks like they have some bad ass basing stuff, but Im not seeing any water effects on their web site. The Steampunk kit looks gnarly though.

It's under the basing pots category, Here you go

http://www.skullcrafts.com/water_effects.htm

personally i would just paint it too look like sludge, lava , mud and then add water effects to the top. Paint it on so it is a thin layer. so it does not look like paint dried on glue but more like thick liquid.

Thanks again everybody for all the tips. This guy I guess is my experiment. I'll probably end up doing another one down the road using all of the suggestions to do it right "the first time".

paint it as water and then give it a layer of water effects and it'll look good

Search for "Woodlands Realistic Water".

I just got some from Antenocitis Workshop. Good stuff.