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Hopefully I can finish this tomorrow or Saturday, but here are some WIP shots of my Eldar Bastion...

1) A whole view. It is built of a medium size Evian bottle with a cut down small-size Evian on top. The (currently) Black bit at the side is just foam card.



2) This shows the entranceway, which is the back of a Wave Serpent from a load of Bitz I bought off EBay.



3) This shows some polystyrene balls that I cut in half. I drilled through the bottle with a hand drill, then filed the hole slightly bigger so I could hold the balls in place with cocktail sticks. I then used PVA glue to give a better hold. The side-piece is held in place the same way.



4) The top is two old burnt out recessed LED lights from my bathroom. I have kept all of these that have burnt out for over a year now, so I have enough for three more bastions. The spire is simply a pulse laser, from the same stash of bitz off EBay.



Jobs to do are to add two more polystyrene balls to the side, polyfilla in the cracks around the door, add some spare twin-linked catapults from my Bitz box, PVA over anything that might not like getting sprayed, put on a coat of roughcoat, , PVA glue sand to the base and bottom of the structure, paint using emulsion leftover from my battle board, wash where appropriate with Gryphonne Sepia, Devlan Mud and Badab Black.




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Hmmm.... sorry about the sizes. I uploaded to the gallery and the auto-resizer chose those sizes. It is too late at night for me to play with it now though...

sweet cant wait to see the finished

Yeah this is gonna be cool! What is the paint scheme?

Creamy with washes to dirty it down a bit.

Excellent start- always good to see some Xenos terrain.

Nice I'd love to see process

Looks good so far. Reminds me of some quick ones that I threw together when planetstrike first came out.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/262210.page

Yours look very nice. Mine will be a very similar colour.

Very cool.. I've always wanted to try Eldar terrain..

This may inspire a piece.

Now with guns and fire points...

Very nice! Can't wait to see it painted!

Now with polyfilla added

Next step - PVA Glue and sand on base.

Then, seal foam card with PVA.

Finally, spray paint.

Looks brilliant! Can't wait to see it painted.

Thats sweet. U did a nice job making it elegant.

Excellent work. I like to see good use of recycling in the project.

Sand added and everything PVA'd...

Next to undercoat then spray, then emulsion...

How big is this? Scale wise to an Aspect Warrior?

That door at the front is the back of a wave serpent, so it is slightly taller than aspect warrior height. Overall, that should give you an idea.

Next shot I take, I'll put a squad in the shot.

looking good! First time I've seen an attempt at this, your doing a great job!

Hmmm...

I am not as happy as I hoped to be now the first undercoat is on. I'd been pretty happy until this point.

It should still be very useable, but I've learnt lots of lessons to do a better job on the next few.

Ouch!!!!

The solvent brunt the polystirene balls?

Anyway, I really like your idea, the general look of your bastion is great!

Yeah, two things in particular have gone wrong.

The roughness of the polyfilla needed more smoothing down. That could be done either by another very thin coat of polyfilla over the first effort, or, if necessary a thin layer of greenstuff. Greenstuff would also prevent any potential disintegration of polyfilla at a later date.

Also, despite putting a coat of PVA over the polystyrene, some of them have melted very slightly. Next time, I would either use a thicker coat of PVA, two coats of PVA, or both.

I also have a few thoughts about the overall shape. For example, I may use some Dr Pepper bottles aswell as/instead of Evian bottles.

The miracle of water bottles and imagination, out standing.

Still wip. Looks oddly metallic in the photos.

It's very cool. Sucks about the partial melting. The one critique I have is the style of the turrets. I like the feel the forgeworld wave serpent turrets have. Are you going for a more natural bone look? Perhaps a few more curves on it would help them blend a bit. It's a great piece of xenos terrain in a world of imperial plastic kits. The foam card shape looks great.

I am not 100% happy with the turrets. A couple of them look nicely blended in, but some look far too bulbous, and it is very hard work to build up the polyfilla smoothly around them. I think some more swoops or curves would help, as well as advance panning of where to place them all, rather than just doing them one at a time...

Things I have learnt doing this:

1) Foamcard can be used as a base, but requires very careful use.

2) It has been suggested I add some PVA glue to my polyfilla.

3) You need two layers of PVA glue to seal polystyrene away from spray paint.

4) Lots of useful tricks for cutting and re-attaching plastic bottles.

5) Foamcard is tricky as hell to cut into shape.

When using spackle/drywall filler/polyfilla, sandpaper is your friend. If you can't apply a smooth curve, just slap on the rough shape, erring towards the oversized end of the spectrum, then sand to final shape and smoothness. When I think of Eldar, I expect smooth contours. The minor drips and blobs really detract from the look and feel of the piece, for me. Were it mine, I think I'd consider it worthwhile to go back and sand them smooth, even if it meant repainting. That said, I do like the overall feel of it.

Its a good shape for an eldar building, but I think the colour is a little too... umm... fleshy?

Yeah, I've already done sanding with both rough and smooth paper, but the join between filla and plastic is very hard to get smooth, partly due to the shape of the bottles. That is also one of the reasons I think less than hemi-spheres is best for the turrets, as the less bulbous ones were those that were easy to get the shape around.

I may go back and sand them smoother, but in many ways I am more inclined to regard this as a completed prototype and apply all of the lessons I have learned to the next batch.


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Flinty wrote:Its a good shape for an eldar building, but I think the colour is a little too... umm... fleshy?

As for the colour, it looks less fleshy in real-life, but I am still considering giving the whole thing a proper paint-job using brushes and what-not.

Lookin' great so far!