Johnnyhorse wrote:
I just watched the "How to Paint Citadel Miniatures" and I have a lot of ideas now. Good suggestion! I can take off from where they left off and talk about advanced techniques, aesthetics, and planning for specific effects. Maybe I'll just mix photos and low-resolution video into a Youtube tutorial. Thanks Eldercaveman -- I needed gentle nudging.

P.S. I didn't reach yet the maximum I can be impressed, so post moar

For the dreadnought base: I used 3 main materials.
A. I used corkboard (the kind you can get at most stores for pinning things on walls/bulletin boards etc.), and then I tore it up and made it look "natural."
B. Get some various "debris." I use about 3 different types of scenic sand, rocks, and other little bits and mix it all up in an old yogurt container, and when I'm ready to use it I paint up a base with PVA glue (Elmers) and throw the base in there and shake it up good.
C. Some scenic grass. I put dabs of glue on a few spots, then lightly drop scenic grass on top of the glue and then blow off excess. If you blow from the sides then the grass tends to stand upright on the base, looking somewhat realistic.

As far as painting goes, I mostly use an airbrush, though it isn't needed.
1. Prime/basecoat it a dark color.
2. Either drybrush, or spray (airbrush, or spray paint) from the top-down to get just the tops of the base, leaving shadows on the sides of the corkboard pieces and crevices.
3. Drybrush a lighter color ontop, much lighter than step 2.
(Note: at this stage, I usually end up gluing the grass onto the base. I do this now because the grass is already naturally colored green, so I don't want to spray it with another color... much.)
4. If you want the grass on the base to meld more with the color of the scene, then I usually spray the grass tufts with a Wash/Shade -- using a watered down brush also works. You just want to tint the grass, not glob thick paint on.
... and the rest it up to you. I've been doing almost all my bases this way.

*** Disclaimer: I often end up rubbing little pieces of scenic gravel off of the glue after I've painted it, leaving spots of "raw", brighter colored bits showing through. I REALLY need to come up with a solution to fixing this problem, because it requires me to go back and dot the landscape with bits of brown paint, which shouldn't be necessary.

Spoiler:

They are created from my standard method of taking photos. The Grey Knights gifs are about 23 photos/frames each, and the Blood Angel is about 40 photos.

The work was compounded by the fact I take pictures with really low light, so the exposures were pretty long — about 2-3 seconds each. I used a rotating tray with a circular-cut foam board as the surface, and would spin it about an inch to half an inch err, I spin it about 12 degrees between each photo. I find a good setting to configure my camera with completely manual and unchanged settings (low ISO, low Fstop, low shutter speed — low light) and set it on manual focus. That way all the photos will be exposed the same way, and you will get every part of the model in focus at some point or another. After I have the rotated photos taken, I used a grey and white card and place it in the scene so that I get proper color calibration: This would be an example — I only need one photo and I can calibrate all other photos according to this one.

Then I just had to get into the Photoshop groove and piece them all together. I made a few shortcuts and got it down to where I can create the gif itself in a matter of minutes. The photos take a little more time. I plan on making a circular piece of landscape to place the models in while doing these rotational photosessions.