Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I think Ruglud is more of a grimdarkster than a kawaiin. Still, always good to try new things.

Are you going with the traditional chibi style eyes, Doc? The mini looks sculpted to be painted thus.

youwashock wrote:What you are doing with that SDE model is super neat.

Thanks. When inspiration strikes...

Red Harvest wrote:I think Ruglud is more of a grimdarkster than a kawaiin. Still, always good to try new things.

I'm not the sort that typically goes in for cuteness. But every now and then a cute little thing will melt my heart. I'm sure Ruglud has a gooey centre.

Anyway, there's nothing cute about the anime San, she's a wolf at heart (when we meet her...)
She is one of my favourite anime characters though, which is why I jumped at this model.

I'd jump further if I saw an equivalent model of Saya (from Blood: the last vampire)
I have this as my phone's permanent background:

❤

Are you going with the traditional chibi style eyes, Doc? The mini looks sculpted to be painted thus.

Yes. The aim is to do this in a very cartoon style. Well outside my comfort zone.

San is now pinned to the wolf and I've sculpted the fur she wears.


Now to make a display base for them...

This is from one of my all time favorite anime films, all the little additions are making the models much better than the original sculpt. Bring on some paint Doc and really bring her to life.

Chibi eyes are easy to paint. The internets are full of tutorials. I had to use kawaiin, kawaiian(?) instead of the "W" word. The forum changes that to 'anime enthusiast'.

Nope, still not digging the style, but each his own and all that - I'm always enjoying the progress and updates (hint)

Thanks York'. Good to hear, you'll be a good judge for how well I do then.

Thanks Red'. We'll come to it when I get there.
The "W" word? I'm not sure what word that may be, that is a reference for an anime enthusiast
I'm almost inclined to start typing various offensive "W" words and see what gets changed to what...

That's fair enough, Ruglud.
Nobody can like everything, and everyone can have an opinion on anything (but I would encourage those to do some research into the subject and give it a go, don't go hating on something you know nothing about).
"it's not for me, I gave it a look" is better than "it's wrong because I don't like it, whatever it is".

As for updates, yeah I've had a long dilemma about what sort of base I wanted for the display.

And finally, I decided on a very leafy backdrop, as you may see in many stills from the film.
Then added trees to frame it nicely.

So I do have some work to show (but literally from the past few days, it's all been thinking up until now):

Starting from a foamcore box,
Filled with polystyrene foam off-cuts, to give something to stick things into and give an uneven surface (rather than a perfectly flat foamcore or card top to the box),
I added a card back and then glued in some old recycled foam,
A couple of stiff metal rods and then a length of cable,
Followed by a variety of tubes, roughly hot-glued together,
Plus some wire branches,
Then progressively (and still in progress) covered with tissue/PVA,
...


The whole top will be covered with foam (tbd?) for foliage, as will the majority of the trees/branches (hence the trees suddenly stopping).
It's just going to be a mass of green behind San and the wolf, with the trees and branches peeking out in places. With mud/rocks and grass underfoot.

Here I thought you were going to just paint up the model not do a whole diorama. Very cool bud.

Nah, one of the back legs doesn't reach the ground so I "needed" to create some ground to reach the leg.

And, when I build for display, it needs a display.

Thanks.

That's beautiful already. Exciting times.

Wow. Nice construction. This is going to be quite the piece.

Odd material choice in the background. Is that cushion foam? I've seen masking tape used to build up fairly realistic looking tree trunks. No idea about the durability of it.
The "W" word. Disguised of course.

Wee- very small
+
a- the indefinite article
+
boo - the sound a ghost makes

Lots of amusing memes associated with the term.

Typed boldly and vertically and Bob's your uncle, eh?

Thanks Graven', youwashock.

Red'. Yeah, I found that foam amongst the trains I found recently. Quite possible cushion foam now that you mention it. I have a few scraps of it and thought it'd be a cheap material to fill in the back. I'm still in the process of deciding upon what foams / materials to use for the actual foliage. More on that below...

Re. the "w" word. I see.

Progress:
Before I can start to place the foliage (and therefore need to decide on how I'm doing it) I need to finalise the position of the wolf so I can work around him.
To do that I needed to build up some of the ground to meet the uneven feet of the model.

Some polyfilla, and my usual mud n' rocks basing, later...


Now I have to really decide how I'm doing the foliage and commit to it.
With that done and the outside of the base tidied, Paint, static grass, paint San and the wolf, combine... no profit as I'm not selling this.

Progress is good, but I need paint! J/K since this is something for yourself take your time and do it right.

That's really creepy. I really like it. I love the colours of the foliage just now, I hope it stays autumnal.

Good to see the doc is still creating a nice variety of things and stuff and that....

Thanks York'. Sorry, I've been slacking on this project the past week. I'll get on it this week though.

Thanks Graven'. It'll be to match what is seen in the film; so bright greens I'm afraid.

Monkeytroll! Me ol' muckka. How the devil are you? Good to see you still kicking.
Yeah, I'm still working on all kinds of things. There's even more in my "money making" blog... even purple tentacles that you've missed out on.

No progress this week, but soon... soon...

See... I said I'd get to work on this project this week.

Stage two of the foliage... more foam!

All hot-glued on, and most of time was taken with making the bits not have flat sides or arranging the flat sides together to hide them...

And you see the green foam that I've used for the little bush at the front? That's stage 3. To give a rougher, more leafy look to the trees.
Don't have as much of that particular foam so this is building up the bulk.

Moar Foliage!!!

Looking good, would never have thought about using foam like that... Consider it stolen

That foam looks surprisingly good Doc ! (At least surprising to me.....)

Does it take paint ok ?

Building the scene up nicely!

The plant texture looks on point. Would love more for the table

Oh man do those trees look awesome!

Thanks CK. I've used small lumps of the yellow foam for small plants on many of my previous models. This was just the next natural step before forking out for "proper" tree foliage.
If I can do something cheap or free, I'll try that first.

Thanks Big H. It turned out well. I had no expectations, just making this up as I go along (as with many of my models).
As for paint... That's for us to all find out: The plan is to soak this (see below) in a PVA/Water/Paint mixture to toughen it up, fully stick it all together, and basecoat it all the way through.
From the little bits I've used on previous models (note; very small lumps, have a look over my previous models to see it used; you'll spot it now you know what to look for) the foam soaks up glue and paint like no tomorrow, but sets nice an firm after it's dry and takes dry-brushing to finish it off.

Thanks MT.

Thanks Comrade. Yeah, I'm certainly going to try this technique for future terrain; depending on what we learn this time.

Thanks Gits'. But wait, there's more...

Next job was to add the green foam, in pieces to give a rougher texture to the trees and fill in any gaps or hide bits of the yellow foam that are too straight.

I had no idea how this was going to turn out and just went about the thing, piece by piece, adding bits of green wherever it seemed it was needed.
While I think it did the job and has provided the finished look I was aiming for...

it does look a bit odd at the moment...

prepare yourselves...

To help, I've grey-scaled the first photo, and this alleviated my initial fears from where I was half way though and thought "OMG it's a green poker-dot crazy mess"...

This will now get the aforementioned soaking in PVA and paint that will tie it all together in more ways than one... hopefully...



Let's see how this turns out...

Looking good. As you say, once it's been pva'd it'll take paint fine. Maybe a touch of flock on a few areas?

I thought it was quite soothing that colour shot from above, probably just me though.

Nice work, the trees are looking great, agree with MT that a bit of flock might work.

monkeytroll wrote:Looking good. As you say, once it's been pva'd it'll take paint fine. Maybe a touch of flock on a few areas?

Ta. Maybe, we'll have to see once some more paint is on.

I thought it was quite soothing that colour shot from above, probably just me though.

Probably...
I was still thinking "OMG it's green poker-dots, what have I done..."

Thanks OMN.

After half of the first application of my PVA/water/paint mixture I reverted to a large paintbrush rather than the little pump-spray thing I was using; it was either too thick to spray properly to cover a large area (the whole point of spraying), or too thin to really give it any colour without tons of layers (not quick).

"Brushing" on blobs of 50:50 PVA/water with added paint and giving the foam a squeeze was pretty quick and covered evenly.
After 3 or 4 applications, with breaks for hair-drying, it looks like this:

There's a few little bits that may need added foam/flock, but can assess that as I paint.

That might be it for actual building. I've decided to leave San and the wolf separate, not just for painting, so that I can pick them up and look all around them (as I'm intending them to be well painted).

So yes, off to the painting desk with you...

Oh yeah, I do have to wrap the sides of the base to tidy them up, but that's it.

Man, that tree technique came out nice! I should have realized that the foam would take the paint solution in at different shades depending on how much you dabbed, but there's some real depth of color here- great stuff!

A nice addition might be to litter the floor with leaves, you can buy these from model outlets , or better yet get a similar thing from the "Catkins " of Silver Birch trees, they will be on the trees soon-ish, go to the woods for a lifetimes worth of model leaves !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_pendula

Effective. I wonder how well the paint will 'stick' to that foam. Time will tell, eh? Enough paint in all the air ockets and that foam will harden nicely.

It looks very convincing.

Should have made her look angry, because rawr rawr humans are evil scum.

https://pre00.deviantart.net/832b/th/pre/i/2016/351/4/5/_commission__chibi_princess_mononoke_by_kelsa20-darw5go.png

Add some kodamas! They're awesome.