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Hi,

Here's a small tut on making some sort of otherwordly plant.. although it's a bit small I think it could also pass for a Tyranid mycetic spore, perhaps a small type carrying just one or a small number of little critters.

Ingredients:
- egg box
-scissors
-brush
-wood glue
-glue gun

---------
Step 1

Take the egg box and cut out the cone shaped part in the center of 4 adjecent retainer cups.

Step 2

Split the tip of the cone into four 'leaves' and bend them to the sides of the cone. You can add some detail to the leaves, like cutting out a jagged pattern along the edges of the leaves.


Step 3
Glue the plant to your base. Any piece of plastic will do. I used a plastic lit taken from a food container.


Step 4
Cover the plant in wood glue... be generous..just slab it on and let dry for a day.

Step 5
I then used a glue gun to get a goopy/slimey kind of rim around the base of the plant.

Step 6
Paint! I recommend using cheap paint for this since you;ll need quite a lot it... I used 'Artcreation essentials' gloss acrylics for this (3 euro's for 75ml). . The colors used to get the result below were Blue violet and burnt umber.
I watered down the paint so it wouldnt comletely mask the yellow of egg box carton.. i think this gave it a nice organic look.

Ill probably add some more detail later.. some highlights and slime maybe.





To give an impression of the size.. here with a 1991, beat-up space marine.



Time-to-dry excluded, crafting one of these things took me about 30 mins.

A 1:72 gun doesn't sound like it'd be that big, especially next to 40K's oversized guns. But if it's like a MG (I'm assuming it is) then it looks like it'll work.

--

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Cool tutorial, just had to go in 4 posts to figure out what exactly this thread was going to be.....

That's genius, love it.

Hi..

I made another otherworldly lifeform, this time a burrowing worm, inspired by the 1990 movie 'tremors''. Construction again was done using mostly egg carton.

Materials used:

-egg carton
-toothpicks (teeth)
-cotton swabs (spikes)
-glue gun

I think it's pretty decent looking for something that cost next to nothing.




The white thing laying in the foreground is a tentacle with a mouthpart at the end. It will be mounted in the worm's mouth eventually.



The mouthpart was made by plitting a cottonswab stick into 3 ends, spreading these apart and then applying glue using a hot glue whilst rotating the cotton swab stick... three pieces of cotton swab stick that were cut into a sharp tip were attached to the corners of the mouthpart to similate grabbing hooks.

Well.. the worm thing is done I guess..

I've added some details to the exoskeleton and made two pockets of sensory tentacles that mounted on both sides of the mouth, Just see for yourself:


Tentacles were made using a cotton swab stick and metal wire.


oh noes:










Automatically Appended Next Post:
The next step is to create a base with some elevation to convey an 'emerging' effect for the burrowing worm.

This was done by 'sculpting' terrain using hotglue. Seriously.. to anyone who enjoys building terrain and doesn;'t own a glue gun yet.. get one.. they are amazing.. and they' sell at prices as low as a couple of euro's/dollars.



The result after basing with sand (I always use wood glue to cement sand to my bases)







The next step will be covering the model in woodglue.. after that it will be primed.

Wow this is good.

I made 5 of these worm on a production line setup in maybe an hour!

So I started painting the worm:

The mouth is done... the carapace needs some more work. The slime was done with ''universal glue''

There's a mycetic spore that hit the ground reeeal hard!

Good work!

Wow, I love the stuff on here!

Fine example how one should write tutorials. Your work is stunning. Very inspiring!

Hi guys,

After a solid year of passivity I'm back with some new stuff..

The images below also include some updates on previously showed stuff.

AS I tend to move between projects it's mostly WIP.

Mycetic spore concepts:




Carnivorous plant:



(ripper) tentacles:



burrowing worm (painted):



My first-ever tyranid painted. I still need to work on some of the details:



group photo







Automatically Appended Next Post:
This is my latest 'mycetic spore' concept and by far the easiest one I've done so far.

Again, the goal was to craft something acceptable looking using simple, everyday stuff and some low-cost extra's (in this case a ping-pong ball )

Materials used:
- toilet paper
- toilet paper roll
- pingpong ball (1x)
- cotton swab sticks
- hot glue
- wood glue



Step 1:
As a first step I made a ball-like shape using paper (newspaper/mag.. you get it). I then wrapped it in toilet paper (4 to 5 layers).

step 2:
I then mixed some wood glue and water (ratio doesnt really matter, 50/50 is probably a safe rule). I wetted some toilet paper with the watered down glue using an old brush and applied the pulp to the base (cd).
This was done to create some sort of connection between the base and the spore so it wouldn't just sit on the base.

step 3:
I then applied plenty of watered down wood glue to the ball-like shape, again using an old brush. I like to quite a lot of it to make sure it is properly soaked in glue.

step 4:
I then placed the ball-like shape on the base and connected the two pieces by applying pulp to the seam.

step 5:
I then cut out 3 pieces of toilet paper roll (cardboard) and placed them on the spore in some sort of flower-like arrangement. (circularly, slighly overlapping) They where then fixed to the spore using pulp.

step 6:
This where the ping-pong ball come into play. I first cut the ball into 2 hemispheres. I then cut open the the top of one of the hemispheres and bend the cut parts slightly backward to resemble a hatched egg. I then inserted it inside the cardboard pieces described in step 5.

step 7:
I cut the remaining hemisphere into irregularly shaped pieces to resemble scaly bits. I then randomly applied these scaly bits to the spore surface using pulp. I used a concentrated pattern, with most scales being grouped on the top of the spore in an overlapping manner.

Step 8:
I then used hot glue to fix the 'hatched egg' described in step 6 to the spore. I just went around the rim of the hemisphere (inside and outside) to hide any parts where it did not connect properly to the spore. I also drew some strings across the opening , resembling slime or whatever.

Step 9:
I then just went berserk with the glue gun and drew a lot of glue-noodles across the base, creating a goopy mess somewhat reminiscent of tentacles or what not.

step 10:
In this final step I cut a few cotton swab sticks into small spines and applied this randomly to the spore surface using hot glue. This tends to leave a big old mess of fine, glue strings that need to be picked off once dry.


Geez.. I wonder if anyone can be bothered to go through all of this text. I'll add pictures again next time I do a tut.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I slapped some paint on the spore. I gave the spore chamber a fleshy look...the result is kind of meat-ballish...which im quite satisfied with, although maybe not very tyranid-like.

To make the cilia stand out a bit I give all hot-glue parts a more pinky color.

The next step will be painting the scales and spikes.

creativehivemind wrote:
Hi..

I made another otherworldly lifeform, this time a burrowing worm, inspired by the 1990 movie 'tremors''. Construction again was done using mostly egg carton.

Materials used:

-egg carton
-toothpicks (teeth)
-cotton swabs (spikes)
-glue gun

I think it's pretty decent looking for something that cost next to nothing.




The white thing laying in the foreground is a tentacle with a mouthpart at the end. It will be mounted in the worm's mouth eventually.



The mouthpart was made by plitting a cottonswab stick into 3 ends, spreading these apart and then applying glue using a hot glue whilst rotating the cotton swab stick... three pieces of cotton swab stick that were cut into a sharp tip were attached to the corners of the mouthpart to similate grabbing hooks.

Would you be able to post a step by step on how to build the carapace?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For that one and all the others I really want to try these!!!

@ warpspider

I will try to build a similar model again and document it.



I've added some more fleshy tones to the spore and covered it in a gloss varnish to give it a wet look. I bet there are better (and likely more expensive) ways to achieve this as varnish tends to appear shiny rather than wet. Nevertheless, I found the result to be acceptable.

Next, I painted the 'scales' in an egg-shell white and drew some lines across them while adding increasing amounts of brown to the mixture. As i had initially painted them in a bright blue, which I found to be too distracting and not matching with the organic look of the fleshy bits. Some of it is still visible through the egg-white that i covered it with, which -rather conveniently- makes for a nice nuance to the all-organic look.

I've also added some 'universal glue' to the opening and across the spore 'chamber' and 'cilia' which makes for a pretty convincing goo/slime.


Lastly I slapped some play sand on the base, which will be painted in a badland / ashworld theme

 warpspider89 wrote:
Would you be able to post a step by step on how to build the carapace?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For that one and all the others I really want to try these!!!

I second this request.

Would you be able to post a step by step on how to build the carapace?

I will, soon.

For now, I would like to present another quick 'n cheap tyranid terrain piece: Tyranid bio-cannon. The images are probably sufficiently self-explanatory. Assembly was really very straight forward.. no clever techniques that require a detailed description with illustration. It;s basically a wrapping foil roll filled with straws and straw-bits. The gun muzzle design was inspired by the ''fleshborer'

Some really excellent and cheap creations - many thanks for the tutorials and ideas

Bio-cannon looks very cool! Is wrapping foil basically aluminum/tinfoil?

 darkPrince010 wrote:
Bio-cannon looks very cool! Is wrapping foil basically aluminum/tinfoil?

It's a different product, but yes, both use the same type of cardboard roll for wrapping.


-------


The bio cannon has been painted. I'd say it's nearly done as it is, except for the base. For the base I intend to add some more detail to make it a bit more interesting.. perhaps a bunch of crystals similar to the one I did previously (image 3). The space marine in the first image was painted almost 2 decades ago, so please don't mind the infantile paint job. It so happens to be that I don't actually own any painted miniatures except for a tyranid gargoyle.



gr

I've added a bunch of crystals to the base.

Hi all,

Here's a quick tut on how to make a waving flag.. perhaps to serve as an objective in objective based games?



Materials used:

- sprue leftovers
- tissue
- wood glue

-----

1) -- Flag pole

I first cut out a piece of sprue frame of the appropriate length and gave it a woody texture by scraping off bits of plastic with a hobby knife. Easy does it.

2) -- Flag material

I then took a piece of tissue and folded it once to get the thickness right. This -obviously- will also make the 'flag' a bit more durable so it doesnt damage as easily.

3) -- Flag ripples

To give it a 'wavy' appearance I then placed a bunch of straws/cotton swab sticks underneath the tissue and modeled the tissue over them using watered-down wood glue. The example shown here is pretty basic, but I guess you could make it as vivid as you want, simply by arranging the sticks in a more elaborate configuration.

Now let it dry ... I used a hairdryer to speed up the process (about 2 mins) cause I didn't have the patience to wait a day for it to air-dry before seeing the result.

4) -- tailoring

When dry I then cut out from the tissue the part I was going to use for the flag, this ended up being about 20% of the 'wetted' tissue produced in step 3... so maybe you can craft a batch of flags in 1 go?

5 ) -- attaching flag to pole

I then connected the flag to the flag pole. This was done using a piece of tissue that I wrapped around the pole, going from one side of the flag to the other. I again used watered-down woodglue for adhesion.

6) -- finishing touch

As a final step, I added some 'detail' to the flag. The edges got a worn and torn look by scraping out bits of tissue using a hobby knife. I also added some holes and slits across the flag surface.


So, thats it..

As a tyranid player I must tell you how excellent this tutorial is. The "sand bug" is awesome looking and the bio-cannon reminds me of the anti-aircraft flood in halo-wars