Epic Nemo WIP part 1: now THAT's an epic base!

[althai]

Ever since I first laid hands on Werner Klocke's exceptional sculpt for General Adept Nemo, I was in love. It's probably my favorite sculpt in the entire Warmachine line, and I've already painted two of them: one and two. One of the things that I've wanted to do for a long time is mount him on a big junkyard base. The epic base he comes with is already a bit of a scrap heap, and I wanted to take that and run with it, placing him in the middle of a giant junkyard of deceased steampunk technology.

The idea languished for a while, but recently I came across Massive Voodoo, which is a fantastic miniatures painting and modeling blog. Inspired by Jarhead's fantastic miniature bases, and particularly the base for his Toxic Girl, I finally decided to make my idea a reality:

The base is built out of many parts: the original epic base he comes with has been cut into several pieces, and those pieces have been incorporated in various ways. There are also metal bolts, brass tubing, a large gear from an old broken cd player, bits of the caps from old superglue tubes sliced to make smaller gears, brass and copper wire, wire mesh, bits of an old ball-point pen, sticks, and of course plasticard and epoxy putty. There is also an old warjack in there as part of the base, with its legs, head, and one of its arms removed. The warjack is from an unknown manufacturer (not Privateer Press) and was received as a random giveaway for participating in an online painting contest.

Pay attention to the pattern of black primer on Nemo's rule plate. I had previously primed his base black, and then later decided to slice it apart and use the pieces to make a larger junkyard base, so it endured a lot of rough handling after it was primed. This caused primer to rub off the corners in a characteristic pattern. Later, when I paint this part of the base, I will duplicate the same sort of pattern of paint having rubbed off of bare metal.

To paint the base, I removed the wire mesh and Nemo's rune plate, as it would be difficult to paint underneath them. I began by priming the whole thing black, and giving the metal bits (which is almost everything - this is a scrapheap after all) a base-coat of boltgun metal.

An old scrapheap, of course, should be full of rusty metal, so my next step is to add rust. For the rust, I used another idea from the Massive Voodoo blog: real rust pigment (iron oxide), made my adding water to steel wool and waiting for it to rust. Since steel wool has a large surface area, this happens relatively quickly (but still takes a matter of days). I used an old blister for this purpose so that I could later close the lid, although you want to keep the container open while the steel wool is rusting, or else it would deplete the oxygen in the container and the reaction would slow and eventually stop.

I could wait for the steel wool to rust completely and the water to evaporate, but being rather impatient, I used the water/rust mixture at about this stage to give everything a good wash.

[althai]

One important difference between pure pigment, like this rust, and ordinary paint, is that paint contains both pigment and a binder medium, which keeps the paint together. Applying the rust wash and letting the water evaporate leaves a this coating of pigment that can easily be rubbed off. So before I go much further, I want to spray the base with a sealer to help keep the rust pigment in place. For this I used Dullcote. (I also masked off the sides of the base first, where I didn't want any dullcote to end up.)

In the next picture I have also added a black wash, composed of Thamar black, water, and fluid matte medium to help begin forming the shadows.

At this point I have a fairly good base from which I can begin building up the rusted iron that will make up the majority of the scrapheap, so I decide to add some colors the other major base elements. The tree gets painted a dull gray-brown, the large gear and the ends of the electric coils get greenish bronze, and the coils themselves are painted gray. I also paint the warjack a faded dull red, but as this is an old scrapped 'jack, I leave plenty of gaps in the paint to represent areas where the paint has chipped or flaked off.

I have a few more details to add before I begin assembly. I want to make sure the shadows are in good shape, so I'll do a few more black washes, this time targeted at key areas of shadow. (I'll do the highlighting after assembly, since the areas I can't reach because of the assembled base elements are supposed to be in shadow anyways.) I also want to make sure the tree and the rope on it are fully painted, since parts of it will be hard to reach with the wire mesh in place.

[althai]

Now the base is fully assembled, with the wire mesh and Nemo's rune plate added:

The wire mesh, like the base, was painted with boltgun metal, then washed with rust solution followed by a black wash. Nemo's runeplate was primed black, then painted in three different colors of metals. I used pure boltgun metal for the corners and circular depression, a dark bronze consisting of boltgun metal, blighted gold, and molten bronze for the bulk of the metals, and a lighter bronze consisting of the same three paints with a higher proportion of molten bronze for the circular rune area. All of the metal areas were then washed with thamar black and umbral umber.

To do the white paint on the corners, I painted them with a mixture of white and cryx bane highlight to give a somewhat darker base to build an old, dirty, weathered white. Notice how I left gaps where the metal underneath is showing through, as if white paint has chipped of the corners. Remember how the primer actually rubbed off the corners when I built the base? I'm using the same effect here, deliberately, that I had then, accidentally. After painting the corners white, I gave them a dirty rust-colored wash. This time I made the wash with paint rather than the iron oxide pigment I used before, in order to have a greater degree of control.

* * *

Now that the base is fully assembled, I begin highlighting. Where I have chipped edges of paint - the white paint on the corners of the runeplate and the red paint on the ruined warjack - I add a thin edge highlight to create a trompe l'oeil effect (creating the illusion of three dimensions on a two dimensional surface). I also highlight all of the metals at this stage, with chainmail for the iron parts, and mithril silver added to my earlier bronze mixture for the bronze parts. For some areas where I have lots of texture (the wire mesh, the giant bolts, and the wrapped wire) I can quickly and easily get highlighting simply by drybrushing these parts. For other areas, where there is less texture to take advantage of, I highlight in the ordinary way to have more control.

The base is 99% complete at this stage. What is left is some fun detail work: wherever I see a part of the base which doesn't look quite right, or isn't an interesting as it could be, I make changes. The main changes I have made are adding more rust in various places, and a final highlight with pure mithril silver on some of the raised edges of metal. I have also done substantial work on the bit of scrap metal overhanging the edge of the base, building up the rust effect, and adding a freehand "Nemo" to add interest, and also serve to title the piece.

Finally we have the completed base, with Nemo himself included.

Part 2, wherein I describe painting Nemo himself, will come when I have a chance to paint Nemo! Hopefully this will be soon, but I can't make any promises.

David

[teejayv]

Dude, this is sweeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!

[PG_Agamemnon]

Pretty intresting. I would like to see it finished so get to work....

[Joroth]

Any chance of putting the whole thing on a 30 mm base?

Not gonna lie, I didn't read much of what all was written, but I didn't notice you mention it anywhere

[Sharp]

I personally would have left off the rune plate, as it looks more tacked on top of the pile than anything else. However, the base is certainly interesting. Nicely executed.

[Almightyfoon]

Kinda looks like nemo is surfing ontop of a collapsing trash heap. "I AM KING OF TE JUNK!" *rumble crash* "OH SH**!"

Looks absolutely mind blowing though, I'm a fellow lover of the eNemo sculpt as well.

[M'Lady]

David~

I am always impressed by your painting skills but this has really been pulled out from that creativity in your mind. The idea of the steel wool is an excellent Idea...I will have to try it on some of my terrain pieces I plan to make. I really can't wait to see what Nemo is going to look like and how he should pull everything together perfectly.

[PG_sanj]

I personally would have left off the rune plate, as it looks more tacked on top of the pile than anything else.

I agree that the cyriss runeplate looks a little bit like it is tacked ontop but I also think that is a good thing.
To me it looks like the most advanced technology is 'king of the castle' and really adds to the feel of the base.

I really think this is going to be a fantastic display piece.

One thing that doesn't sit right with me is the wire mesh.
I think it obscures too much detail and much prefer the wip pics without it.

[jar]

Uh ah... pretty cool, really like that and feeling very honoured about your work!

Keep up the happy painting vibe
Regards
Roman