Bushido: Ito Idol/Shrine to Orochi

Since GCT has not made models for their excellent faction deck Terrain elements yet (to my knowledge), I made one myself. I used a BONES fountain and a WoW snake I picked up at the FLGS, Redcap's Corner for about US$5.00 total.

If you know the original models it is clear what I did. I had to carve out the basin so the LED light can show through the resin and I added two pillars on either side of the base to continue the vertical style and also catch some of the glow.

I finished it with the same painting as I used on my scratch-built objective tokens with the moss treatments.

The stream of water is silicone teased out on wax paper and then attached to the mouth using silicone again. The basin is filled with Envirotex resin, untinted. The bases are two parts of a LED tealight that I covered with Apoxy Sculpt and textured by rolling the fresh putty over stone pavement (same for the additional pillars mentioned above.)

You can still twist the LED halves to activate it or if you don't want a glowing fountain, simply remove the bottom and LED underclasp light for a smaller, "normal" fountain.

Reaper BONES: WIP Lit Flame Markers

As mentioned before in the lit Reaper ghost tutorial, the Reaper BONES line features translucent models, including ghosts and fire elements (both fires and fire elementals).

Here is the WIP for lit fire markers and some production notes. See the lit Reaper ghost tutorial in the link above for steps on prepping the halves of the tealight. After the prep steps have been done, move to the following.

Unlike the lit ghosts, the base for fire will be visible. Just like the ghosts, I removed the tealight dome on the upper housing to allow for the bulb to fit into the miniature. I cut/drilled a hole in the bottom of the fire, just like the ghost. Note I used the large fire piece, instead of the smaller model and an orange tealight instead of a green one.

Then I covered the halves in Apoxy Sculpt and after a few hours of setting, I sculpted in lines for stones and I also rolled the halves over cement to give it texture. Once cured, simply paint and reassemble. Bam! Easy peasy. I suggest that you play around with detailing the top of the tealight, the fire area, with elements like stones and even wood, to add to the illusion.

I'll be using these as flourish on Strange Aeons boards and maybe as objectives for Bushido.

Reaper BONES: Glowing Ghosts using LED Tealights

This one is for my new friend Garrett (did I spell that right?) and pre-existing friend Benn @ my FLGS Redcap's in Philly but this also goes out to anybody who is thinking about glowing effects on their tables, or at least some small, placeable elements like minis or scatter terrain (more on that later).

I built the ghost above tonight for this tutorial and it took about 20 minutes.

Reaper BONES make super inexpensive, translucent models ripe for lighting and you can get easy and cool effects efficiently. LED tealights are crazy inexpensive and can be used to make really great wreck markers, bonfires or in the following case, ghosts. I was insisting this very thing the other day to Garrett and pointing at my own blog as proof, failing to realize I never actually posted any damn thing about BONES lit projects here on Sarcophagi,  though I did post it up over on Lead Adventure Forums, found here: Lead Adventure Forums

Anyway, I've found a lot of traction for lit things like ghosts for pulp games like Strange Aeons, to which I am addicted. I am working on Fire markers using tea lights as well and I'll post up something on that later, though the principles are the same.

Needed:

• Reaper BONES Grave Wraith, about US$3.00
• Green Tealight, available through Amazon, US$7.00 for a pack of ten. I like these because the batteries are replaceable.
• Jeweler's Saw or Xacto Saw
• Scalpel or Xacto
• Crazy Glue
• 2" base
• Green Cotton (Halloween floss)
• Optional: Silicone (from DIY)
• Optional: White poster tac

Something to consider with this... Depending on how much light difussion you want, you may or may not want to get the LED bulb into the miniature. In some cases, gluing the  mini right to the top of the bulb housing is enough to get the light to diffuse through the mini, where you don't see a glowing mass at the base, but instead that bulb is hidden by cotton floss. I have made three ghosts and overall I think gluing the mini to the bulb housing is probably the best way to go visually but in the following case, I put the bulb up in the mini as a case for the most amount of steps or a larger mini that needs more direct light to diffuse out, which is the case with this mini.

 Cut the tombstone off the ghost. I saved this bit to paint up later with other tombstones. You might want to leave that there, your call. The ghost of a tombstone is cool too I guess. It does fit more centered on the tealight with the tombstone off.

I cut off the protective housing over the bulb since it is easier to trim out a hole for the smaller bulb instead of the bigger housing, the OD of which surpasses the width of the base of the ghost. 

Glue the tealight onto a 2" base. You could even skip this step too if you aren't an giant stickler for BTB physicality in games. I had previously tried painting the sides of the tealight black in an effort to hide the sides under the cotton more but as it turns out, the clear sides transfer more light into the floss and the glow hides the sides of the teal ight best.

Here's Rick all cored out and dry-fit to the top of the tealight. Like I said, when you put the bulb into the bottom it looks more like a bulb in his feet. Fear naught.The cotton will diffuse and blend it. Be sure that before you glue you play around with getting the bulb centered into the mini so the bulb sends the most amount of light straight up to the top of the mini. Shut off the lights and move the mini around on top of the lit tea light and you'll see what I mean. If you have to glue on top of the bulb housing leaving an undercut below the miniature, just fill in underneath with clear silicone and let dry then it will be super strong and still conduct light.

All together and ready for cotton. But first, trim out the cotton "smoke".

Grab the cotton and make a circle about the height of the mini. Pull apart the center and arrange the mini through it so the floss is around it's "feet" or whatever. Remember before with the bulb? Pad the cotton over it thick. The more cotton, the more the glow. Once happy with your "smoke", glue on the ghost. Then add the cotton after it is dried.

Annnd... there it is. Not much to it actually. You may wonder about securing the cotton to the sides. I've played around with this some and found two things: First, it is hard to do and second, probably not necessary. If you are stickler for adhesion then I suggest you use some white poster tac on the sides and learn to live with it. Permanently attaching it seems unnecessary and that can block replacement of the battery as well as the twist-to-activate motion.

Here are 3 ghosts I've made. The one on the left is my favorite. I cut her from her base and glued her sideways over the bulb housing (pic below). Her flowing robe blends in great with the cotton. In the center is Rick. On the right is a more skeletal ghost. Note that the last ghost's tealight has sides painted black and while it doesn't look terrible at all, you can see that the light doesn't diffuse as much as the first two. Finally, these are bright enough to use under average table light, meaning you do not have to play in the dark for these to look spooktacular. Spell check really hates that pun.

So that's it friends! I leave it to you to try out, like I said, there is not much to this. Experiment and have fun with it.

Strange Aeons: Swimming Fishman

Ok, first attempt at the swimming fishman for Strange Aeons is passable but really shows what rendering water in resin does for you when you try and fool the eye. By cutting up the Bones Tiik warrior and gluing it to blister plastic the size of an average base, I thought the illusion would be made with clear latex caulk... and it does look cool. The problem is all of my water features are deep tinted resin so the illusion of a swimming Deep One is sorta ruined as the eye sees below the surface and there isn't anything there. The effect will look fine on darkly painted water features that have no depth to them, like paint and polyurethane covered board.

That said, I was happy with the improv of putting caulk into a small medical syringe to aid laying down small ropes. It took more than a day to dry but overall it is an effect I'll develop more.

The real issue in this was the water based polyurethane I used on the painted fishman itself. I wanted a deep wet look on him and when I applied the polyurethane, ANY backbrushing tore the paintlayers right from the figure, leaving just the spray primer. So I imperfectly re-covered a few layers of paint and just moved on.

I'll be heading back to this idea of sculpting waves and swimming, as I add some more fishmen to the mix.

Strange Aeons: Fishman

Here's a $3.00 model that sorta puts minis twice as expensive to shame. I'm using a Reaper Bones Tiik Warrior as a Fishman for Strange Aeons. Fun to paint, looks good and scary... what's not to like?

He originally had that latern-thingy on his head and I rather liked that as a detail but I wanted to keep this jerk closer to the Innsmouth look than farther from it. As it was, I added more color than I had planned but glad I did in the end.

I based it in black, with layers of Sage Greens over greys with a purple/brown wash to pull detail out of the scales after layers. Color accents on arms and legs are scrubbed in with a short brush and some aqua, ice blue and GW green layers adorn the claws, horns and snarly bits. Most of the purples go up to pink which is why I did the eyes pink and rheumy.

Don't touch my Daaarrrrt

Strange Aeons: Completed Bones Werewolf

Here's my finished Bones Werewolf. I painted this over 2 nights by drybrushing browns and greys over black undercoat, purple wash with flow enhancer, layers of greys, browns and sage green, glazes of red and purple. Detail work was simple and straight forward except for the eye glow, where I used reds, oranges in a flow enhancer red glaze. I really like this model and loved painting it. It has some weird parts to the sculpt though, his right side eye is out and his left is recessed, which made for some paint decisions that did not sit well at first but I decided it just makes the model visually appealing and whimsical. Practically speaking, there are join lines down his arms and across his chest that were impossible to remove and it being a US$2.00 model, I wasn't going nuts going all greenstuff and smoother on him; he's badass as-is.

WIP: Strange Aeons Werewolf Part 2

Continuing on with the Werewolf for Strange Aeons from part one, I detailed the beast and did some glazes with flow enhancer, using reds and purples. Up next, detail clean up (eg teeth) and basing.

WIP: Strange Aeons Werewolf

Aww... Mr. Fuzzy snuggle-bottom is vewy sweepy and-AHHH! AHHH!!! GET OFF!!! GET! OFF!!! DOWN! SIT SIT SITAAAHHHH!!!!!

 A Bones Werewolf about 2/3 the way done. Needs detailing and basing. I'm pretty impressed with the Bones line, the only neg I give it is cleaning mold lines sucks but for the price you cannot complain too much. Paint goes on well, lots of detail, material is alarmingly flexible but strong but doesn't seem to shrug off paint layers and it retails for something insane like 2 bucks, US.  So, yeah. No complaints at all. Want the Bones Cthulhu!