Monday 24 June 2013

'nids part 86 - Tyranid Bastion growth pt7.

In some respects I feel disappointed that I'm not sharing the following pictures 'live' so to speak. This is six nights continuous work. I cracked open the white DAS and just thought I'd see what happened. and as time went on I got better at it. Using my trusty sculpting tool I just scored some horizontal 'biomechanical' ridges and although it's not perfection by any stretch the clumsy nature of my sculpting does have a certain 'alien growth' feel to it. Day 1 aw me sculpt the left tower and for fear of ruining what I'd done I left it to dry overnight. Automatically that gives me a timescale of 8 days which is why I dropped all the other projects, although given it took around an hour to do I could easily have swapped to the vault or Tac Squad when this was done but I was a bit drained by the whole procedure. The second tower was Day 2, with an emplaced weapon slit, which I'd foolishly forgotten to add on the first tower, I wonder how difficult that will be.


Anywhere, I'd sanded the grout too much was quite flexible as I tried to sculpt the clay but it was only a minor irritant. Additionally the surface was still quite dusty, although you couldn't tell to touch but the DAS did struggle to stick. I don't know why adding water on the outside makes it stick but it does help. Maybe the clay is ultra-porous and it wicks through to help slick it up and stick to the base. I also found adding in chunks and then working them together helpful. I prepped a whole wall before I sculpted and think given the surface area you would struggle with Milliput to do this. I'm sure it'd start to go off before you got to this stage whereas a quick wipe over with water breathes life into the clay.


Here's where I shave off a day. Given these two inner walls a quite small and fiddly anyway I was prepared to gamble smudging the sculpt by doing two at once. I didn't expect them to be great so I could afford a mistake or two.


Day 4 and I treated the right tower as a single unit also, sculpting both sides of the emplaced weapon in one go. The following night I thought I could do the same on the big tower. 


With all my experience so far and growing confidence but it was a little too much and I left it with some of the elements sculpted hoping I could join them up without too much fuss.


I also filled out some of the inner battlements and Capillary towers just because I'd snagged my rubber gloves on exposed support pins a couple of times and to use up clay that had been out in the air for a bit.


Lastly I added on the forgotten emplaced weapon port - easy peasy and the remaining wall was finished off and I was able to blend it in with few problems. I'm concerned that the emplaced weapon ports are a bit bland, perhaps they could have done with a bit of texture?


I'm pretty much sculpting on the fly here, I'd intended to frame each wall [which will be bonewhite with a red flesh lining and my usual blue/turquoise chitin plate but I seem to have dropped fleshy bits on the walls which leaves the areas intended to take the fleshy bits quite plain. I also need to get my head round the Tervigon belly-esque flesh bits that will be growing out of the base...
I was going to be using some paper craft balls covered in PVA'd tissue paper but my brother reminded me about my lava balls, which are much more organic and I've also got a couple of Termagant bodies I can embed in it to look like the Bastion is gestating bioforms like a Tervigon and explain why it would be defended - so that has to happen as it's cool!

Anyway, I bet that would have been quite exciting to see that happen step-by-step each day, almost live, sorry. Although it does make it a bit easier to follow when I'll only have one post on the tutorial page and we'd be on 'nids part 91 - Tyranid Bastion growth pt13 with still tonnes to do - so much for that micro-blogging concept.
Tyranid Bastion Foamboard core template part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. | part 6. 

8 comments:

  1. All I can say is Wow! That's looking freakin' sweet, man!

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    1. I hope this doesn't come across as immodest, but, I know! Seriously, I've been bigging this up because I've surprised myself with how well it's turned out and this update doesn't even come close to what will happen on Friday!

      I'm just so excited, particularly as the sculpting above is actually really easy to do, just pressing the sculpting tool into the clay, dragging and smoothing until I'm happy. Glad you like it.

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    2. Cheers GSI, I'm doing my very best on this one.

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  2. I'm checking your site daily at this point for updates. Once again, awesome job dude. Each post gets me more excited to see the project completed.

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    1. Thanks DerFoLiciouS, although just to let you know the blog usually runs on an every other day schedule. So there is a new post today, but it's not a Bastion update I'm afraid - that's Friday ;)

      However, the new post is still very cool and far be it from me to suggest you don't come back EVERY day, I do! Afterall there is nearly three years worth of content here so unless you followed the blog from day one there should be something cool here you may have already missed.

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  3. What's next? Nid's fortress??? Looks great! Can't wait to see it completed!

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    1. Logical next step would be a Skyshield or even a Fortress of Redemption equivalent but with the amount of effort gone into just the Bastion I'm not sure I'd want to do that for quite a while. We'll see though ;)

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