Forced Perspective Bases

Hi folks,

The last step of my Nephilim Jetfighter project is to finish off the base. As I mentioned last post, when my mates gave me the model they had based it with some Epic-scale figures, to introduce some forced perspective.

"Forced perspective is a technique which employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera."

In this case, the figures on the base are supposed to make it look like the Jetfighter is doing a higher altitude pass over the battlefield. When I saw what they had done I loved it, I don't think I had ever seen anything like it before. As part of the re-painting process, I decided I would add some extra details to the base but retain and enhance the forced perspective. To kick things off, I scraped off some of the old basing material and marked out where I wanted the river to be with a white base coat.

Next I painted the river using Caledor Sky for the deeper water, blending from Teclis Blue to Lothern Blue on the shore.

   


I was planning to add some sandy shores to the river, to match the river on my gaming board. The material I used on my board was shell grit, which has some fairly large shell pieces in it. To enhance the forced perspective I used a mortar and pestle to crush some of the grit into much finer grains. I cleaned the mortar and pestle with vinegar when I was finished (it dissolves the calcium carbonate of any left over shell).

  
To apply the grit I used PVA glue, which I painted on with a brush on the banks of the river. 

So that was the neat, tidy... rational, painless part. After that I sprinkled the crushed grit on the base and let it dry for an hour or so. Stupidly, I used my breath to blow the excess off the base and got a fair whack of it in my eyes. Thankfully (?) I have had some experience with this kind of accident, so managed to keep my eyes jammed open until I could get under the shower and flush them thoroughly. Ten minutes later the excitement was over and my eyes were 0% gritty. Next time, I'm just going to give it a blast with my airbrush, or wear some damn safety glasses (I have enough pairs of them).

 To cover the bulk of the base I used the summer/spring flock mix that I always use. I mixed a big batch of this stuff when I first did my gaming boards, the day it runs out I swear the sky will fall.

I added the two remaining Epic-scale marines to the base, which had fallen off during the removal of the original basing material. I also chopped up a Citadel jungle tree and used the smallest fronds to represent some larger trees around the base.

To finish it off I applied a 1 mm layer of water effects to the river. The surface tension of the water effects is very strong (the intermolecular forces are strong in this one...) so there were no troubles with it flowing over the shoreline or the edge of the base. 

...and that's how I left it for the night. It usually takes over 12 hours for the water effects I use to set, so I didn't touch the base again until the next day. Then I whipped some black around the base edge and called it done! Tomorrow I'll post the final pictures of the whole project.

See you across the table,

Marc