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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Green Slime Basing Tutorial

It seems like people like tutorials.  My casting tutorial from a couple of weeks ago is currently my most ever viewed post.  That tells me that I need to do more!

Today's tutorial is a glowing green slime base.

First, the money shot.

Glowing Green Slime Base Effect
I saw something similar to this online and decided to give it a go.  This is STUPID EASY to do.  Literally anyone can do this in about 5 minutes or so.

First, start off with your model.  I glued on some cork, glued on some sand and primed black.  I then drybrushed with a dark brown, medium brown and bone color.  Nothing complicated.

Glowing Green Slime - Step 1
Next, I took some Moot Green and dry brushed the edges of the cork as you can see below...

Glowing Green Slime - Step 2
Now, it's time to go crazy.  I went to Michaels, which for those of you who don't know, is an arts and crafts chain store in the United States.  I bought some Tulip brand Glow in the Dark Dimensional Fabric Paint.  It can be purchased from Michaels, or also at Amazon.com.  It's normally ~13 USD at Amazon and ~11 USD at Michaels, but is currently on sale for 6.59 USD on the Amazon store.  This stuff is totally worth it.  It comes with orange, red, white, blue, green and yellow.  I'm using green, yellow and white for this tutorial, but blue/orange slime would work the same.

The Tulip paints I'm using.
The paint tubes have a nice applicator nozzle, so you can use it to put glue directly on the base.  It has the consistency of thick PVA glue, so slop it on.

The Applicator Nozzle is the perfect size for models.

Glowing Green Slime - Step 3a
Next, do the same for yellow and white, but put less on.  Just put the yellow in the middle areas of the green and then the white in the middle areas of the yellow.  The glues will sort of mush together a little, so you'll get a nice graded effect.  I didn't take a photo of the white stage, but just pretend there is a Step 3c photo with some white on the yellow.

Glowing Green Slime - Step 3b
Last, but certainly not least, we're going to do a little basic object source lighting, or OSL.  We're going to make it look like the slime is glowing up onto the model.  To do this, take the same old Moot Green and just dry brush it onto the undersides of the model.  Imagine that the slime is actually glowing and think about the areas it would actually hit.  On my model, I mainly dry brushed on the metal areas as I though they'd be more reflective in real life.  This step took literally 10 seconds.

VERY IMPORTANT...  Moot Green is very watery.  Make sure your brush is pretty dry or else you'll get streaks.  If you get streaks, you can wipe them away with your finger immediately.  If you wait, you're stuck with them.

Glowing Green Slime - Step 4
There you have it.  To me, this looks awesome and takes practically no time at all to do.  Of course, it's easier to do on larger models, but can look just as nice on smaller ones.  If you're working on 25 or 40mm models, I would suggest no more than 1-2 "pools" of slime.  If you're working on anything larger, go crazy and practice.

Here's a wider shot of the finished model.

Glowing Green Slime - Final
Oh...  and it glows in the dark, which is awesome!!!

And it ACTUALLY glows!