 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video. Today, we're gonna revisit something I did a long, long time ago But we're gonna make it new. We're gonna make forest bases for our Sylvaneth or, I guess, anybody we want to wander in a forest So Let's get into it. The strict technomancer that is Vinci Vee. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci Vee style. The key with forests is that they have a lot of layers Like an onion or a parfait There's just a lot of different layers of things going on in the forest the dirt the twigs the fallen trees Brush bushes flowers grasses Depending on what exact biome you're talking about there can obviously be a lot of difference between Temperate forest and tropical jungles and things like that But what we're gonna do today is just throw the kitchen sink at this I'm gonna use a lot of different materials to make my forest now. You don't have to use all of this I want to tell you right up front. This is a pretty big base. It's for a pretty important character So I wanted to go the extra mile You don't have to feel free to use the parts of this You think look cool or look interesting to make your own bases now with that little warning out of the way Let's get into a crazy crazy forest base. Let's go over the top All right, and over the top we shall indeed go let's start with a basic list We're gonna do now. This is a character base 80 mil base. We're gonna go a little wild Of course, we've got to start with some basic cork. Everybody loves cork quarter inch thickness Then we're gonna also have some little resin cast rocks. These are from her starts molds But you know any little rocks will do this is just these are just options I warn you I'm gonna use more than what's even here because this gets out of hand fast We've got some crushed glass more small rocks Then we've got some tiny this is for making trains the little green for making their green grass Tufts tufts tufts tufts both flowers and tufts, of course if we're gonna do forests We've got to have our tufts no problem there Got some old dried out tea leaves as well as some summer growth from army painter like basically mossy type of brush plus Dried tea leaves which are great for sort of ground cover Then we have our forest pine bark interior house plants This is the secret recipe for rocks at scale. So we're gonna use some of that all the different rocks All right, we begin by just I want to build up some space to work on We're also gonna do a river in this little stream little babbling stream through so I got to make space for the stream to run So of course, we just got to lay down some cork make some nice shapes that we can we can build on and work with Nothing too exciting about this part this is just me playing around with cork and you know trying to find little ways to make an interesting vignette once I've got my general landscape down we're gonna add some of the bark rocks on top where I Where I think they'll be interesting Rocky outcroppings in the middle of woods helped to create contrast by having some you know much more like inorganic items in the hard rocks Mixed up with all your grass and dirt and mold One of the little smaller rocks. So got out the her starts mold rock as well as some of my little Crushed glass pieces and just kind of scattering them around Again variance is the key nature is very random turns out it doesn't really follow any building codes It just kind of does whatever it wants and gets all up in each other's business So having little tiny rocks scattered all around to complement my big rocks helped to sell the whole thing By the way, I'm gluing this all in with just some super glue thin that I'm using out of a pipette for control Now we need some paste to cover everything over. This is Vallejo brown earth Ground cover nothing too exciting here if you don't want to buy these basing pastes You can also just make your own out of sand and PVA glue and water So you could also do that and that would be perfectly fine and acceptable But part of this is covering up the cork and integrating all the elements and just you know getting dirt on everything We wait a while for that to dry and once that's all dry now We get out a nice PVA glue or white glue and water mixture Just kind of lay that down since this is going to be a little riverbed River beds often have little rocks and things like that on the edge of them So we want to go ahead and get even more tiny rocks so much of doing nature is different size rocks I guess I could have just called this video different size rocks, but people probably wouldn't watch that So then we're just kind of scattering around some of this very tiny rocks which in scale would actually be still pretty big Now we need to layer on more ground cover So this would be fallen to Tritus branches sticks leaves trees everything that covers a forest floor We're just gonna kind of scatter it around Wherever there seems to be you know the right area wherever we want to disguise kind of the cork layers and stuff like that Just I purposely crush some of this up very thin So with the tea I'll crush some of it in my fingers to get down small Whereas I leave some of the leaf pieces rather big and then again Just a few drops of super glue thin out of a pipette to lock everything in place Nothing too tricky here, but again, it's just about Making sure that there's lots of different visual confusion and interest going on on the base One of our last pieces we want to get these nice mossy growths in here where we've got I don't know shrubs or ground cover bush brush basically So I just pick some of this summer undergrowth stick it around wherever I think it's going to be you know visually interesting or compelling or Provide for color in the end remember these will be a bright green We're all done and then drop it down with some super glue thin So you can see here how I keep adding layer and layer and layer on top more things more detritus Rocks sticks all these different little things that I'm building up So even though I started with simple cork you really can't see any of that anymore because of everything that was left And we ended up doing that just for the height Remember those layers of the forest floor of all those fallen branches and sticks and twigs are what you want to do And in fact, there's no reason you can't go out into your yard find tiny little sticks Put them in the oven dry them out a little bit to kill anything alive in them and then use them in your basing Perfectly fine. There's even more materials that I'm not using here. So get creative and make your own forest floors All right, so everything is there it's glued down. It's dry So now there's only one thing left to do and that is to prime that model So there we go all primed and you can see I really truly love the moment where you prime a bunch of disparate materials and draw them all together It's wonderful Let's talk about painting so now we got to paint this base obviously and I'm starting with a lot of pretty dark desaturated colors dark browns things like that So this is obviously some brinox hide some dark Some dark green from pro acryl as well as a little reddish-gray from ak interactive and some little dark dark brown ochre from chimera and The reason I picked these very dark colors is because when we're laying down the absolute bottom ground cover I want to make sure that you know, everything's rather muted desaturated muddy There's a couple things going on here one I mixed the green into most of the elements I'm gonna paint with so I bring that dark Camo green into the rock color you see me applying now into the earth color basically all over the place because I want it to have that earthy natural feeling and Because in nature everything kind of gets on everything else It's you know like a plate overflowing with mashed potatoes and peas try as you might they're gonna just get into each other So because of you know, it's gonna get wet and then it's gonna rain and water will splash everywhere and leave to try to Surround I want to make sure that we have that Idea that the colors are interchanging that nature is getting all up and over the rocks That everything is getting in each other's business, but this is of course just the base coat time So getting everything nice and colored You know the fact that I did some zenithal helps a little here But I'm not overly relying on it though. It does mean you can thin your paints a lot and just kind of tone things the color Building up rock Coloration on bases is one of my most favorite things because it's so easy First of all notice. I'm not using just black and white here I mixed in a dark green with a gray to be it for my base color And now I'm using reddish gray for my highlights and then integrating ice yellow into that reddish gray To create the texture and stippling on the rock. I'm also not trying to paint them carefully I'm trying to turn off my brain and just Let some natural stipples happen while still paying attention to the direction of the light Which is coming in from where my hand is right now basically Nature is random shut off your brain stop your brain's natural desire for synergy and Create those nice random stippling patterns Now we're integrating some olive green from Vallejo a much brighter much more intense yellow green Bringing out those individual elements of that moss and those plants even mixed in a little ice yellow to really pop up the Light and kind of make that stuff stand out We don't want everything to be desaturated in the end nature does have some bright interesting stuff going on to that same end I grab some Vallejo golden brown and Just sort of integrating that around where I want Lighter colored dirt so mixing it up into the rocks Especially in areas where there are recesses in the rocks. So if you see I'm often pushing it up into recesses or Places where one part of the sort of rock layer from that indoor pine bark meets another or where one layer of the or the edge Of some of the darker parts down below And I'm doing that because I want to show that's where dirt gathered than the water evaporated Now it's time to use some GW washes our old friends, but I'm not washing the whole base No, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna ruin all that good work Instead we're just gonna get out that wash and just Stipple it around just a little dib dab stipple staple get it around again trying to show that color This green that I'm using the BL tan green, which is really intense is gonna be my first layer of sort of moss Now an interesting thing about moss and that kind of organic growth is it happens at lots of different scales and at the scale We're working at some of it would be pretty small and imperceptible to the eye unless you got really really close So this is just more or less staining those rocks green We're gonna hit other layers of that moss growth later Now of course, it's time to get some tufts Which is gonna be a chance not only to show more growth and vegetation But also a chance to work in more color really bring the forest alive now the tufts here are is from gamers grass And I really like these gamers grass tufts Especially the wild section because you can see how they come in lots of different irregular formations and sizes Which just feels much more natural and real Make sure you work them around evenly you want to integrate them into the other elements So you see I'm pushing them up against moss or again into recesses where there would naturally be dirt Accumulating and hence enough dirt for grass to grow amongst the rocks Same thing with the flowers. I picked purple here because I thought it'd be a really nice compliment to the eventual figure That's going to go on top, but it's also a really nice splash of color without being too overwhelming You want to be careful that you don't make the elements and tufts and flowers on your base too bright So it distracts from the figure this sort of lilac color is very soft. It's highly tinted. And so it doesn't really distract Same with these very soft orange flowers. They're not like intense punch you in the face pumpkin orange It's just a bit of soft splash of color So primary with the purple most of my flowers are purple And then I just scatter around a few of the little orange tufts just to again add some more Visual confusion and an interesting visual or variance to the tones Okay, let's make moss. So we stained it with the green shade now. We're gonna go a little bigger So I've got that green stuff. I'm you buy it from train stores I don't actually know what it's called But it's like this flock that you put on your your big mat where you're gonna do a train diorama Mix in a little PVA glue a couple drops of dark camo green and then some water I mixed way too much water in here. You really only need one drop, but it's fine in the end It doesn't actually matter too much. You just have to wick it off. Then you mix this goopy awful mess up Uh, you want a little bit more glue to water ratio than I have like you can see all that extra water I have that I don't need that doesn't mix in there Um, and then what I'm doing is grabbing it touching it to a paper towel to wick off that water And then just brushing it into the spaces where moss would grow This will give you real hard moss texture like this is visible in scale texture So this is big hearty healthy growing moss You just kind of scatter it around with a paintbrush and then once you've got it where you want it It's not going to stick right away Until it cures. So then you go in and push your finger against it to get it there Now everything needs to have a little bit of paint on it So of course I do go around dry brush the grasses touch the flowers with a little bit of wash that kind of thing just to integrate them More dirt so getting out our brown earthy pigment and again I'm just going to want a sort of push that pigment into the recesses of areas where I want there to be a brighter More drier more Sort of alive dirt So I just push some around wipe off my brush and then just really work it into the base Now I don't really fix this because I don't need to um, I just work it in and leave whatever's there there I do varnish the whole thing before this resin step. So that will lock it in Now green stuff world uv resin we all know we all love it. It's perfectly fine But did you know you can also get equivalents? Uh Generically because it's used to make paste jewelry And here is where I start to go wrong because I mix way too much ink into this But you mix some ink into it and make a nice mixture And uh, you just swish it swish it swish it You really want to mix this quite thoroughly and then we just do a little pour off of there on the stick Now this will run over some like it'll run over the edge of base if you don't have a cap That's okay The nice part about this uv resin is if it starts to go over the edge like it's doing right there You can just kind of wipe it place it where you want And then grab your uv light and if you just hit the edge you'll solidify the edge And it will stop flowing. It's just that easy. So you could sort of instantly stop it. So wipe shine done Yeah, so this is the part where I screw up I mixed too much ink in here and it got to opaque that's the bottom line Uh, I had a feeling I mixed it wrong because a couple extra drops of ink came out. I didn't want But I thought hey, let's just go with it anyways because we're rushing and we're doing this for a video And this is a good point here. Look, even I mess up everybody messes up. We always make mistakes You never grow beyond them And I could have I guess somehow fixed it. I'm not sure how I could have actually But Instead I thought now let's just use this. Let's keep going So even though I had intended to do only one pour and have it be like a relatively transparent green brown That's not really how things worked out, but that's okay. We can build on this. We can make it look cool It just means we're going to push this crazy base even farther. So Yeah, let's keep pushing and see how absolutely crazy we can get All right, so let's try to unscrew this pooch so I start with more of the resin over top and the reason I'm doing it just clear this time is because now I'm going to treat the green like a base coat like I like I base coated the The bottom of the thing in green and now I got a build on top of it So we're just basically starting kind of over Yeah So I want to create more space the illusion of depth is done by having clear stuff In between a color and another color So I do two more pours basically of this resin And then lock it in and seal it and dry it out each time I'm using my little UV light as well as just my actual bright lamp to dry it out Once that's done I grab gloss varnish and a little bit of brown ink because I want to put that over the top You can see that's this little soupy mixture now. It looks very milky here But remember when the gloss varnish dries it's going to dry clear I also try to knock all the bubbles out of it before I pour it or at least most of them So I just give a little coat of that over the top to again That's going to kind of run and settle and create a very thin colored texture over the top But there'll be a clear layer in between Now we're going to take a little gloss gel medium mix it with some of that Basically just green wash you can use. I'm not a lot of my My green wash from GW so the green stuff world to perfectly fine stand in And this gives us this little green Basically cake batter paste and we're going to put some rills into this little babbling brook because it shouldn't be still water Anyways, little babbling brooks babbled and so they need to have rills So I just get some of the paste on there and then I use an old brush to kind of shape it And I'm always working directionally. That's the key You want to pull the brush in the direction of the rills And you want there to be brush marks and strokes in there because that's the waves you're creating Again, this looks like birthday batter, but it will dry clear as you can see But it creates that nice Really like as though the brook is flowing To reinforce that I take a little ice yellow plus that same green And I'm going to draw the actual foam where it's reeling up and foaming Not doing this over everything just in the places where there would be that foam gathering And you can see maybe there's a rock under there or something like that The fact that the paint is matte is helpful because the rills don't reflect glossy like the clear water So by putting them over we can create directionality in the flow of the water and actually show The traveling direction of this babbling brook I think we fixed it and boy. Oh boy. Has there never been a more satisfying moment Then when I put the black rim on this base Always a great moment, but here Oof This felt good folks after screwing up that pour and having it look ugly But then managing to turn it into something I thought was pretty cool This felt great So there you go. I think in the end it turned out pretty good I like how it looks. You'll have to tell me how you what you think Again, feel free to grab the individual parts of this that you think are useful Because in the end I wanted to show you all the different elements the rocks the twigs the trees the tea leaves Everything you can integrate in to make your forest base is compelling visually interesting and most importantly alive So I really hope you enjoyed this if you did give it a like Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. We have new videos here every saturday If you've got any questions drop those down in the comments below and don't forget We've got a patreon focused on helping you take your next step in your hobby journey That's really focused on review and feedback. It's got a great patron in a great community You can join and hopefully continue to build your skills in So thank you so much for watching this. I really appreciate it as always We'll see you next time