Gokufan's Celestial Genesis: Uzeon

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Project Entry by gokufan

Base

February 8, 2019

Tutoring 3

Skill 3

Idea 3

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I’ve been seriously procrastinating on finishing this guy, I keep looking for a flight base or clear acrylic rod, finding something 60% suitable, then not pulling the trigger. I thought making the actual base could help light a fire under me.

I decided to do a desert base similar to the one I made for Twilight. Uzeon is much bigger and top heavy to boot, so the base should be fairly large/heavy to keep him from tipping over. I was inspired by some pictures of erosion near the edge of the Llano Estacado. I’ve never done a base this intricate before, but I’ve been reading some diorama tutorials lately and eventually you have to go ahead and do it yourself.

I started by gluing some layers of "cork" (is this stuff really cork?) onto a wooden square. I tried to make a somewhat natural looking erosion pattern.

Then I added a bit of texture to some areas with a layer of miliput, and glued some plastic I'd cut out to the sides of the base to create a flat edge. In this picture it's glistening with watered down PVA glue in preparation for the next step.

I added some sand and rocks. Then let it dry/cure overnight.

Priming. I went with a bright zenithal since I want it to be a fairly colorful desert.

A very thin layer of VMC desert yellow. I'm never sure exactly how much I can put down while retaining the zenithal effect, but I think it worked here.

Being a proud New Mexican I like my deserts red, so I added quite a bit of red and brown pigment powders from Secret Weapon. I also added some Army Painter highland tufts.

Another shot of the finished product. The color didn't come out quite right in either of the photos, so imagine it somewhere in between.

I’m pretty satisfied with how this came out for my first real attempt at such a base. There are some problems with how the plastic sides turned out (wish I had some polystyrene card instead of this much harder stuff) but it’s fine for a personal project. I do feel like the base could use something more, but I can’t think of anything cool like Edward Cullen from my Twilight project, unfortunately. Maybe something will come to me.