I spent about two hours repairing all the broken picture links in this thread (no pictures were showing up in any tutorials other than the Rackham Trees, because of the Great Photobucket Debacle of 2017). I had a couple more tutorials to post and didn't want to add them until that tedious task was done...
Alien Forest Tutorial
This project uses a lot of re-purposing other plastic plants along with methods found in previous tutorials. I wanted a very alien landscape that looked a bit like the wild environs of He-Man's world, Eternia, but could also serve as a 40K deathworld or something for my retro sci-fi.
I started by making some landforms, using styrofoam, mounted on hardboard. I then blasted it with spray paint to pock it up and break down the sharp edges. Then I added toilet tissue and plastered it down with Mod-Podge.
I wanted the plant life to look really integrated into the landscape, and added some ping-pong balls that I cut open and reshaped with a heat gun. My idea was to show a plant that 'popped' open and rapidly grew from a cyst-like round shape. I used latex caulk to make root systems as I have done on the past trees. Smaller styrofoam balls indicate cysts that are still growing.
I added some texture to the ground and did a bit of painting in advance. I planned on a weird 'tertiary triad' color scheme for the forest.
The cyst plants have three wire stalks textured with latex caulk, terminating in a styrofoam bulb.
I found some odd looking black plastic 'plants' at the craft store and decided to mix them in. I then added more caulk to give the impression of roots, so the snake like tree seems to grow up and down.
At this point I wasn't sure which fronds to go with. I had some clear packing material that had a neat texture, but I ended up not using it for leaves. I decided on some Christmas holly leaves for the tall trees, and ended up using the packing material on a different tree type.
A second plant type is based on some crappy looking plastic apples from another batch of Christmas decorations. I turned the apples upside-down and textured them with toilet tissue and Mod-Podge, followed by some puff paint veins. Then I topped them with some plastic tufts from a 'grass mat'. I made a bunch of these, some to be attached to the larger bases and some individually for ease of set up.
I ended up changing the colors
A third plant type uses packing peanuts. These had to be coated with a non-waterbased epoxy first- water based glue 'eats' them. I had a bunch of white plastic plants that I thought would go well with the tubes. The pics show the process of building up a landform using insulation foam with a resin coat, followed by drywall/wall patch 'plaster', then a texture layer using carpenters wood filler, slightly watered down.
All that remained was to paint the rocky ground, and add a lot of moss, random seed pods, and other plastic plants found at the craft store. I made some additional small plants using wire, heat shrink tubing, and old broom bristles.
After using a heat gun to shrink the tubing I used the same toilet tissue/Mod Podge method to texture them up. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the texture method, which I learned in high school
I painted them and glued them into the larger landforms.
As always, thanks for looking!
08 February 2017, 09:49:06 AM
