When did basing with sand and static grass start? Who made it popular?

[Hammers]

Makes one wonder about other rather important trends in the Hobby. Who initiated the larger trend to move from oil based paints to matt acrylics? I know I did my first ones, Mithril Miniature, with Humbrol Enamels.

[Von Trinkenessen]

I've been using static grass since the late 1970s, when "Games Innovation" based in Bradford on Avon pioneered the polystyrene 2 foot base boards covered in static grass applied with a Van der Graaf generator.

[Vanvlak]

Makes one wonder about other rather important trends in the Hobby. Who initiated the larger trend to move from oil based paints to matt acrylics? I know I did my first ones, Mithril Miniature, with Humbrol Enamels.

True - I'd always used enamels on model kits, but converted to acrylics when I started wargaming after finishing not more than a handful of models with enamels.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

I will start a new thread about Enamels to Acrylics 

[westwaller]

I based my Heroquest miniatures with sawdust (painted brown). I used to use gravel for my Space Marines and Orks to get that look that they had in White Dwarf. I believe GW actually used Cat litter for their bases.

Then I switched to builders sand painted Goblin Green, drybrushed with Sunburst Yellow (just like real grass! ) in the early 90s.

I tend to use finer sand now and paint it brown before adding grass.

[MartinR]

I used railway modelling flock in the late 1970s (I still have two original bags). The sand and grass thing I started doing in the late 1990s, I will have copied someone else, most likely from the Mansfield Wargames club. My  first full sand and static grass army was SCW, but I did have a lot of older 6mm stuff done with painted sand bases.

Lost interest in fantasy around 1980 so I've no idea what was happening with GW etc.

[Keith]

I used 'Polyfilla' early on, mixed with all sorts of dirt usually scavenged from Mum's plant pots :-). Moved to sand around 1985 but mainly becuase I lived next to a beach!

Static grass from about 1989 or so I think. Also remember a phase where I used Miliput for a lot of basing in the late 80's which was quite fun but time consuming and often resulted in an over-use of 'interesting' rocks and sometimes mushrooms to liven things up a bit. Used to use an old toothbrush (or my brothers) to texture Miliput and Polyfilla etc..

[Captain Blood]

Also remember a phase where I used Miliput for a lot of basing in the late 80's which was quite fun but time consuming and often resulted in an over-use of 'interesting' rocks and sometimes mushrooms to liven things up a bit. Used to use an old toothbrush (or my brothers) to texture Miliput and Polyfilla etc..

I went through this phase too. Laboriously applying a doughnut of Milliput, pushing it all into shape, then trying to texture its unyielding surface with a toothbrush and embed small stones in it. Used to take absolutely ages  

Then I discovered gloop and never looked back.  

In fact, I’ve just remembered (it was a long time ago) that my first textured basing was done with Tetrion - a kind of ready mixed Polyfilla. Because that’s what Bill Brewer used...

[Keith]

Yep - couldn't buy Tetrion easily on the Isle of Wight, but my parents were always 'doing up' the house so an endless supply of Polyfilla. I would frequently emerge from the garden shed covered in the stuff after mixing far too much. 

[Michi]

For me it was much the same - green painted filler with static grass on top from the beginning in the late 1980s to sand and static grass/tufts from 2000 to present days.

I found an example of my old and new bases for comparison (the coins are exactly the same):  

[Connectamabob]

When I first started doing minis as a tween back in the late 80's and early 90's, I preffered to keep the plastic bases pristine black (even painting the slotta tabs black so they'd blend in) as a sort of abstraction that wasn't supposed to be seen. If the plastic was molded in a non-black, I'd paint it black (Testors flat black enamel, usually). Minis with cast-on sculpted metal bases got painted according to the sculpted groundwork, but I disliked these kinds of bases, and thought less of mini companies that used them.

I left the hobby somewhere in the early 90's and didn't make it back till the mid 00's, at which point I had a lot more experience doing diorama bases for display vehicles and large scale figures. My instinct at this point was the opposite of what it had been before: instead of an "invisible" abstraction being the ideal, I wanted to ditch the plastic bases completely, and make wee tiny versions of the sorts of bases you'd find on large display figures instead, complete with "classy" rim like the wood bases used on said display models. The solution I came up with was stone souvenir rings for the rim, filled with epoxy to form a solid base.

For the first version of this, I used epoxy glue as filler and texture goop made of glue or paint and sand for the groundwork. There were a number of things I didn't like about this though, most of which boiled down to different forms of lack of sufficiant control. For the second (current) gen I switched to using epoxy putty for both the filler, and the sculpt the groudwork. I'm pretty happy with this.

The type of putty makes a huge difference. I use Aves for this. It's soft and precise like plastiline, and is very easy and efficiant to work with in this context. Gives me absolute control, and applies as easily as texture goop. I would not advocate Green Stuff for the same job. I've never used Milliput, but from what Keith and Blood say above, it's probably very different from Aves as well.

I dislike the ubiquity of the "tufts and sand" look, because I feel like it accomplishes the exact opposite of what it's ostensibly supposed to. It's supposed to be a universal neutral ground option, but in reality it's an arbitrary specific one that's just as easily out of place as concrete or cobblestone or metal. A true universal option would be a "non-entity" abstraction like black bases, clear bases, or logo bases. Many seem to reject that approach because they really want a base that in theory blends in, but in practice they end up with something that only blends in some of the time, and under any other circumstances they are forced to willfully "not see" in exactly the same way they would with an abstract base. It seems like a doublethink half-measure strategy to me.

For me, characters get ring bases with sculpted groundwork, and identity-less armies or mooks get blank abstract bases.

[boneio]

I don't know if it was the first, but at least one of the first armies done in this style was the re-done studio undead army for whfb, in WD 211.

Can't find an image of the WD article, but here's a shot of the army conveniently opposing a traditional 'green' army:



Still for me the best army ever done by GW - largely nostalgia, of course 

[AWu]

I found an example of my old and new bases for comparison (the coins are exactly the same):  

Those Eschers have seriously thick bushes :O

Necromunda was one of the turning points.
Studio models are still on Goblin green bases but featured models were based in different ways - more appropriate to the terrain.

Incidental Necromunda was released with WD 190. That is almost two years before 2011 but the process has to take time.

In 40k turning point was 3rd edition with different colored edges.. The rule of goblin green was put to an end..

[FramFramson]

I'd be a fan of clear bases, only I prefer to be able to use the base to alter the height of figures if need be.

[carlos marighela]

I suspect Australia is/was behind the curve but I too have a sense that static grass as opposed to flock was a late '90s oe early 2000's thing. Similar patterns here. My first armies were painted with Humbrol enamels and based on card orvoccasionally balsa painted green. Trips to model railway shops and photos in Battle and Military Modelling saw me adding sawdust flock.

I'm pretty sure that the first time I saw static grass was the Heki variety and that was around the turn of the century. I've been usung sand and PVA bases combined with flock, followed by static grass and now tufts for around  20 years as I still have minis from then. I also went through a brief polyfilla around the bases phase and gave that up for a waste of time.

 The two influences on all this? British wargames magazines and what was available at model railroad shops locally.

First time I can recall acrylics being used to paint armies was by a housemate in the late eighties, who used Gunge -Sangyo, all that was available locally save for rather iffy Tamiya acrylics. I have vivid recall as he was painting Russian cavalry with turnbacks we described at the time as bathroom fitting colours.