I've been interested in doing more clear resin casting. I figured the Elemental Champions would look great with some added transparency. I started with the units, which gave me a chance to experiment with making molds and tinting resin.
Casting:
These models proved to be far more difficult to cast than
Ol' Grim's torso, as there were far more nooks and crannies to catch air bubbles. I ended up designing and printing a casting box that had a "door" on each side; I would glue the model into the box, then use the shafts from ear buds to create vents anywhere I thought air was likely to get caught:
Then I sealed the "doors" in place with PVA, using elastic bands to hold them until the PVA dried:
With this done I was able to pour in silicone to make a mold:
Once this set I could pull the doors off and easily extract the mold, carefully cutting it open to remove the model:
I would then transfer the mold to a casting box I designed and printed, that would actually feed the resin to the mold from underneath, so it would slowly fill from the bottom up:
Actually mixing the resin, trying to de-gas it, then slowly and carefully pouring it into the mold was something like a half-hour process per mold. Between trying to get better casts and trying to dial in the tint colours, and of course casting enough to get 15 units, it took ages to finish.
I had to do a lot of cleanup work too, filling bubbles with UV resin and even trying to replace missing details by building up with UV resin then sanding down to the desired shape. One particular recurring issue, for example, was the fingers on the Fire Kami; only one cast came out with fingers that I could "rescue" using UV resin, all the rest needed greenstuff work to look even remotely decent:
The Air Avatar was a little bit more involved. The mold was made the same way, but before casting I took some miscast bricks (made from Green Stuff World acrylic resin powder mixed with water and cast in a Green Stuff World brick mold), broke them into smaller pieces with a hobby knife, and painted them to look like small rocks.
I cut a strip of clear plastic from a blister pack, and used a heat gun to soften it so I could bend it to follow the contour of the Air Avatar. I attached the rocks to the plastic strip using Green Stuff World UV resin.
I put the rock-encrusted strip of clear plastic into the Air Avatar mold before filling it with resin, embedding the rocks inside the resin.
Air Avatar:
I cast the Air Avatar using clear resin with no added dye. The Air Avatar was actually the first model I painted, so I did some things differently from the rest. I airbrushed on Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 113 UVCut Flat to serve in place of a primer. I was also hoping that blocking as much UV as possible would protect the resin from yellowing over time. After glueing the model onto its base I applied a masking tape I had gotten from a local art store onto the rest of the base and used blu-tack to try to protect right up to the model.
I painted the rocks that are part of the original sculpt with the same colour I used on the inner rocks: a leftover mix of brown artist acrylics (Daler Rowney "Graduate Acrylic" 201 Burnt Sienna, Phoenix Artist's Acrylic Value Series 690 Vandyke Brown, and Phoenix 601 Raw Sienna) that I've had lying around for a while. I lightly drybrushed the entire model with Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight; I decided to use this on the whole model to try to help the detail to stand out. I then washed the rocks on the base in Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade. I gave the model another airbrushed varnish of Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss; I considered leaving it glossy as this enhanced the transparency, but it didn't really make sense for air to be glossy so I went over again with the UVCut Flat. For illustrative purposes, here it is before the matt coat, next to an Air Kami with a gloss varnish:
And here is the same model after I went over the gloss coat with a matt varnish, you can see how the matt finish makes it looks less clear:
After the model was done, when I tried to remove the masking tape from the base, it left a stubborn residue behind:
After some experimentation I found something that was able to clean up the residue, however I don't remember what it was and I think it also melted the plastic of the base a tiny bit, but luckily I was able to smooth it out enough to not be too noticeable.
Air Kamis:
The Air Kamis were cast in clear resin then airbrushed with a varnish to act as a primer. I think I actually used the GX 113 Gloss on all the models other than the Air Avatar; I might have been hoping this would help washes flow into recesses rather than tinting the whole model, tbh I don't remember. This time I used Talens Liquid Masking Film to protect the base, which fortunately worked very well.
I gave the models a light drybrush with Two Thin Coats 10036 Trooper White. The grunts' armour was then basecoated with Scalecolor SC-63 Metal N' Alchemy Black Metal, then washed it with Citadel Shade Nuln Oil. This was followed with a dryrbushed of Vallejo 72.053 Game Color Chainmail Silver. I decided it was too dark, so I drybrushed the upper surfaces with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver.
To differentiate the Elite I basecoated its armour with Citadel Color Tin Bitz, then washed it with Citadel Washes Ogryn Flesh (thinned with Citadel Technical Lahmian Medium because my pot is old and has thickened). It was then dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, but I decided it was too dark so I drybrushed the upper surfaces with Citadel Layer Auric Armour Gold. I also left the "gemstones" on the gauntlets clear on the Elite, where I had just painted over them on the grunts.
I varnished them with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss then Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 113 UVCut Flat.
Earth Kamis:
I initially cast the Earth Kamis with green-tinted resin; first I tried a mix of ten drops of Pebeo Fluid Pigment 67 Blue with around five drops of Pebeo Fluid Pigment 62 yellow (in 30ml of resin, which was very excessive). This became very opaque; an issue that always seemed to occur if I used more than a couple of drops of Pebeo yellow. My second attempt came out better with six drops of Pebeo blue to two drops of Pebeo yellow in 20ml of resin. Later I aquired some Green Stuff World 2402 Dye For Resins Green, using seven drops in 20ml of resin.
Which didn't really matter because I then decided to save clear green for different models and switched to purple for my Earth Kamis instead. I tried two drops of Green Stuff World 2401 Dye For Resins Blue with three drops of Green Stuff World 2404 Dye For Resins Red in 15ml of resin, but this was too dark. Next I tried five drops of Pebeo blue (which seems to be much less saturated) with two drops of GSW red in 20ml of resin, and finally three drops of Pebeo blue with one drop of GSW red in 20ml of resin:
I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. The grunts' helmets were painted Black Metal, washed with Nuln Oil, then dryrbushed with chainmail silver and finally the raised surfaces were dryrbrushed with silver. The Elite's helmet was basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold.
Finally the unarmoured areas were washed with (old) Citadel Shade Druchii Violet. I only did this on the lighter two; when I started on the darker one the shade wasn't really visible and I was afraid it would darken it even further, so I quickly wased it off with water and left it unshaded. I varnished them with Mr. Hobby Mr. Color GX 112 UVCut Gloss, but decided not to follow up with the matt varnish as I liked the idea of the gemstones being shiny.
Fire Kamis:
Initially I tried to tint the resin orange while casting, but then I decided to just use yellow so that I would have bright yellow as the lightest parts of the flames. I had a hard time with the yellow tint, as the Pebeo Fluid Pigment 62 Yellow was very concentrated and just a few drops would turn the model opaque. The Green Stuff World 2403 Dye For Resins Yellow was much more controllable; in the end I used about five drops of GSW yellow in 15ml of resin.
I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. I then washed the models with Citadel Shade Casandora Yellow; this gave the models the orange tint I had hoped for but darkened them a lot more than I had been expecting. It also seemed to even out the differences in the intensity of the yellow tint between the models.
The flames were looking flatter than I had hoped, so I tried to darked the recesses on the lower parts of the models with another, more carefully applied wash of Casandora Yellow. To try to lighten the models up a bit and create more contrast I tried to take some of the wash off the raised areas by lightly rubbing them with cotton swabs that I moistened and then picked up a small amount of The Masters Brush Cleaner And Preserver, washing the models with a generous amount of water afterwards to make sure there was no residue or leftover brush cleaner. I think this did lighten the raised areas a little, but it's hard to be sure, that might be just my imagination.
The grunts' helmets were painted Black Metal, washed with Nuln Oil, then dryrbushed with chainmail silver and finally the raised surfaces were dryrbrushed with silver. The Elite's helmet was basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold. I also made sure to use the one cast with good fingers for the elite, which allowed me to leave the fingers clear rather than painting over them as I did with the grunts.
Fire Avatars:
I had some trouble casting these guys as the "brain" at the top kept coming out empty. Which is kinda funny to be fair. Eventually I got a good cast, and then ended up with a second good cast (I had only been planning on making one) when I had some leftover resin. I used the same yellow tint as the Fire Kamis, and painted them the exact same way as the Elite Fire Kami.
Water Avatars:
For the first cast I tried about five drops of Pebeo blue in 20ml of resin, I tried to lighten up the second one a little with about three drops of Pebeo blue in 20ml of resin. The first cast had rather a lot of small air bubbles on the surface; the second had far less. Unfortunately I careless chose the rougher of the two casts when I was taking photos...
I varnished the models, glued them to the bases, and applied the liquid mask to protect the bases. The metallic parts were basecoated in Tin Bitz, washed it with Ogryn Flesh, dryrbushed with Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, then the upper surfaces were drybrushed with Auric Armour Gold.
The models were looking good; I would say they were my favourites in fact, like deep blue marbles. However I decided to try to bring out the details of the water's surface a bit more; I considered a light white drybrush, but decided instead to try to shade the recesses with a wash of Vallejo 73.207 Game Wash Blue Wash. This darkened the models more than I would have liked, and kinda flowed a bit too much; it didn't really stay in most the recesses and so didn't accentuate the detail as much as I would have liked. That might be at least partly due to the gloss varnish I was using in lieu of primer?
Overall I think these models look fun, and I learned a lot while making them. The bronze looks really good to me, I'm really happy with how that turned out. In the future I'll try to use lighter tints while casting, knowing know that shading has such a pronounced darkening effect on clear casts. I am planning on casting and painting the monsters as well (eventually); in fact I specifically chose the two metallic colours for the units based on how I plan to paint the monsters. These guys did take a long time however, hopefully it won't take me as long to get the monsters done.
I really just don't paint at home any more; there's just so many other things I feel like I should be doing when I have energy. Plus painting requires setting aside some time when I won't have to stand up and move around; that's something I can't count on as much these days. Leaving my painting half-done on my desk while I step away for a moment is an invitation to have my cats knock over my painting handles (with models attached of course), drink my dirty paint water, and sit on palette (getting paint on their fur then spreading it around my desk and floor when they move). So I mostly just get to paint at the local gaming club. Which I can do as nobody wants to play Warmachine or Monsterpocalypse, just MTG and 40K - which I'm really not interested in.
