Friday, January 15, 2016

Blood and Poison


There's one more touch to add to those ninja archers... some blood/poison blades.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the idea behind this is to create something that can be seen very easily on the game table in order to distinguish two units from each other easily.

You can see the products that were used in this image.  The heavy gel, which I use for everything from water effects to fire to fur sculpting, is an all purpose must!  Then we have some Secret Weapon miniatures realistic water and Vallejo fluorescent yellow.


I thought I would try to get a mix of blood and poison on the blades, so the first layers would be a mostly blood color with a touch of poison.  The fluorescent yellow is mixed in with the deep red and Realistic Water, and allowed to flow down the blade.


I am not mixing in the heavy gel just yet, since I am focused on getting some blood onto the blades first.


I thought it might also be interesting to have some drips and splatters from the blades on the ground and snow piles.


The first layer on the snow was a very transparent application of Realistic Water with a little of the red mixed in.  Additional layers were added in the center of these spots, in order to make it look like the blood was starting to be absorbed into the snow.

Having hard lined red dots on the snow would make it look like blood hitting a ceramic floor!  I thought this would keep the snow effects going.

If these were my own minis, I would have added a tiny layer of snow flock over the top, and let the blood drops naturally soak into that rough surface.  However, that's not an option here, as I must keep these snow bases in line with the dozens of other bases that were done before.


Fortunately there were a number of instances where the snow piles were right under the blades, so I could keep doing the soaked blood effect again and again!


And here's a quick shot of those bases...

I had so much fun making these kind of blood effects on my Adepticon Dark Eldar army, I did a video as part of my instructional series.  It was called "Bloody Mess", and it was lots of fun!!

Here's a link to a YouTube preview:


To try and simulate a very obvious poison color, the fluorescent yellow was mixed into the heavy gel, which could create some drips on the blades.


I put the yellow/gel mix onto the tips of the blades, letting the darker blood stains make it stand out.


On these horizontal blades, it was neat to add a few different drips hanging from the knives.


One more view with all the poisoned blades!!  Stay tuned for all the individual mini photos!

If you are interested in the "Bloody Mess" video, you can get that directly from me, and don't forget many more titles here:



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