MASSIVE VOODOO: Tutorial - Creating tiny waterfalls

posted by roman, jarhead, kong

This time it is about how you can create tiny waterfalls or drops of water on your miniatures. It goes a bit hand in hand with making icicles. Here we go!

Creating tiny waterfalls - what you need
- a base where you want to place it (should be painted close to the end or already finished)
- a lighter
- something from clear plastic
- a metal tweezer
- a scissor
- superglue
- a toothpick
- Tamyia Clear colours
- patience and a big crate of bananas

What to do?
On the latest painted Scriptor i went for this goal and decided to a little drop of ugly chemical water that runs out of some rusty ductwork. I take some cheap plastic jars you can get in the supermarket for this, but you can use a lot of different things for example the same used on the icicles or even those clear plastic things Games Workshop's Eldar tanks are up to (hope you know what i mean).

Attention: Take care of your breathing health and use a face mask while doing so - it is a good suggestion to do the following steps outside - i did not, but only because i am stupid. Make sure you read this carefully to really know and understand how to it, before you do it in panic.

Using the lighter to put the plastic on flame, not long, just a couple of seconds. Take care not to touch the hot plastic and take care to blow it out with you breath before the flame is getting to big or the plastic melts and drops. Don't breathe it out like a hurricane, gently and controlled - really, please take a lot of care with this. I am speaking from bad and hurtful experience here.

You should already have prepared your metal tweezer so you can use it fast - you only got some seconds left.

After it is blown out fast take your metal tweezer and carefully elongate the soft and hot plastic. You might try this a bit more often in the beginning as you need to get a feeling for the time you have while doing it. Keep the tweezer in place and wait until the plastic gets hard again. There is not really a control on how exactly your strings will look like, try and error. No hectic at all, you can do this a hundred times - it is better to take care of your safety while doing so.

After it is hard again take your scissor and cut of the pieces you want to use. I actually prepare a lot of different strings to have the choice. You can store them somewhere for further use. Sometimes you get burend places where the clear plastic changes colour - i don't want them at all so cut them away. Only the clear ones.

Now i take a toothpick and some superglue for detailed glueing the cutted parts in place. You can glue them on top of eachother - it is all about your patience. Take care to use only tiny spots of superglue as too much can look nasty with the clear plastic. If you want to use them clear you can get a clear waterfall, like Raffa did here on this base:

If you want your tiny waterfall coloured you got to wait with painting it until the superglue is completly dry. If you don't you'll kill your brush and that is evil. For painting a clear waterfall and make it look wet i can propose the Tamyia Cleah Colour Range, with red you can do great blood effects but there is also blue, orange, green and yellow to do other effects like these one here, for example green and yellow: