Hobby: Thoughts on Basing

Hey there dice rollers:

It's your friendly neighborhood painting guy. This will be my first column on this sight and admittedly I don't have much experience with this kind of thing so bear with me. Today we are going to discuss some of the finer points of basing.

It is this humble modeler's opinion basing makes or breaks a model in it's finished state. A good base can make an average model look good and a good model look amazing. The flip side of that is a bad base can kill a models look in the same fashion. There are lots of things that you can do right and lots of things you can do wrong. I am going to discuss a few of both here.

Things not to do:

1. Do not limit the options for a base just because it is in the same army as other models with there bases already done. Repeating the same technique over and over will give a fielded army a cookie cutter look on the table top. Also having a uniform base with varied detail work on seperate units allows the army to look good on verying types of battlefields.

2. Do not over detail a base. To many things going on at one time gives the model an overdone look. This takes away from the paint job and wastes time. I'm not sure about anyone else but my hobby takes a great deal of time and wasting it not only keeps me from getting more done but also takes away from other things you may need to be doing.

3.Stay away from color coding the verticle sides of the base in order to separate different units. Having models with blue or yellow or red verticle bases makes your army look like a clown painted it when it is fielded. You can mark the bottom side of the bases with numbers or even colors in order to separate them.

Things to do:

1. More than one level to your bases will make them pop. Weather you are using green flock or sand adding static grass or some sort of stone in order to give the base a three deminsional look will bring the paint job on your models.

2. A uniform type of base is needed in order to make a completed army look good on the table top. Be careful to avoid making them all the same as we talked about before. Keep the details veried but all of your units need to look like they should be on the same battlefield.

3. Maybe the most important piece of advice I can give is the one the fewest people do when basing there models. Paint the base before you detail it. If you are using sand then paint the base beige before gluing the sand down. If its flock then paint it green and so on. This will take away the look of black or gray from showing through your basing and taking away from the work you are doing.

Next time we will dicuss how using washes can help and hurt your models look. Anyway, I hope these tips help you even if it is only a little. Until next time keep painting and basing and enjoy our great hobby. Pass it on to someone else if givin the chance.

Till next time
The Fiberglass Demon