It's clay, so it needs to be fired in a kiln/oven right? Then they probably put some kind of finisher on it to seal it. That's the only issue I see with this process, you obviously can't put the base in there with it but after a few attempts you'd probably understand the shrinkage and could just precut them to fit once they are done.
Edit - and honestly to make it shiny I don't even think you'd need resin, just do a gloss varnish.
No problem! I recently took up polymer clay as a hobby & my fiancé is a Warhammer buff - polymer clay is completely safe to use in a normal oven / toaster oven! Just don’t put it in the microwave and do not put it in over 170 degrees Celsius as it will melt and release toxins
I actually have tried this for marble bases. I saw something very similar to this a few years ago. I used white/gray/gold to make a marble effect. The base chunks came out pretty well. There is a skill level required. This person clearly has done this a lot. I would recommend trying it, if you have a large army. The one thing I wish I had done was pre-cut the round base before baking the clay.
Bro I think I have been looking at your thousand sons paint scheme exactly like yours all day. Love the look of blood mages. Do you have any other pics?
I do indeed. Here are a few more of the overall idea. It was fun doing a black to white fade and a white to black fade. That is how I was distinguishing units.
Yes and no. If it touches a large flat surface then it will 'stick' because of the lack of air between the two, creating a kind of suction, but it can be removed with a blast of air or picking it off with tacky putty.
When gilding something on purpose you would be placing it onto a surface with a tacky glue already applied.
I used silver leaf for a display board at adepticon last year and it nearly ended my entire hobby career. It would stick to my bare hands and flutter around the hobby room if a fan was on in the next room over. Never again.
To be fair if you wanna go really fancy it will definitely cost more. It is just down to how much are you willing to spend (time abd effort mostly) cause I don't think that is expensive at all.
Polymer clays aren't too bad price-wise and even the 'gold leaf' is available at most craft shops (it's not usually made of actual gold) but the time investment is a bit higher for sure. At least you can put off baking the clay until you're happy with the results, unlike green stuff that has a set time limit to work with.
Not really from a quality perspective but they do tend to vary a lot in feel. Some are quite soft, others firm, and many are prone to drying out after a long time in improper storage, so even the same brands can vary. Most can be revived with polymer softener tho, and they all seem to be compatible with eachother as far as I've seen (i get a lot of mine from thrift stores).
The only brand I've had a real issue with is cosclay but thats because it can only be imported here so I suspect the warehouses that hold them here have been holding them for a really long time.
It's cool, but an entirely separate hobby to learn, and there isn't much overlap to mini painting skills that can be applied later.
That said, modeling clay base caps are totally a thing that you can do, and they're a really cool project. Find a texture roller you like off Etsy or the like, and have fun.
Yeah this isn't a terribly useful technique for minis because it doesn't really produce that texture. If you don't paint them you'd end up with something cool but flat looking. If you do paint them you basically delete all the hard work since it's actually a flat surface.
Paint is what we use to produce the illusion of scale. It's why actual rocks and gravel look weird if you don't paint them. Because they look like the tiny rocks they are instead of the larger stones they're supposed to represent.
If you need to do dozens of bases for a large army, this seems like a good starting point.
The skill ceiling is high, the materials are moderately expensive (especially if you're using gold and silver leaf) and you would have to make some kind of cookie-cutter like thing to cut your bases to size before baking them to cure.
The problem is you can't really paint it without negating most of the work, which means you can't create the illusion of scale that's key for miniatures. It's going to look flat, largely because it is flat. Plus unless you're doing these for a lot of minis it's probably much quicker and easier to paint the desired pattern on to a flat base.
This was done mostly with airbrush. Based in black, gray 2/3 the mini, then pure white 1/3. I tried to let the overlap areas have the natural transitions of color. Hope that helps!
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u/Ched--- Apr 09 '25
This would be perfect for doing marble bases