im looking to build me a dio, and i think i have it all worked out. exept fot the grass. anyone know how to do cheap, real-looking grass? out of houshold items would be great!!! um,...im a n00b at modeling, and i dont exactly have any greenbacks to spend yet, so...
thanks in advance!

For taller grass I use jute twine, the type of stuff you might tie up old newspapers with.

I take a long piece of it. From one end, about an inch up, put a drop or two of crazy glue, and wind it tight. When it's dry, cut the twine right through the crazy glue. Then hold the glued end and unwind all of the little fibers to straighten them out. Eventually, you'll figure out a little assembly line procedure to speed up the process, but that's, in essence, what I do. I can easily do hundreds of these on a day when I don't feel like modeling....like when watching a football game, etc. Then I have a bunch of tufts of grass when I need them. Best of all, if you want dry grass, you don't even have to paint the stuff. But if you want green, I "plant" the tufts into some styrofoam, airbrush them, and then put them into whatver base I'm using later. My bases are almost always pink polystryene foam, so it's easy to plant the grass into the bases.

Hope this helps.

Rob

Here's one feature on grass from string. I used it pretty effectivly.
Grass

wow thts cool man. never thought of tht i always used a much harder way. thks ill be sure ta use tht in my next dio.

Ola Sam

What also is a cheap and convincing way to make grass is using the cheap soft bristled brushes you find in the DIY shops. You will often find them in the bargain bin. Usually they have them in quite a big diameter and will only cost you a couple of dollars. One brush should give you plenty of grass.
Here and example of how that looks. The green shorter grass is from Heki... Costs quite a lot but looks pretty good. But the longer grass is done with the cheap brush bristles.



And in another older dio

And the grass is also growing along the edge of the shed


Yes it takes a lot of time to put it in position. What I basically did was take some of the bristles apart beteween my fingers, Cut them off to desired length, Rolled it a bit between my fingers so the get some space between them. After that I dipped them in some whiteglue and pressed them directly on to the base. If you don't roll them between your fingers then it looks a bit like someone dug in a big brush in the ground. By rolling it between the fingers you will make it look more natural.

I hope you can do something with this information

With friendly greetz

Robert Blokker