I will probably use this vignette for a campaign or FOM soon, not sure which yet. Just wanted to share some pics of the coming together of the base for the figure and to show how I plan such projects. The same principle applies for even complex dios. All comments welcome.

First I start with a rough sketch of how I want the base to look.

Once I am fairly satisfied, I begin by gathering materials, in this case, since I am after a bombed out room of a concrete building, and the scale is fairly large, I like to use sheetroock that has had the paper removed on both sides. A warm water soak and some elbow grease does the trick.

Then using my sketch as a guide, I do a mock up of the scene that I want to portray as seen below.



Once I am satisfied with this, I measure the mock up and cut the base, in this case particle board.

I then take a picture so I can use it for reference when permanently attaching the material to my base, pretty standard stuff.

Now the fun part! Once I am ready to transfer everything over, I give the surface of the base a good coat of straight white glue.

I then begin placing the smaller pieces on first, followed by the larger ones until I get it just right. The larger upright wall portions in the rear of the base get some extra white glue.

Next I spray this with a diluted mix of water and white glue and everything is set to dry overnight.

Once set, I again give it another spray with the white glue mixture and allow this to dry. I the seal the material to the outer edges of the base by tooling in a bead of 5 minute epoxy all the way around.

After this dries, I give it a light coat of spray adhesive and sprinkle some fine ground sheetrock and sheetrock sanding dust. I apply this in select areas only.

The rebar pins are made from appropriately gauged wire. The notches are made by gently squeezing the wire cutters in incremental distances the length of the wire.

I wanted to have some really gnarled bent rebar so you want to make all of your bends first before you indent it, else the wire will break or bend straight at the indentions.

I drilled some micro holes in the locations I wanted the rebar, including through the chunks of "concrete" still attached. A small drop of CA into the holes and the rebar is ready to insert.

I then attached small pieces of shaved gnarled wood. You don't have to get too neat here. I just use a sharp utility knife and a 1 x 6 pine board and shave off appropriately scaled pieces. You will be surprised how realistic you can make splintered boards using this technique.

It is difficult to see, but there is some twisted gnarled sheet metal in the scene also. I make this by taking a length of solder and laying it on the concrete floor. Use a torch to melt it and the flat of a hammer to mash it out. Once cooled, you have some really gnarly, damaged looking metal that can be twisted and formed to the desired shape to suit your needs.

Here are the results so far.





Next, I sparayed the whole assembly with a coat of flat black for shadow and then light grey. Once dried, I gave another shot of flat black to areas of the walls that I wanted to look "burned".

Then I detail painted all of the bits of wood and metal and rebar with varying shades, drybrushing lighter with each step. Rust and some silver for the metal, some browns and reds for the wood ( I added the reds to flat parts of the wood only to represent some paint still present) and black, rust and steel to the rebar.

A note about rebar, or concrete reinforcing rod. For those who have been around or worked with it, you know that it rusts something fierce!! I have torn out concrete with rebar and even buried in the walls, if it wasn't rusty going in, it is definitely rusty when it comes out!! Alot of elemental occurences would cause this but most likely, just the moisture in the concrete when it is poured is the major suspect. So make sure if you model rebar to rust it up!!

Finally, I adressed the concrete itself by drybrushing some earth shades and many different greys to eventually wind up with this.








All that is left is to add the figure (when it is done) and weather with some pastels.
Oh yeah, the propaganda poster is suitable for the scene. It is for the Volksturm, a Nazi attempt to call on the last reserves. The caption translates to "Freedom for Life".

The base will get some nice wood trim applied and one of our custom acrylic cases. This will be a belated Christmas present for my older brother who is a wonderful modeler and figure painter in his own rite and used to build me such when I was a kid. It is time for me to repay the favor!!

I am trying to get him back into modeling but he know paints digital aircraft. He did the plane for the new movie Flight of the Phoenix so I know it keeps him busy but I will keep twisting his arm to join the big-A.

For those that may be hesitant about building a base for your figures, don't be!! It adds so much more to the appearance and really is not that hard even for beginners. There is a wealth of knowledge here on Armorama and I hope I help by giving back a little.

Thanks for looking and enjoy!!

wow, that looks very nice, thanks for the article you wrote with it!

Good work Steve and thanks for the tips and how to's look forward to seeing the end result.

Dave

Thanks Steve: Looks great, lots of flexability with this method, and you make it looks so easy! You've given me some good ideas for a future Dio.


Bruce

Well Dear Steve i want to thank u for the nice article sbs u shared with us and to say that i like ur way of doing this procedure and also the way u describe it

What i wanted to point u at is a question i have and a possible correction, and that has to do not with ur high modelling skills but for the real picture that u want to represent .

Are all the ruin part u show on the vigniette from roof section that was bombed and brought down, or they represent als some surrounding wall of the building .

Since u say that is a room of a bombed concerete building i d had to add this.

if its an internal room, there is no way that the surrounding wall would have that much thickness or that they would be made from solid concrete. They d be probably be from brick or other material depending on the era.

If some of the ruins present outter surrounding walls and they would have rebar inside they d usually have the net style not the bar one, but even if it was for the bar style they would also appear in closest distances

Then usually when a roofes comes down the first very heavy concrete pieces fall down and the cloud mass from smaller particles and pieces like spackle and other surface materials would fall over these so the coat of fine and very rubble should be over the first big pieces. I have done some photo studying over damaged building pictures and also been building (as an amateur) many years and keeping in touch with pro's i have been teached the techniques and the philosophy .

just wanted to share some thoughts with u cause i see that u re doing a really good job that could help many hesitants to start some building work - even a ruined one to add interest in their dios.

Have a nice year and keep the good work there

Costas

If all the ruin parts are from the supposed bombed roof then the rebar pins would have been in a shorted distance one from the other and also there should usually be some other crossed parts of rebar wire.

Steve

Thanks for a great article with pics. it has given me a few ideas for my next dio involving rubble.

Brian

Good and useful information, thanks a lot.

Regards.
Cagin.

hi Steve,
very nice work.great article and photos.thanks a lot.
happy new year.

Well, they can be all of the above. Basically, what I was trying to simulate was a narrow room that may have jutted out from the main structure. Say, a bathroom or other such room that would be small but still have bearing walls which would have rebar.







The bar is spaced approx. 16" on center to scale.





Good points all. However, since the wood trim I will be applying to the base will hide the edge, we have no idea how deep the rubble actually is. In theory, the roof structure will be buried underneath here with some wall pieces on top covering this. The wood we see is remnants from the roof structure. Being a former contractor I too have done some demo work, although I agree that my base may not totally accurately represent a real world structure.




I appreciate that and all of your points are well taken. Thanks!





Probably right there.

You are spot on right there Goose. However, I am not quite finished yet. It will get some dusting with pastels after I add the figure and I know it is hard to tell from the pics, but there is some fine particle material over the top of most of the rubble. I don't want it to be too dusty though because I am going to add, of all things, SNOW!!!! Not too much, just enough to represent spring thawing since the figure that will occupy the base has some light cold weather attire over his uniform.


Thanks Again all for the comments and suggestions! They are truly appreciated!!

Added my light snowfall this evening. I didn't want to get to heavy and hide the detail. Enjoy!

That looks great Steve.

Thanks for the how to. Very usefull

Thanks!

There was some speculation earlier that the walls may have been too thick.

Considering that this base is for a 120mm figure, let's break it down a bit.

Assuming a man at 6 feet tall, our 120mm figure easily breaks down to 20mm per foot. The walls of the base are made from 1/2" sheetrock which equates to 12.7mm, which for the scale we are representing would equal about 8 inches thick, perfect for foundation walls and footings.

Now I would agree that for 1/35th scale this would be massive! But sheetrock has lots of uses in that scale too.

When you strip off the paper, you get a really pock marked appearance which makes great slabs of concrete for roads, and well used pavement of any kind and you can crumble as fine as you like for concrete rubble.

Nice looking base! I hope to see an article and the final finished product with the figure! Nice job

I think what you've done looks fantastic Steve! I can't wait to see it with the figure...please continue to share...and thanks for the how-to!

Excellent work! How did you do the snow in this one? Baking soda? And how did you avoid getting it all slushy?

Thanks, Yes it is baking soda, sifted from above with a crank style flour sifter, works great!!
I use super hold hairspray in a pump to set the bking soda after sifting with no white glue to keep it from getting "slushy".

Looking very good again :-)
Chers.
Cagin