Making a MINIATURE Enchanted Forest (and painting with Disney colors)

hey i'm narb makes and i've been wanting to make a miniature enchanted forest for a while now so when this week's sponsor reached out to me with these crazy detailed miniatures i knew i had to finally tackle this project [Music] my first stop was at the dollar store where i picked up a bag full of plastic plants and shrubbery these are going to be making up some of the forest undergrowth and bushes around my trees so i took some time to clip them and organize them based on size and appearance making sure to only select plants that would look good in miniature form in the past i've used store-bought laser-cut plants and ferns and i keep saying i want to try making my own so here we go after designing some ferns and other greenery i set to cutting them out of some black poster board mostly so it'd be really hard to film what i'm doing look at that once we pop them out we have little tiny ferns that we can shape and glue down wherever we want one downside to these is they're a bit fragile and can rip off rather easily to remedy that i decided to try another thing i haven't really done before and that's acid etching some brass i cut out a small tester piece and i set about flattening it and spray painted it outside the color here doesn't really matter much but it should be something dark for the next step basic idea for etching is you want to develop some sort of resist it's a fancy way of saying something to block the acid in parts of the brass you could do this with toner paper markers masking tape etc etc if you have a laser engraver you can actually just laser engrave away the spray paint parts that you want the acid to cut laser is too weak to actually cut into the brass but it cleans away the paint just fine [Music] to hold the ferric chloride we're going to be using a plastic container that has a small tube pumping air from the bottom of this holder this agitates the solution and speeds up the process by a lot now fair chloride is a mild acid but wearing gloves saves me a bit of a mess and clean it off later there's not much to look at while it's going and it should be placed somewhere warm to speed up the time it takes for me i put it up in my 3d printing enclosure and set up a little heater with it but even then it took over two hours to etch all the way through the brass when i took it out i used some baking soda to neutralize the acid still on the brass sheet and then just some water to clean the rest off the rest of the acid can be stored and reused many times honestly this isn't bad for the first attempt at this i'll definitely have to come up with more designs in the future now these are very sturdy plants compared to the paper counterparts but i can see why they're expensive to buy the process is a lot more involved than the paper ones all right with the plants figured out let's make some trees and when i said i wanted trees i mostly wanted to improve on my previous attempt at making these i wanted big lush old forest trees with detailed trunks in order to accomplish that we're going to be sculpting them out of polymer clay which i've also never used before you're seeing a bit of a trend here [Music] anyways i start with a wire armature so the clay has something to stick to this is just a set of thin gauge wires twisted around and split off at various places after the clay is properly kneaded i roll out little sausages to go around the trunk and make sure to get some even coverage so that no wire is showing at the bottom and then take various sculpting tools which is really just a bunch of metal sticks with various types of points and carve in some wood-like patterns in the tree this really didn't take much time at all and was rather kind of fun reminds me of playing with play-doh as a kid now the instructions say to shove this in the oven for 15 minutes on low heat to cure but i don't think my wife would appreciate the noxious fumes this releases in our food oven so this old toaster oven will have to do after i did this tinu from craftastrophe told me that i probably need to cover the sculpt in some foil so it doesn't burn like this thanks tina that's an excellent idea but yeah i think they came out pretty good my second one wasn't even as burned up at the top thanks to the aluminum foil to give these trees a bit more height and some finer branches i went outside and actually got some branches these are from a pine hedge which seems to have lots of splits in the wood a smaller scale which is perfect for miniatures now these essentially dry twigs are a lot more brittle than the wire armature i made so to give them a bit of strength i tied a bunch of them together and glued them to form these sort of stick bunches they get grafted onto the bigger trunks where the wire connections end i mostly used super glue as well some uv resin to make the connections a bit stronger and then plastered on some filler to hide the seams while we wait for the plaster to dry let's take a moment to look at the minis that inspired this project to begin with they're from this week's sponsor which song miniatures if you want more ways to challenge your players wrap up adventure arcs and show your dungeons and dragons world it's not just kobolds and goblins and this type of boss encounter is right for you get that epic and terrifying dark souls or eldon ring type boss battle for your role playing game this kickstarter campaign is focused on making the most hyper detailed miniatures so that painting them leaves you with a shelf-worthy masterpiece that you could admire even when you don't get much gameplay use from it and the value is insane only three dollars for the over six inch tall lord of the grove and six dollars for the extra lieutenants and all unlock stretch goals each miniature comes pre-supported and they come with full stat sheets for use in d d fifth edition as well as a faction page for use in if worlds collide which is an open source skirmish war game i've been developing if you want to take a closer look at these and grab them for yourself i encourage you to check out the link in the description you won't regret it [Music] in order to help me come up with a good paint scheme for the forest itself i wanted to make sure it would be cohesive and go well with the miniatures that would inhabit it to decide the color palette i'm going to be leaning on an idea that one of you commented on for my rapunzel tower build and that is using disney movies as an inspiration for color they've got teams of talented artists and colorists that work tirelessly to get the best color palette for their movies so why not leverage some of that in our own art for this i took inspiration from the great map paintings of the movie pocahontas this is a classic and if you come through the footage you'll notice something odd there's rarely a scene where you see a brown bark and idyllic forest colors it's all leaning into dark blues purples and everything is sort of tinted in this otherworldly color i exported a screen grab from the movie and imported it into the website coolers which gives you a nice palette to work from after printing it out i set about color matching my own paints to match the painted upload of the grove with this palette the warm reddish brown and slightly purplish tan are going to be dominant on the miniature but almost non-existent in the environment which will primarily be blue green and teal like in the scene as i was painting these i also got an idea forming why would this mythical centaur lord be guarding the forest well we need some sort of mcguffin that adventurers would be seeking to exploit that's what i thought of the fountain of life this would be some sort of magical statue with cupped hands which when do forms in this particular clearing harnesses the essence of the forest magic into a potent magical elixir i kip bashed this model digitally from several free sculpts including this bust of sappho by emmanuel villanes sorry for butchering that i added various organic shapes such as mushrooms flowers and leaves to make this look like an overgrown statue in the woods and then set about printing it in resin and i don't think i supported the head properly since i had a bit of tearing here but this works in our favor since i can carve away some of these sections and fill in some gaps to make it look like the statue's been worn away by time and chipped away doing a very exaggerated paint scheme on this because it's going to be sort of a focal point of any layout an objective to seek out that means very strong contrast from dark to light as if the clearing opens up just enough to shine a spotlight on it from above to get this effect i used some very diluted washes to tint all the crevices dark while keeping the flatter surfaces almost pristine white while planning out the bases for the trees i had envisioned the statue being integrated into one of them but i wasn't quite sure how it was all going to come together [Music] so i wouldn't be paralyzed by making a decision i decided to just continue on and cut out several bases out of this final tile which i end up using a lot of in my dioramas and terrain i like it since it's flexible and waterproof so any plastering goops i add don't soak into it as much as they would on something like mdf or wood in order to have something to place on the bases other than the trees and bushes i treated myself to some new woodland scenics rock molds i've made some similar rock molds before by just using crumpled up aluminum foil but the detail you get from the molds like this is unmatched they're a bit pricey but i plan on getting a lot of use out of them for my project so i felt it was worth it once dry i'm able to break apart the rocks and arrange them onto my bases in a natural way just with a bit of hot glue here and there to tack them in while i work with them and a layer of pva and more plaster filler to really hold them in long term once the plaster was mostly dry it was time to unify all the materials a bit more i took all my existing work and primed it in a rather strange color teal remember our pocahontas color palette well this would make a great base for the following layers i thought [Music] once primed i gave the ground a bit more character by adding pva glue and flocking with coconut fibers from the pet store this will get slightly tinted later but still maintain its natural look so we didn't cover it with the initial layer of thick primer it's now time to make the tree canopy and for the size of the trees i'm making i wanted a rather cheap and bulk solution buying flock and foliage from hobby stores is quite expensive and while it looks great it's not always a good solution for large projects like this so let's try making our own clumpy foam flock i have some of this bendy foam type packing material i think it's the same stuff that pool noodles are made from i cubed up a bunch of it and tossed it in a coffee grinder this actually ends up looking really good as fluffy foliage let's see how it goes on the tree with some spray adhesive i can dip the branches in and get some good volume it takes a lot of back and forth to build up more and more of it but the process is worth it it seems like i vastly underestimated how much i would need so it's time to cut some more so it would fill out all of my trees once that was done you can see here i'm testing up the layout a bit i even repurposed some older trees i've made to serve as sort of saplings and give some variety nature isn't going to look all the same so you always need to introduce some sort of variation i realized at this point that gluing the trees down wouldn't really cut it so i ended up drilling some holes from underneath and fixing the trunks in place with some longer screws that way you can pick these up by the tree trunks and it won't come loose i took care to blend in the roots with more coconut fibers and pva glue here making it all look like it belonged now that the trees were in place i did another pass at some highlights with an airbrush so blend in coconut fibers the trees and rocks a bit better and to keep all the foam from shedding like crazy i did a pass of spray sealing everything with some watered down pva glue after this dries overnight it's going to give everything a lot more strength planning on adding a lot more fine flocks to the top of the trees but in order to get a better overall color on the leaves i took these outside and sprayed various vibrant colors on the black foam to give it more character [Music] to flock the highlights i'm using more spray adhesive this time the stronger stuff and dusting various colors of sawdust lock and foam flock from above with a sieve this gives a very natural looking highlight to the trees and makes a huge mess to boot more spray sealing to keep these from shedding and on we go do you remember those plants we worked on at the very start of the video well time to bring those out and place them on once again variety is the name of the game here i added all the different types of paper plants plastic plants and even the brassast vines it was a great way of making this look like a fantastical magical forest that it is i even took the time to add these plants into the fountain of life statue i love how this is turning out so far but i did want to mute down some of the bright plasticky colors so i sprayed everything with a dark blue craft paint through the airbrush this slightly desaturates and tints everything to look more consistent as the paint isn't very opaque [Music] finally to give the fountain of life its life-giving waters i ironically poured in some extremely toxic uv resin and cured it with a uv light probably not advisable to drink this and i doubt it will give you any magical powers but hitting that subscribe button probably will and with that i want to thank you for tuning into this video and hope you enjoy these finished shots of the whole project i'll catch you on the next one see you around [Music] you

Channel: Knarb Makes

Views: 76,256

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Id: -EWgx2mO4lU

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022