Jungle Scatter Terrain

As I mentioned in the post with the New Eden ruins, I started working on some scatter terrain. Now, I've never really made any before, so I wanted to make a few as proof of concept before making a whole bunch in case I wasn't happy with the result.

So,I started with a couple of oval bases, and added some coffee grounds to one, and some sand and gravel to the others. I also added some cork bits... after the original base material... Thing #1 I'd do different in the next set. Also the cork is too flat. Thankfully it ends up hidden pretty well in the end.

I started adding flock, and pulling out various bits of plastic foliage, and some pistachio shells which I glued closed and onto plastic stalks. I tried both super glue and hot glue for this. I think the super glue worked better.

In addition to the flock, I added a bunch of other random ground cover material, largely looking to add different textures, but also included a couple twigs to serve as fallen logs.

I dithered a bit about the plastic plants. I strongly considered just leaving the bases as is, but echoing in my head was every mini painter saying you absolutely need to paint your basing material.

So I did. First by priming black....

Then giving it an over spray of white.

This was followed by painting the foliage Craft Smart Hunter Green. Here's thing #2 I'll do differently In the future I'm going to make the bases without the foliage, ground cover only. I'm going to pre-paint all the foliage, priming it Black, then White, then (and this is the really important step) Green. If I had an airbrush I'd use that, but I don't, so it'll be rattle can. Once it's all painted a basic green, I'll go in an tint different plants different colors.

   

In addition to the green, I painted the base 2 different craft browns, and used a combo of the Hunter Green and Lush Foliage to pick out moss and other growths. The pistachio seeds were painted with the same Terracotta I used on the ruins, and some of the Spanish moss got painted with Purple.

And here they are among the ruins.

While not perfect I feel like they served as proof of concept, and provided a couple of important lessons for future pieces.