Trees Please! (photobase finished 10/01)

[matrixone]

Here are two in-progress pics of my new photobase I am building.

This first pic is of some of the cheap ''bottle brush'' trees I bought a while back, I can't remember what brand these are but I would not buy them again. Right now I can't afford to throw these out and buy other trees so I tried brushing on some white glue to the trees and sprinkling on some Woodland Scenics green fine turf and it made a huge difference in their appearence.
On the left is after the fine turf was added to the trees, on the right is how they looked as I pulled them out of the bag.


The pic below is the photobase itself after the ground work was added to it and some darker patches of brown sprayed on it, almost all of this base will be covered in fine turf so those dark brown spots will not be very visable, I will be adding about 35-40 trees on one side of the base.
The funny looking kidney shaped thing is something I bought from a Walthers catalog earlier this year...its supposed to be a rock outcropping, it looks bad from above but at scale ground level it looks okay. I will be using the fine turf to blend it in with the base.
This photobase will be usable from three different angles and be usable with aircraft and armor models...well thats what I hope anyway!


Matrixone

[Gondor]

I watch with interest.

Gondor

[ChernayaAkula]

Whoa! What a difference! No comparison, really. They look so much better and much more convincing now!

It also helps that they look less perfectly triangular or cone-shaped now. Not even Christmas trees look like that and they're bred to have that cone shape.

[matrixone]

Thank you Gondor and ChernayaAkula.
I just tried a couple test pics of the photobase as it looks now with the grass on the base and a mock-up of a few of the trees I plan to use. The trees will look okay but the grass looks terrible, its too uniform looking and looks more like a golf coarse instead of a field airstrip. Part of the problem is the ground is a little too smooth, I did not have enough paper mache and tried to stretch it by adding a little too much water to the mix, after it dried it flattened out. A lot.
Tomorrow I will look at it again under full daylight (it was getting dark when I took the test pics) and see what needs to be done to make this thing look better than it does now. Adding all 40 trees will help a great deal too.

Matrixone

[puddingwrestler]

Ah, the dreaded cheap bottle brush tree... they can always be improved.
Have you tried using dfferent shades of turf mixed together to give some variation? Also worth using lightere turf higher up the tree. Also worth trimming things a bit so the outline is a bit more uneven and natural.
For absolute realism, the ground beneath needs to be carpeted in dead pine needles; but I'm not sure how you would make those. Short lengths of Woodland Scenic's field grass (the long stuff you use for reeds) or the cheaper alternative would be to use short lengths of unraveled sisal twine in it's natural brown colour (it also comes in green since it's used for gardening) I guess.

Have you tried making your own trees? Okay, it can be tedious, but it'd come out cheaper if you are cash-strapped.

[matrixone]

This photobase is now finished, here are some test pics of it. These are rather poor pictures but it has been very dark and overcast here the entire day...not good conditions for taking pictures of scale models.

This first test pic is taken from the front and shows the treeline, after looking at this pic I decided a new backdrop with trees painted on it will be needed to get the most out of this backdrop, it is too bright looking behind the trees to look very much like the edge a forest.


This pic was taken from the left side of the photobase, the Me 262 in this pic and the one above is the old 1/48 scale Monogram Me 262.


Here is another pic taken from the left side, the Me 262 in this pic is in 1/72 scale.


Matrixone

[matrixone]

Thanks for those suggestions Puddingwrestler.
I used a mixture of Heki ready made trees and those bottle brush trees on the photobase. Yes I did use slightly different shades of green fine turf on the trees I reworked, but it may not be very visable in the pics I just posted because of the dark conditions when these pics were taken.
I already had the trees on hand when this new photobase was started and needed to either use them or throw them out, making my own trees would have been better but not sure if I would have had all the things needed to make them. Before my job ended I did buy one of those ''Supertree'' starter kits from Scenic Express but they are not for making pine trees like I wanted for this photobase.
The worst problem I had was not having enough paper mache for the ground work and had to thin it to get enough to cover the photobase, the ground does not have the texture I wanted and is too smooth looking. On my next photobase that I will make I will be sure to have a thicker mixture of the paper mache so it won't flatten out as much like what just happened with this one.

Matrixone

[puddingwrestler]

Have you tried polystyrene sheet ground work? It's amazingly easy to shape with sand paper, veyr light, and often free. You'd then need to cover it with plaster or papier mache, but it makes an excellent base.

[matrixone]

No, I have not yet tried polystyrene sheet. Where I live the only craft store that was in my area went O.O.B. over a year ago so I would not know where to source polystyrene sheets, and the same goes for the large sheets of foamboard I like using for painting backdrops since the craft store was the place I bought them from.
This photobase was made on the cheap, the thin plywood I used for the base was going to be thrown out from my old job and I saved it and took it home, the same goes for the 2 x 4's I used for the framework...they cost me nothing, the major expense for this photobase was the trees, many of the trees I used were ready made trees by Heki. The paper mache and fine turf were leftovers from photobases I made a few years ago so I did not have to buy them recently.

Matrixone

[puddingwrestler]

Just about everywhere apart from Australia, high density blue or pink polystyrene is used for house insulation - I expect you can find it by dustbin diving around building sites...
There's also a lot of low density white used to package electronics. The shapes can be odd, but you can often cut them down to something useful.

[Gondor]

Interesting to see your Me 262 with a pair of X-4's hanging from it. Did you rob the X-4's from another kit or did you get them from a shop, if so where?

Gondor

[matrixone]

Thanks Puddingwrestler for the inforamation on the polystyrene sheets, there are several building supply shops around here.

Gondor,
The X-4's seen on the Me 262 came from the Amtech Ta 183 kit, the Ta 183 kit comes with four X-4 missiles.
If you would need some X-4's in 1/72 scale a good source for them is the Revell 1/72 scale Me P 1101 Nightfighter kit. DML/Dragon also made this same kit.
I have three 1/48 scale Dragon Fw 190D-12 kits and plan to make at least one of these as a bomber killer fitted with two X-4's.

Matrixone

[Gondor]

Matrixone I have the Dragon ME P 1101 which only has the two missiles, I was hoping that someone was producing them other than as part of a kit.

Gondor

[matrixone]

Gondor,
You are right about the Me P 1101 Nightfighter kit only having two X-4's in it, it was the day fighter version that had four of the X-4's.

I have never heard of any X-4's being available seperately, it would be a good idea though, 1/48 scale and 1/32 scale would be good sellers.

Matrixone

[rickshaw]

If you're looking for more realistic looking "rocky outcrops" I'd recommend using chunks of pine bark.  Downunder, its sold as a garden cover as an alternative to bare soil (which evaporates water too quickly).  Its available in gardening/hardware stores.  What you need to do is look for the larger chunks.  I used to use it in wargaming for cliff edges, etc and it looks amazingly lifelike.  Its also a hell of a lot cheaper than the alternative cork bark which Woodland Scenics sells at high prices for the same job.