So after the initial experiment making a Tyranid Capillary Tower i decided to have another go, further refining my technique.
Firstly, base your quartered polystyrene cone. This time i used a pre cut wooden disc as the base (which looks much neater!).
To help create the effect of broken ground around the base of the tower, i glued some foam pieces around the base to assist with the effect.
Once they dry, start cutting the ridges into the back of the styrene piece. I roughly measured out the spaces to create a roughly uniform look. These will just provide a guide for when the clay is applied later on.
Once the ridges are cut in, take some air-drying clay and begin to coat the back of the tower. Make sure you coat the tower in a reasonable thickness of clay as this will help you cut details into it later.
Coat the foam at the base of the tower in clay as well to create the broken ground effect.
Once your happy with the shape of the clay, carefully cut some ridges into it, following the cuts made in the styrene foam earlier. For this i used the back of a kitchen knife.
The clay will take roughly 24hrs to dry and i recommend waiting before moving to to the next step, otherwise you'll end up putting finger marks in places you really don't want them!
Once your happy the clays dry, take some basic polyfilla (or similar). This needs to be applied to the front of the tower. I watered down the filla with water in a 50/50 mix. This obviously makes it more runny, and will hopefully give the filla a more organic look when dry. Try to cover every surface of the styrene so it doesnt melt when you spray it later on!
Give this an hour of two to dry before adding some texture to the front of the tower with some medical gauze soaked in PVA glue. At this stage you'll also need to add some 'spikes' in the front of the tower. You could use anything for this, as long as its vaguely pointy!
This is great at creating an organic feel. Make sure you stretch the gauze between different sections of the tower. Base the tower with some sand, and your build is complete!
Give it another 24hrs to let the gauze dry and get painting! I went with the same colour scheme i used for the rest of my 'Nid army, but you might want to go for something more neutral.
After painting and varnishing i added one final touch - slime! I did this using a hot glue gun, stringing the glue between different sections of the tower. Do this after varnishing, otherwise the glue would go cloudy with the vanish.
I couldn't decide whether to go with spots or stripes on the back of the towers - what do you guys think?
Scale shot with the Crusher Fex!
A close up of the 'slime'. This was really easy to achieve, i think it really makes the towers pop!
There we have it. There's another 7 Towers at different points of construction on the table at the moment, as well as the Spore Chimney which is now half painted. More on the terra-forming efforts of the Hive Mind soon...
The Gungrave
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