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Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 29 Mar 2007, 18:42
by bark
hi all out there in the woods,

i want to show you all how to do some nice treekin from scratch.
as i play a forestspirit army i have the need to include some treekin (9 at the moment), but as i don´t like the gw ones i had to think about some alternatives.

as there are some big woods outside my house i went for a short stroll and found what i needed, lots of different sized dry twigs (but never ever take one from a living tree, you could never know.........),
with those i decided to built my treekin. this is also ok with the fluff for them, as they are described as dead trees animated by some spirits.

make sure that you collect different thicknesses of twigs, this will help to give a more natural look to your treekin.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin001.jpg

here are some of my used tools

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin005.jpg

i wanted to give them a similar look as those made by gw, so i went for some roughly manshaped forms.
i used a drill to pin all those different twigs togther and glued it with a 2partepoxyglue, this should give them some hold.
the red thing (i don´t no the english word is used hold the twigs together while the glue drys)

keep a look on the natural shape of those twigs and how you can use them to enhance the look of your treekin.
i used smaller pieces of wood to create some movement in the limbs by building elbows and knee´s.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin009.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin007.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin006.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... kin008.jpg

then it took quite i while till i get to motivation to go to the next step.
the heads, faces and details.

but this will come in an seperate post.

bark

Posted: 29 Mar 2007, 19:03
by bark
ok, lets proceed with the second part.

for the heads i used greenstuff and modeled roughly shaped heads with a seperate lower jaw.
i used the heads of some needles to create the eyes.

at this stage the heads look like some bigeyed, toothles serpentbeast something..

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed002.jpg#
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed001.jpg

then i added the theeth, i imaged them as wooden splinters that where created during the reforming of the dead wood by the forestspirit.
so i used greenstuff, rolled i out flat and used a knife to cut out triangular shaped pieces, those i glued into the open mouth.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed009.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed010.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed008.jpg

also in this stage i added some greenstuff around the eyes to get rid of those big staring ones.

as the "skin" or better the bark of the face ins´t finished yet, you don´t have to work super clean, it will be covered later with more greenstuff.

to get some details i sculpted some treefungus by adding a litte piece of greenstuff, making it flat on the top an adding some line on the underside with my modelling tool.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed004.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed003.jpg

for more details, little fingers and to get some connection with my dryads i added some left over dryad bits biy drilling holes into the twigs, gluing them in an smoothing the connection with greenstuff.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed007.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed006.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed005.jpg


ok thats part two, tomorrow i´ll post how i´ve done the bark on the heads and some finishing touches.

bark

Posted: 29 Mar 2007, 19:52
by Ardanwen
very nice so far :nod: but 1 thing: how do you make sure that the bark of the twigs doesn't fall off? (now it will be sturdy but it will get looser in time)

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 07:51
by bark
hi,

the problem with the bark is a big one.

after building them i brushed them with thinned pva glue, i hope that this will give a good hold.

i´ll also basecoat them with several thin layers of black spray paint, and after painting is done they´ll get some coats of varnish.

i hope this will work.

bark

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 11:09
by Ardanwen
Ok, good idea :nod:

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 11:20
by DarkMark
I think pinning would have been a good idea, and must say so far you've done rather well. Lookingforward to end result!

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 11:25
by bark
@ darkmark

i did pinning on all those guys, maybe you missed that part in text above.
i realized soon that without pinning it won´t work,

bark

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 14:16
by bark
hi,

as promised, i´ll post some more pics of my work.

more details on for the heads:

to get a better match with the dryads and according to the artwork i added "hair twigs", for this i again used left over dryad bits.
i glued them with superglue and blended them with GS.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed014.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed012.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... d011-1.jpg

and finally here is how i´ve done the texture on the faces.

again i used GS, i put little portions onto the head, smoothed it out with a modeling tool and than used the thin side of it to create the barktexture.
make sure that you make them irregular, so it will look natural.
i also reworked the "eyelid" parts.
i also extended the fresh GS onto the theeth and to the branchhair to blend them into "skin"

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed029.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed026.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o152 ... hed019.jpg

now i´ll basecoat them with a few black layer and then start painting.
i´ll keep you updated, but it might take a while

bark

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 18:28
by -= Racka =-
looking good so far!

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 18:39
by Ryikko
I like the faces a lot! keep it up!

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 21:15
by MortenLarsen
They look really good so far, and they are proberly the cheapest option :lol:

Posted: 30 Mar 2007, 21:20
by Sethayla
Very good! :nod:

Posted: 31 Mar 2007, 12:29
by hal
The teeth are nice 'n sharp. Presumably you did them separately.

Posted: 03 Apr 2007, 12:41
by bark
@ hal

yes i did ´em seperatly, i flattend some GS and then cut out small triangular pieces, those i put into the mouth, afer having hardend i blended them into the face in the same step i did the whole bark texture.

bark

Posted: 03 Apr 2007, 16:27
by JMGraham
Outstanding! You've done a nice job creating dynamic poses and adding interesting little details (fungus, sprites). I'm really looking forward to seeing these painted.

Jim

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 01 Apr 2008, 18:44
by bark

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 01 Apr 2008, 18:48
by bark

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 01 Apr 2008, 18:54
by bark

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 01 Apr 2008, 19:09
by crystalnickel
Wow, these look great, and what a creative idea. I'm very impressed.

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 02 Apr 2008, 01:15
by Beithir Seun
Some very nice models. They're quite similar to my own Treekin, which were also made from Green Stuff and twigs because I hate the GW Treekin models! Great work Bark!!

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 02 Apr 2008, 01:23
by EC was here
These are very very nice. Excellent work.

I will be curious to know how they hold up. In a dry climate, such as where I live I would expect them to quickly become quite brittle. It might pay to store them in a humidor (they'll smell great too :D ).

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 02 Apr 2008, 01:53
by DreamCatcher
Hey I'm the middle of almost the same project. I used some twigs and left over metal parts to build my treekin.
So far I've finished sculpting the first tree kin. I'll post pictures when I'm all done with them.
I must say that i didn't think they were going to look good after your first post but after seing them all made and painted... Great job!
One thing though, you could have blended the limbs with the bodies using a bit more green stuff but hey, they look really good anyway. ;)

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 02 Apr 2008, 03:28
by ampao
AWESOME!! WOW!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

I didnt expect for it to come out this way! Great job!

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 02 Apr 2008, 22:53
by Ryikko
That's absolutely mind-boggling-ly cool!
I'll have to "borrow" the idea if i ever decide to have Treekin... :paranoid:
Kudos to the amazing work

Re: Scratch built Treekin

Posted: 03 Apr 2008, 00:41
by Sethayla
Nice! Very Nice! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

How did you paint the wood? Did it look different painted then the GS so you had to blend them?

-Seth