Eggs, Sludge, Trees and Rocks

Alien Eggs

More little terrain bits and pieces as part of my Planet Heck terrain project.

I picked up these resin eggs recently.  They were fun to paint.  I didnt stick directly to the colour scheme as defined in the “Alien” movies.  Although the scheme is close, I added a couple of colours to tie them in with the bug figures that I have and to make them look a little less dull.  They are shown above with some face huggers, chestbursters, Xenomorphs and Genestealers.

Jungle Trees

 

I have had these jungle tree models since 3rd edition 40k was released (’98? ’99?) but I never did anything with them until recently.  I always figured that I would paint them.  Seeing as that I have no shortage of toy soldier things to paint that meant that the jungle trees remained untouched for a decade. 

While making up some of the cork based terrain bits for the Planet Heck project I figured that simply using them unpainted would be fine. They are quite bright, but no brighter than aquarium plants or similar.  Anyway, as any regular viewer of Star Trek knows, alien plants are supposed to look bright and fake.  When mixed in with some of the other bits of tree terrain that I have (both weird giant mushroom type things right down to more mundane “real-life” trees) they make for a pleasing effect.

Rocky Outcrops

 

These “rocks” were made with broken up cork tiles.  Although they are a little bland looking, I like the fact that they are quite generic. They can be used to represent an airless moonscape, a canyon on the outskirts of a Wild West town or rocky areas in a jungle etc.  Additionally, if I had started to add foliage etc to them, while they may have looked cuter, their functionality may have suffered as they start to blur the line between “rocks” and “woods”.  Thats a bad thing if the piece is intended to be gamed with.

Sludge Pools

 

The sludge pools above were made from a very old vac-formed crater set that GW released in 1987 or ’88. 1989 maybe?  A primitive ancestor of the Craterscape.  I painted those up in 1996 to match a dark grey terrain set that I put together for Necromunda.  I made a watery effect with several layers of varnish in the pools that still looks pretty good.  Earlier this year I gave the exterior of the pools a quick drybrush of brown to match the Heck terrain.  I think that it improved their look overall.