Alien plants

Packman and Axon hang out in the Greenhouse after successfully completing their last mission. As they didn't go around the whole room I decided to post about the scenery I used.

The terrain I used was a mix of 3D-printed models and homemade scenery. I'll kick off with the 3D prints first, using Axon for scale.

Shockingly, none of these came from Etsy. I found them all on Amazon, starting with this collection of alien spores by EnderToys. While I have issues with EnderToys' stuff — they have print lines on them that you could use as sandpaper — they were only $10 for some chunky scenery. Of the six pieces in the set, I got these three painted in no time. The other three are primed and will be painted up at some point.

I picked up this set, called Fantastic Flora, back in August last year and got them partially painted until I gave up and did something more interesting instead. They're also by EnderToys but have a better print quality. The two larger models were finished off first, and then I did the two smaller ones over the next couple of days in between making the homemade scenery. Why I stuck these to bases is beyond me and I really wish I hadn't done that.

This set of Mystic Mushrooms was the easiest to paint, so they were slammed out first. There should be four but I'm buggered if I know where the other one is, so we're stuck with three. These should work in fantasy or sci-fi and they turned out looking pretty good given they're just painted with Forest Flesh and Purple.

So, onto the homemade stuff. This was inspired by Keith's scenery he used for one of his excellent  Hubbard's World Star Trek adventures and was made with stuff I had lying around and some cheap aquarium plants from Walmart and Amazon.

I kicked off with a bunch of 3" wooden discs, painting them with black craft paint and then giving them a coat of thinned matte varnish. Once dry I used some Crayola modelling putty to add some bumps and contours, and then after leaving it for about 30 minutes to dry I painted over the putty with matte Mod Podge to seal it.

To get the texture, I just plastered Vallejo Black Lava paste over all the bases. They were put to one side to dry, which takes a couple of hours. In the meantime, I set about snipping the aquarium plants off their bases and cutting up the longer ones to make them shorter. I used cheap ones from Walmart: a 3-pack of three types, a few individual plants, and three of these tall green ones. Altogether the aquarium plants probably cost a total of $12, and I also used some from this bag I got from Amazon.

Once the paste was dry I painted all the bases Violet, washed them with Druchii Violet, drybrushed them with Purple, Deep Sky Blue and a touch of Pink, and gave the base edges a once-over with black craft paint.

Then it was just a case of sticking the plants into the putty. I started off with the larger ones, using a pointed sculpting tool to make the holes and superglue to hold them in place. Then I added the smaller cut-up sections, trying to vary the colours and placement as much as I could. It didn't take long to get them done and I was very happy with how they looked. As the putty is much softer than greenstuff or Milliput, making the holes was a doddle.

I switched to Packman for this photo because he shows up better. These three were made the same way, only I piled the putty up into much taller mounds so I could use bigger leaves. I think the central plant was picked up at Dollar Tree, and I cannot remember where I got the larger leaves I used on the left one. After adding a ton of small plants around their edges, the final touches were some alien tufts and a few stones.

The homemade scenery came out looking really well, and apart from having to wait for the putty and lava paste to dry, they were done pretty fast. I've got a lot of bits of plants left over, so I'll have to knock up some more at some point.