Big fish, little fish

[Amazon_warrior]

I've been working on this on and off for a while, and I finally made myself finish it. It was a techincal challenge as much as anything else:

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j79/Amazon_warrior/Miniatures/Hippo_last.jpg

I made the bits on the base myself out of putty, and I'm especially pleased with the anemone and the mosaic.

[Sculpta the squig]

I quite like it, it very colourfull and different :) And the sculpted bits on the base look good aswell. However the fish hanging from the plant makes it look a bit like a christmas tree ;)

Squig

[Amazon_warrior]

Lol, I see what you mean! Somehow, in my imagination it looked a lot better! Ah, well, we live and learn, and this was certainly a learning experience.

[thewartoad]

Amazon, the blending looks amazing! I like the colors you chose.

[Frustrated Father]

Lovely colors on this one - betting it grabs a lot of attention on the display shelf.

[waghorn41]

Lovely work but have to agree about the hanging fish. Beautiful colour.

[DeafNala]

G'Morning Amazon,
Very nice piece of work. I like the hanging fish; it makes the scene more 3-D. If you add a few strands of kelp-like grass you might be able to hide the strings. I did up some kelp for an underwater RPG out of plastic shipping strap material [the kind that has a cross grained pattern to it] & styrene sheet plastic cut onto long thin itriangles, heated & shaped [bent] to get a wavy sort of shape.
Reality viewed through imagination adds a certain loveliness to the perspective. Well done, amigo.

[Amazon_warrior]

Thanks everyone! :)

In my imagination, the fish were a shimmering, suspended shoal. In practice, this was a lot harder to achieve that I'd guessed!

[Hinton]

A very beautiful piece. The seahorse is just amazing, I like all of the little sea creatures and the base is great. Excellent work.

[Wren]

I love the way you painted the creature (hippocamp or something I think?) - both the colours and the way you placed them. The crab and mosaic and general sea scene is pretty cool, too. I don't find the fish strings very noticeable in the picture, but probably would be a little distracted by them looking at it in person.

[demonherald]

Great work all round love it.. Interesting to look at nice and bright and just plain different....

perhaps you could bring the fish tighter together more school like and attach them to each other by fin nose tail etc.. not that it would make that much difference still works..

[Amazon_warrior]

I was wondering whether I should have suspended the fish from wires. My initial idea was to wrap weed round wire and then tie the fish on. I couldn't really find thin enough plastic weed (and perhaps I should have had a go at making my own), so it didn't quite come out as I planned. *Nothing* sticks to that damn stuff (I think they make it that way because of algae), so a lot of fiddling was off the cards unless I wanted naked weed and paint flakes everywhere. If I do this kind of this again (and I can, because I still have more sea-minis), there'll be DIY weed.

[Skya]

For plastics that "nothing" sticks to I have a can of Rust Oleum plastic primer that works minor miracles. It also has the advantage of being flexible enough to handle the fact that plastics tend to bend. Mind you, it mostly gets pulled out for painting plastic toy soldiers, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work on aquarium plants as well.

[PaintMinion]

I think gluing them in a few groups and using wire hidden in the seaweed would work better for what you're after, but I do agree that the paintjob is a stunner! The only nitpick would be extending some sort of brightness down onto the face/nose. Perhaps a "blaise" of the orangish color like on a regular horse to help bring out the face...otherwise it tends to get lost in all that brightness. Perhaps a touch of different color on his belly, or push the contrast in highlight and shadow a bit more to give the belly and torso some depth. The crab is great, as is the anemone, but the crab is my favorite part. :-)

[demonherald]

There is stuff in pet shops here called Natural fern.. Kind of a dried algae mat... if you brush it with resin preferably or varnish at a push you can shape it on a plastic bag and incorporate wire into it for extra strength... when the resi or varnish is dry you get really nice natural look weeds... I did some last year don't think I've got pics anymore but I'll give the customer a shout see if he has any...

alternatively small wires could be used to pin into a central structure like a sunken branch and weeds used to hide the wires...

hmm got me thinking has this one as there are a few reaper pieces I've seen a lately that have me tempted to try something underwater....
all good fun.

[Moavoamoatu]

It's fantastic. Great scenery.

[Amazon_warrior]

Some very useful suggestions! It's instructive to hear how other people would approach a particular problem. I really should have made this a wip, but there we are.

Reaper have a surprising amount of sea-related minis, and they're quite nice. The Fathoms Deep range from Eastern Front has some lovely minis too.