- cover base with textured paint
- paint base green for countryside or red-brown for town/city
Citadel dwarf on cardboard base covered with textured paint
Modern post apocalypse figure on metal washer covered with textured paint
I've never been too crazy about this, but I tend to view the base as just an irritation that has to be addressed once the figure's been painted, rather than anything more. Recently, however, my Pirates and Zombie figures have forced me to reconsider this approach.
I reckon the towns of the apocalypse will be messy, so muddy textured bases still seem appropriate. Having bought some pavement bases for my most recent figures, however, I definitely prefer them.
Latest zombie survivor on pavement base
This brings me to something of a dilemma: Should I leave my old figures on the textured paint bases, or should I rebase them on shiny new pavement/rubble strewn bases?
Part of me says to rebase. Even though a specific base type "locks" the figure in (pavement bases will look a bit silly indoors or in the countryside, whereas a generic base, while not really fitting in anywhere, also doesn't look completely out of place anywhere), it does ground (sorry) the figure. There's also scope for extra touches on the bases - litter etc., that just add that bit more.
However, the big question is: How do I remove all the gunk that's on the base without damaging the figure? There are two types of base I use: slottabases for plastics or figures that came with tabs, and washers for figures with integral bases.
Slotta bases
Metal figures are glued to the base with everything from Bostik to two-part expoxy. Clippers, however, will remove the base and getting rid of the tab shouldn't be too much trouble. Hopefully this can be done without damaging the figure too much (ideally not at all). The liberated figure would then just need pinned to a new base.
Plastic figures are just glued directly to the slottabase. I'm not sure it will be possible to remove them without damaging the paint. It may even be difficult to remove them without damaging the model, which would be A Bad Thing. I may have to accept that some of these figures will just have to remain on generic bases...
Integral metal bases
The bigger challenge is those figures with integral bases. When I based the pirates I took clippers to their bases and then filed the feet flat. I noticed, however, that the legs of the figures moved apart when I cut into the base. I suspect doing this on a painted figure would lead to cracked paint - definitely not the result I'm hoping for. My current thinking is to clip off the edges of the base, then file the rest of the base away. I'm going to try this manually first, but hopefully a drill with a grinding stone can be used to take out the bulk of the base before finishing it off with a file.
Another possibility for integral bases is to remove the textured paint, then create a new rubble strewn base around it. This would be done using filler, sand, plasticard for beams and corrugated iron etc. While this won't be appropriate for all the figures, it does at least leave the figure on its base, and on the washer, but should make the base much more interesting.
I've set up a test figure (shown below) by gluing it to a washer and adding textured paint to it. I'll leave it for a few days to dry thoroughly, then see what happens when I try and remove it. I shall report back on the results.
