How to make a Crystal Forest





This is amazingly easy to do, once you have the necessary materials





The first crystal is made by a company called APM Corporation. They specialize in making plastic ice items, so if you are doing an ice planet then they will probably have everything you need. They can be found at http://store.plasticicecubes.com/sectionname.html I have used a shiny surface as the base because it greatly increases the light effects. The smaller crystals I picked up at the craft store. They come in several different colors, and two sizes. They are intended to be used in vases for floral decoration, but pet stores will also sometimes carry them for use in aquariums.




I painted them using a clear green acrylic paint made by Tamiya Color. If you can’t get the Tamiya paint or need a different color, then you could do the same thing using Future. If you aren’t familiar with what I am talking about then please visit http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html .



Here is what they looked like all finished. Since the crystals were all the same size, I had to cut some off of the bottom to get the different heights.




This one is the more traditional Necron crystal. It was simply made by cutting a clear plastic rod to length, then beveling the ends using a file. The acrylic paint fills in all the small scratches left by the file, so there is no need to buff or polish anything. The hard part is finding clear plastic rod that isn’t round. You could use square rod if you are willing to file all of the corners, but that would be a lot of work. Then I noticed the rods on my Venetian blinds. They are clear plastic, and hexagon shaped, exactly what I needed. A quick trip to the home improvement store yielded several replacement rods.

Added to "Modelling Guides and Modelling Tutorials". Excellent walk-through, Vet Sgt.

E.

Wow, that's really impressive, and very effective en-masse as the first picture shows. I definitely think this should go in the terrain resource section! Darn it Eigle, beat me to it!!

It would be interesting to see what it looks like in different colours, but I imagine it would be very well suited to something like a desert or Necron Tomb World, especially if you could get a brighter green Tamiya Clear paint.

The smaller Crystals

These aren’t very spectacular by themselves, but they are good for adding a little variety to your crystal forest.



These were made with beach glass. I left them unpainted in order to have a little variation in the coloring with the other crystals. If you aren’t lucky enough to have a beach near your house these can also be found in a craft store.




This one is just a pile of the floral crystals. The crystals came with a green tint to them, so I also left them unpainted for more color variation.

@Vet Sgt



Your ingenuity is the most impressive part. You were amazingly resourceful. One of my new favorite things to do now is look around on the ground for cool things to base my models with. Never thought to look at the windows. LOL.

Those crystals are wicked sick though. Reminds me of Kryptonite. I'm thinking about doing some of those only a blue color. So ill need to get a clear blue acrylic paint. Or make multi-colored crystal growths. depends on how much $ for the paint.

For painting the clear plastic.

When I was painting my Fire Prism's clear crystal, all I did was dip it in the green wash (watered down). I did this I think 3 times till the color was dark enough for my liking.

Beats buying a new type of paint, I'm guessing most folks have the washes by now.

Thanks for all the comments everybody.



The Acrylic paint gives a very shiny surface appearance, and also will fill in any scratches. If you aren’t looking for either of those properties, then a wash should work nicely. It all depends on what your personal tastes are in the appearance of your crystals.



When looking for materials for a Chrystal Forest don’t discount the smaller crystals.



The pile on the left is small acrylic plastic pieces that are intended to be used for floral decorations. They have very rounded organic shapes. The one on the right is rock salt crystals; I got these directly out of my water softener. They aren’t as clear as the acrylic ones but they have a much more angular crystal like shape.


This is what the acrylic pieces look like when glued down to something else.


This is what the rock salt crystals look like.


This is what happened when I accidentally spilled some glue into the bag of acrylic pebbles. I think that I like the look of these better than the ones that are glued down over a core.

I am not sure what to call these, Liquid crystal puddle maybe?


These were just an experiment but I think that they worked out well.


I made these from a piece of florescent light fixture. I have been using this material for a while to make cobblestone roads and stone walls by painting it like stone. They sell this stuff in home improvement stores in the lighting section. The sheet that this piece came from is about 1Ft X 4Ft. if you want to go crazy and make a crystal paved road, this would be the material to use.

It reminds me of the acid pools that were dotted around the landscape in Dawn of War 2.

Great collection of Crystal tutorials and idea-mongering, the pool idea is a nice sourcing of alternate materials with a complete segway in thinking. Reminds me a lot of the Crystal race for an alternate game system. Let me look up a URL for a plausible enemy race akin to this scenery :

On checking the Hobby Resource [Alternate Alien & Ally Miniatures] thread, I realise it was from Vor : The Maelstrom. They're the Shard faction as seen here : Vor - The Shard



Be a nice confluence of alternate miniatures and your Scenery ideas VetSgt

- Tael.

I wasn’t going to post these, but your post pushed me over the edge. You made me realize that just because I had filed the idea under “cool but not relevant to what I am doing”, doesn’t mean that somebody else couldn’t use it for what they were doing. This is what happens when you cross over the line and go from freakishly large and improbable geological features to inorganic life forms.







I was just goofing around when I made these, but I think that they turned out nicely any ways. The style doesn’t fit my use, but if I were doing inorganic life forms then they would be perfect.

HARVEST THOSE TIBERI........ oppps wrong thing.

Great idea, and thanks for the link need to get myself some

Comparison of the different colors when painted onto floral crystals



Please excuse the double image, but this picture was taken on top of a mirror in order to get the right amount of reflected light. The top four are the Tamiya Colors that I have. The lighter green one is painted with food coloring and Future. The clear one is unpainted and only included for comparison purposes.

This is the first time that I’ve used the future technique. Straight out of the bottle the Future has a very low viscosity and acts like a wash. If you let it air out for a while (several days in my case) then it starts to thicken up and acts much more like a normal paint.

Great comparison "chart" Vet, thanks for that man. Allows me to figure out some uses in other areas besides tabletop scenery. Such as warpstone, Ice walls etc..

- Tael.

Thanks for the tutorial Vet Sgt. Yet again your resourcefulness is amazing. Several great ideas throughout.

I think your glue in the bag incident leads to probably the best way to make some of these things. Fill a container (a bag, small box, whatever) with the pebbles, pour in a little bit of craft glue allowing it to flow in the pile and leave to dry. Then remove your randomly formed crystal structure, top up the plastic bits and go again.

The fluorescent light cover is another stroke of genius. Particularly with one that has such a random looking pattern. I just looked at all the covers on the lights here at work and they are all depressingly uniform and regular. I guess that is a blessing of sorts, means none of them will go inexplicably missing

I am glad you liked the “chart”


I have to agree with you on the glue in the bag incident. I am not happy with my current acrylic pebbles since they are too rounded for my personal tastes. However, I am sure it is just a matter of time before I find some angular ones that I like better.

A Crystal Swamp?

Do you have any fluff written that includes your crystals?

Oh man those are sick! I have got to make some red ones for my Space Marines....

No I don’t have any fluff for it. This just started as some simple terrain for my sons Necron army. It then seemed to take on a life of it’s own . It certainly has a lot of interesting possibilities, and if you or anybody else wants to write some fluff for it then by all means go ahead, I would love to read it.





I must say that I am a little surprised at all the interest in the crystal forest. When I first made it I figured that only the Necron players would be interested in it. However with just a few slight alterations to what I originally did, then it could be made to work with many armies.




I was just goofing around when I made this “swamp “section, but I learned a few interesting things doing it. I used a mixture of green food coloring and Future to paint the hexagonal crystals in this picture. They are all painted the same color, but they look radically different, because of the effects the light on them. The underside of the florescent light fixture plastic was painted silver to reflect the light back. This causes the crystals that are glued on top of it to be much lighter than the ones that are around the edges.

Woah NICE work there Vet Sgt I now think I will have to build some of these for my Groups Table, It will make the 2 Necron Players happy *Well Until I set up the bomb and go all Dark Crusade on them* However this may wait till I have Made My appartment block and the Tau Headquarters from DOW:DC But these have made my list of stuff to make Only my dirt and such will be the dark grey rather than the red dirt.

Keep up the good work Vet Sgt

--WhiteFire--