Swamp bases

CoolMiniOrNot has swamp bases in it's "Groundwerks" line, including clear resin versions (the difference is not obvious from the photos but the clear versions are cast in clear green resin; look at the bubbles and you should see a difference):










They also have "slime" bases which might work for swamps as well:








If you use clear resin I recommend painting a light colour underneath the base topper before glueing it down; experiment to see what colour works best for you. Unfortunately I they probably only have the one 50mm, two 40mm and three 30mm sculpts seen in the photos, which is why buying the "slime" toppers and scupting your own ground on top might be a good way to get some variety. I've done something similar by placing Alexia 1's "pile of skulls" base on top of the "slime" topper to somewhat match a "swamp" base I used for a Thrall:

Omg...thank you all so much for your awesome answers

Those CMON bases are brutal!

I never used water effects...any sugestions/recomendations?

I'm no expert with water effects, but I did screw around with them a bit. My experience is that if you're trying to fill a complex volume I recommend pouring thin layers and letting them set before pouring the next layer; this helps reduce issues with shrinkage of the resin. This probably isn't as necessary for filling simple shallow volumes.

Personally I felt that it worked better to paint thinned paint or ink between layers than mix the colour into the resin when I was dabbling with water effects; I found that adding any paint or ink to the resin increased the problem of shrinkage (and of colour becoming concentrated in nooks and crannies).

It might not be easy to see what's happening, but here's some of my experiments:


In most of these test the resin filled the edges (taking the colour with it) but was much shallower in the centers (leaving the colour thinner as well); applying thin layers helps created a more even surface and painting onto the surface between layers helps the colour stay uniform. Final result:



Not great - there's certainly room for improvement, and a deeper green might have worked better - but not terrible.

I never thought of painting the layers. I will have to give that a try. I imagine you would want to use very thinned down paint to keep it somewhat translucent. It looks great in that last photo though. You could probably get a good feel of depth too with darker paint as you go down in layers.

I have bought both Groundwerks and Secret Weapon bases before. Both are great.