Post by Remrafian on Jan 5, 2015 15:00:05 GMT
As requested and promised by me, here's the (not very) long awaited hot glue gun flame tutorial.
This process took me no more than 30 minutes, but the Sewer snake ones took longer...mainly because I wanted them to look perfect!
Tools I used:
Needle nose pliers x2
Hot glue gun
Hair dryer
Bowl of water
Paint brush
Paint palette (a tile or a plate works fine)
Paper towel
Materials I used
Thin modelling wire
Glue sticks (for Hot glue gun, duh!)
Yellow ink
Red ink
Cut the wire to twice the length you want the flame to be. Fold the wire in half and use one needle nose plier to pinch the folded part in place and the second set of pliers to twist the opposite end together (you could do this by hand, I find this to be less neat!) You should have one twisted piece of wire at the length you want.
Now, the fun bit! Load your glue gun, you wont want to run out half way at this point. Plug the glue gun in and let it reach its maximum temperature. Liberally apply hot glue to the twisted wire, don't worry about the shape too much as this is all apart of the effect.
Now use a hair dryer to dry this (erm, because if you put it down it will stick to everything/anything!)
Once dry you (should) have something that looks like this.
To make the fire look more wild and random you need your glue gun again. To make the spikes in the flame, squeeze tiny amounts of glue out on to the armature and flick the gun out to make the glue stand up, the glue will dry before it folds over. Do this as many times as you see fit (I did this hundreds of times over for my sewer snake ones.) 
Don't worry if what you have looks like a dead hamster like this.....
Gently peel off the 'fur', careful not to remove the work in the last step. Now it will look more fire like.....
Now you can move your work to paintshop, which is incredibly easy. Here's my set up for this job.
Usually, I would heavily dilute inks. We need a potent ink for this job so no need for dilution. Dip your brush into the yellow and cover 95% of the flame in the ink. Use the hair dyer again to dry this.
Using your palette mix a 50/50 yellow/red neat ink (make sure you wash your brush in between dips to prevent contamination of ink colours) to make a bright orange ink.
Brush this colour onto 50% of the flame on the more raised areas (almost the same as a dry brush....erm, but wet). Again, use a hair dyer to dry the ink. Wash your brush thoroughly after this step.
And yes, you guessed it! Now dip your brush into the red ink, and this time you are picking off only the very tops of the flame spikes (25%). Use the hair dryer again and wash all your painting equipment off.
All finished! 
