"Modeling "burning tank" markets from cotton" Topic

I have made a bunch of "on fire" markets from cotton balls, pulled out and glued to washers.
I spray painted them lightly with black, so I have a nice blend of white and grey smoke.
I am thinking of making more because of I do EW Soviets, I will Ned a lot more.

I want to go a lot more gruesome and do them as actual flames.
I am thinking of using spray paint to do flames. Should I spray red first, or yellow? Which is the deeper color? And should I add orange to the mix?
Much cheaper would to use Testor's enamel chow ever, can one paint cotton balls with enamels?

Looking for guidance from those who may have done this before.

I glue larger cotton pieces from vitamin and medicine bottles to flat washers or plastic disks.

When dry, I tease the fibers out into the shape of a flame and coat them with diluted white glue.

When dry, I paint them flat white.

When dry, I paint them bright yellow, orange, red, and black from base to tip.

When dry, I spray them with gloss coat.

They look pretty good.

link

Winston,
I ALWAYS make all my own tank fires, explosions, burning houses, etc, every game, No need to glue anything. I get poly batting, tear it into a bunch of piles, spray some, black, some brown, yellow, orange, red & keep some mostly white. Dark colors: Blk, Brn, Red – Don't soak the paint in, spray some heavier tan others but don't cover everything.
Light colors: You can paint these a little heavier, so you see them when ripped up & mixed.
Start with yellow/orange add a little Black above that top it off with some white & browns. You can rip up the poly and kinda "build" the explosion by mixing the colors. Works great. Very easy to do once you get the hang of it. You just put the colors in that order, do some tearing, and make custom fires that look damn good, IMHO!
PS- I sell bags of my pre-painted Fire/Smoke for $10 USD plus s/h. You get a lot more than you get anywhere else for that price also, (if it helps).
See here:
link
All fires, etc, made during the(very hectic)game. I have more pics but Flickr is having problems at the moment!
Hope this helps.
Peter

Winston, paint the orange at the base followed by dark gray and then black. Here is an image of an AFV burning.

I've done cotton before by stretching it out and spray painting with Testors enamels, works fine!

Hi,
I've used the technique from this great blog. It involved gluing polyester cushion filler to those little battery powered led candles/tea lights then spraying black. In the UK we get them in the Poundshop which is i guess similar to a dollar store.

It's very effective in my opinion.

Link below – hope it works (typing on phone at work!)

link

I use red and black wool twisted together. Looks great.

I use flame markers for my damaged CY6! B-17's bombers out of dark foam. I paint it black. Then I paint the burning part yellow, then blend it higher upon the smoke plume with orange. You can be liberal in painting over each color to blend the burning effect. The picture that Bashytubits posted shows a good mix of orange, black and even gray. Foam is easier to paint on than cotton balls IMO.

Phil

I use fishtank filter fibre – it teases out better than cotton wool:

Some I spray in just grey and a little black. Some I spray first with a little yellow and then red before the darker colours.

All are hot glued onto a washer or coin.

John T

Bulldog- Those are so cool! Wish I was in something bigger than 6mm or I'd be all over that.

Coastal2 – I'm also into 10mm and 6mm scales and I've been thinking how to downscale these. The lights are so cheap that cutting them apart to get to the essential components is no big deal. The battery is the small flat type that could be incorporated into a base. Not sure about switching on and off. Sounds like my next terrain challenge!

I've tried a few different approaches John.

Burning buildings

Just batting spray painted grey

Night light "Surrounded" by batting. Batting is white but darkened with grey. I place this around the night light fixing it with lots of diluted white glue. I then spray paint some using orange (more concentrated in certain areas) I glue that on in pieces to give an "on fire" look

I've also done these with darker grey and back and they look effective but no photos :(

To represent "damaged" or On Fire

These are much smaller. Cotton wool stray painted orange/ yellow (yellow first)and the top piece black. Glued onto a coin. Hair sprayed it to stiffen.

Again white batting covering a night light with lots of white glue applied to the lower areas and then throwing light gravel and sand on the white glue…effective explosions

Thanks for the plug Bulldog

Heres a picky of mine

and to see the lights flickering (special affects) there is a shot in this short film

YouTube link

Ooh, if grabbing used fish-tank filter material, you wouldn't even have to spray it grey!

Reduce — Reuse — Reanimate

I use black hamster-bedding material (presumably for Goth hamsters), which also saves the need for spraying black.

What do you use for white hamsters?

I actually got come cloth dye and dyed cotton balls before teasing them into smoke. I love how they turned out. I took a serious look at the idea of the flickering flames, but on 15 mm the tea lights are just too big for anything except King Tigers et. al.

(Sorry about the size of this image. It's the only one I have.)

I wrote up a how-to guide at my blog, and to make your life easier here is a link to the Spotting Round guide to dying cotton balls for wargaming smoke