Advice on waterfall/river for my display board

[zarenkenial]

Hey everyone.

With the CanHammer Team Tournament coming up in a few months, I thought I would up my game a bit by making my display board really pop out with a nice waterfall and river coming across it. Here is the pic of my display board with my intended list and some markings for the river:







As you can see, I have started the river in the top left corner and will have a waterfall pouring down into the small lake below and pouring out across the display, pulling the viewer's eye across the board. As you can also see, the plan is to have a unit of Genestealers running through the water which means I will need to figure out how best to add woodland scenics realistic water to the bases. 

So my question is two part. How best do I go about painting and texturizing both the river bed and the Stealers' bases and how deep should I cut in the foam?

My original thought is to cut out a small 1/2 inch recess for the river bed and use light weight Hydrocal to form the river bank. I will also use the Hydrocal with some rock molds to make the rocky cliff sides more realistic and not so plain and grey (I will also add moss and lichen on the rock face after I have painted it). Then, I'm thinking of adding sand and small rocks on the river bed/banks but then, painting it is where I am struggling. I want to create depth in the central areas so I am thinking of simply putting a sort of dark blue/green towards the center of the river and transition into a lighter color and then seamless into the river bank and pouring the realistic water over top of that in a layer or two. The other option would be to add blue/green to my realistic water and pour without painting the river bed. Does anyone have any experience using these products for similar effects? If so, how should I go about doing this?


I could also go for a shallow look an not paint in any depth and just add a layer or two of realistic water right out of the bottle.


Thoughts?   

[guns]

You're 100% correct to focus on painting as the most effective means of creating the illusion of depth. If you decide to go that way, then one little tip I have is to resist texturing the riverbed except for the outermost edges. Any sand/rocks you use in the centre of the river will show up and break the illusion, even if your paintjob is killer. I'd also resist the temptation to tint your water effects medium, because that rarely works out well. A little tint can definitely enhance the look of the water, but unless you tint it to the point of opacity the colour of the bottom of the riverbed is going to be -- overwhelmingly -- what defines the appearance of the waterway.

You may have greater success trying to go for "stream" over "river" since the area you've marked off is only, what, 2 or 2.5 Genestealers wide? Scaled up that's something between 5-10 feet wide, and more along the lines of a creek or stream than a river. A waterway of that width wouldn't be very deep unless it was a man-made canal or something... nature wouldn't carve out a huge, deep trench.

Another advantage of a shallow waterway is that it won't clash with models placed on top of it. If Genestealers are standing in a deep river you'd expect the ones at the centre to be submerged up to their chests or higher, while the ones on the edges would be ankle-deep. If you model a stream of a consistent shallow depth all your 'stealers will look correct with the water effects base-treatment you've described doing on te individual figs.

Aaaand another advantage to going shallow is that it means your waterfall will consist of a lesser volume of water, which will be easier to work with and to make look accurate. If you do a deep-V wedge river then you have to figure out a way to model a huge volume of water in your waterfall.