Lead Adventure Forum
Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: Admiral Benbow on January 17, 2010, 10:14:59 PM
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For some weeks now I'm working on a couple of terrain pieces showing deciduous wood forest, usable for games in middle to northern europe or northern America. I tried a lot of techniques and things I've read about only, and as usual reading about and doing things are two quite different things ... But I had a lot of fun and learning experience, so why not showing how it was done. Here are some teasers, a small forest pond (everything else around it will follow ..) and my first test piece finished. More pics tomorrow and as I go on with this project.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_52_24_2.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_52_24_0.jpg)
:)
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Very nice!
How did you do the water lilies?
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Lovely.
Are the lily pads made using a hole punch, and then slicing out a section? It would be great if you listed all the different materials you used here though - there's so much going on, and lots of ideas to steal!
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Oooh. :P I've been waiting for this to appear! Lovely. Please do share materials and techniques. :)
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The idea for the small pond with water lilies comes from a very useful book from Model Railroader magazine called "The New Scenery Tips and Techniques". It's still available and very good value for anybody interested in scenery techniques:
http://www.kalmbachstore.com/12243.html (http://www.kalmbachstore.com/12243.html)
In there is an article by Gerry Leone about "Lily pads, cattails and pond scum" showing his methods of modelling a nice pond diorama. You can find this here http://home.earthlink.net/~grleone/diorama.htm (http://home.earthlink.net/~grleone/diorama.htm) including some nice pics,
(http://home.earthlink.net/~grleone/trains/diorama/dio-diorama-full.jpg)
but unfortunately the link to the full article seems to not work any longer. So, basically it goes as follows:
Lily pads feature slightly concave borders; to get this effect, I cut two different sized pieces from brass tubing (about 6 and 4 mm diameters) and used my hobby drill with a grinding tool to sharpen one end of the tubes. Take a small piece of heavier paper and push around 4 to 5 blobs of different acrylic greens/olives/greenbrowns with a moist brush until the paper is covered, but don't try to mix the tones fully. Let dry. Then, on a soft material like a cutting mat, punch out the pads from the uncoloured backside of the paper! Punch 6 to 10 pieces in one go from different color areas, then poke them out with a wooden dowel from the other end of the tube. Voila, concave borders! Now just slice out a triangular section with your sharp knife and the lily pads are ready to go to your pond.
Sounds easy? It is easy!
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(...) Please do share materials and techniques. :)
Absolutely seconded! ;D
This pond looks just like the one I discovered a few months ago while roaming the Paderborner Naherholungsgebiet (LEO translates as "local recreation area" :D ). Top notch!
EDIT: Thanks for the update! I keep drooling...
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Excellent! :-*
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I bought that book also and I must say it is a great resource for anyone interesting in advanced (and not so advanced) techniques. Everything in that book looks amazing and is explained very well.
Nice job Admiral, I'm impressed!
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Beautiful.
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Those two pieces are fantastic. Great work. Thanks for sharing!!
Regards,
Hitman
8)
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Wonderful!
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Can't wait to see the whole 4x8 table! :D
Great stuff,
Brian
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Wow! I Can't wait to see more...
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Outstanding terrain Michael. Absolutely gorgeous.
It makes me want to go and make some more myself, straightaway! (So that's genuine inspiration).
I hope I may get to see some of your wonderful terrain 'in the flesh' later this year.
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Outstanding terrain Michael. Absolutely gorgeous.
I hope I may get to see some of your wonderful terrain 'in the flesh' later this year.
Seconded, I love it! ;D
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That is perfect! :) I too have that book. A couple of others that are invaluable resources are:
http://www.amazon.com/Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass-Richard-Windrow/dp/1841760625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-1
and :
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass/dp/1841769754/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-2
Osprey Publishing has a large variety of books on the subject of modeling and terrain making. They are my bibles of landscape modeling.
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Wow, the bar has just been raised again :-* :-*
Wonderful stuff there Admiral. *scuttles off to have a go a the lilly pad thing*
cheers
James
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That is perfect! :) I too have that book. A couple of others that are invaluable resources are:
http://www.amazon.com/Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass-Richard-Windrow/dp/1841760625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-1
and :
http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Terrain-Modelling-Masterclass/dp/1841769754/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263837375&sr=1-2
Osprey Publishing has a large variety of books on the subject of modeling and terrain making. They are my bibles of landscape modeling.
About time I invested in a terrain modelling book like that, thanks. I'm off to see Mr Amazon...
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Very inspirational - as always your work is outstanding. Thanks for sharing the lovely pics.
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Love it! :-*
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What did you use to make the water?
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Lovely.
The finished table should look spectacular.
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What did you use to make the water?
NOCH 2K Wasser-Gel, which has the consistency of honey when poured:
http://www.noch.de/de/produktkatalog/artikel_detail.php?noch_artikelid=0060870 (http://www.noch.de/de/produktkatalog/artikel_detail.php?noch_artikelid=0060870)
Lovely.
The finished table should look spectacular.
Thanks. But I'm working on forest terrain for a 50 x 50 cm part of our new Thirty-Years-War-table, not for a railroad layout ... lol
(Although I would love to do so 8))
But even then, in my experience it's always the little details which make unspectacular stuff a bit more special.
:)
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Michael, you astonish us again and again with your skills and projects. Very inspiritional!
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My goal for this project was to spend no money at all and only use stuff I already had laying around. For the deciduous trees I had a bag full of dried pieces of roots, collected on some holiday walks in Bavaria.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_55_16_3.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_55_16_1.jpg)
I also used a bunch of twisted twigs bought from a florists shop some time ago, I really don't know what this is called, but it has a natural look like small tree branches already.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_55_16_2.jpg)
As I had no experience building model trees and had only read a lot about creating them, I just took some pieces of roots, removes the one or other broken twig, cut one end flat and glued this to a cardboard square with white glue, additionally secured with a small brass screw from underneath. The cardboard will later be glued to my terrain pieces, that way the trees will have a firm foundation on the base.
But I wasn't quite happy with these constructs, they looked too unnaturally, not like real tree structures.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_55_16_0.jpg)
So, for the next ones I looked for a good looking roots piece for the stem and planted the branches from the bottom up myself using parts of the twig material. A hole was drilled into the stem, and the twigs were glued in with a hot glue gun. This way you only need to wait a couple of seconds for the glue to cool and set. After finishing a tree this way, a mixture of brown acrylic colour, some dirt powder and water was brushed roughly around the glued areas to cover the shiny glue spots and get a smooth transition from stem to branch. The hot glue gun was also used to simulate some roots branching out at the bottom of the stem.
A lot of ideas and techniques were based on similar things from Elladan and his inspiring website http://www.elladan.de/040%20Bocage%203/040.htm (http://www.elladan.de/040%20Bocage%203/040.htm).
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_54_03_4.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_54_03_3.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_54_03_2.jpg)
These trees were much more to my liking ... ;)
It was time to start the first test base for ground structures and materials and to test fibres and flocking. I used some single roots of another kind and glued them directly to the pre-cut hardboard-base. Twisted out rubberised horsehair was ripped into small pieces and glued onto the twigs with UHU-craftglue.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_54_03_1.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_54_03_0.jpg)
The horsehair was airbrushed with Tamiya dark-green, the base got its foundation with brown-coloured ready-mixed filler from the DIY.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_52_25_4.jpg)
More next time. Thanks for your interest!
:)
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Brilliant as ever :)
How does the Noch Water compare to Woodland Scenics 'Realistic Water' (if you've ever used that)? Sounds a similar product...
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Excellent use of natural materials. Are you going to flock the trees to add a little more realism to them or leave them as they are? Either way they look great. Having spent some time in the western US I was able to gather some sagebrush (aka. tumbleweed) which is another great thing to use for tree structures. A walk through the local forest always yields some great things to use for scenery.
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Glorious. :)
That's a great link to the terrain building site too - very inspirational.
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Those roots are spectacularly good as trees! So easy to use, rather than farting around twisting wire etc. The pond is so lifelike - I love a good water-feature so I might try and get some of that wasser-gel. Again, so much better than varnish etc.
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I have huge trouble finding roots like those ones. Aside from digging them up out of the ground, where do I start looking? :S (Yes, this occurs to me to be a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway!!!)
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Brilliant as ever :)
How does the Noch Water compare to Woodland Scenics 'Realistic Water' (if you've ever used that)? Sounds a similar product...
Thanks, Richard! I've read a lot about "Realistic Water", but didn't have the opportunity to try it. The Noch water is a very glutinous stuff and slowly hardening; needs 24 hours to fully cure. I like it as you're able to manipulate it with a toothpick and most airbubbles have time enough to get to the surface and vanish. But as my bottles are empty now, I had already planned to give that Woodland stuff a try ...
Excellent use of natural materials. Are you going to flock the trees to add a little more realism to them or leave them as they are? Either way they look great. Having spent some time in the western US I was able to gather some sagebrush (aka. tumbleweed) which is another great thing to use for tree structures. A walk through the local forest always yields some great things to use for scenery.
Yes, the trees will be fully flocked. Sagebrush seems to be a very nice product for building trees, unfortunately it's only available in the US and quite expensive when ordered from online railroad shops. There is a very nice how-to with sagebrush here:
http://ryan.skow.org/tutorials/trees/index.html (http://ryan.skow.org/tutorials/trees/index.html)
I have huge trouble finding roots like those ones. Aside from digging them up out of the ground, where do I start looking? :S (Yes, this occurs to me to be a silly question but I'm going to ask it anyway!!!)
There are no silly questions, Christian. :)
The most easy way to find good roots is to walk through your nearest spruce or fir-tree forest and look for knocked-down trees like that:
(http://www.wetteran.de/unwetter/odenwald/nebenschneise_2.jpg)
You should find lots of useful roots, cut them out and let them dry thoroughly. Another recently discovered source could be bonsai branches ready to buy:
http://www.nadeco.de/naturdekorationentischdekoration/hoelzerundwurzeln/bonsai-aeste---gehoelz---abschnitte.php (http://www.nadeco.de/naturdekorationentischdekoration/hoelzerundwurzeln/bonsai-aeste---gehoelz---abschnitte.php)
I didn't try this stuff myself, but maybe that's a nice material. And there are others you can get through suppliers of dry-flowers ...
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Thanks for the tips, Admiral :) Looks like I'll be doing even more bush walking!
Now that I think of it there is a knocked down tree at a local park... that picture is beautiful. Is that near where you live or something?
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Thanks for the tips, Admiral :) Looks like I'll be doing even more bush walking!
Now that I think of it there is a knocked down tree at a local park... that picture is beautiful. Is that near where you live or something?
No, unfortunately not. I just got it from Google picture search ... 8)
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Some more work and pics since my last update. After using rubberised horsehair for the first trees I changed over to a synthetic material called filterwool, usually used as a filter-material in pond pumps.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_02_13_4.jpg)
I had to buy this very large bag as smaller ones were not in stock, so I'm able to plant the siberian forests in 28 mm now ... If anybody would like to get something of this stuff, I'm happy to part with it if you paypal me for the postage costs.
Next two pics show some trees with the new fibres already in place and then airbrushed dark green.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_17_01_10_10_52_24_3.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_02_13_3.jpg)
Next step was to prepare the groundwork. I first flocked some bushes from horsehair and other fibres with different shades of green flocking stuff, even a couple of older H0 scale railroad bushes came into refurbishing.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_03_24_2.jpg)
I had saved twigs and bark pieces from stripping the roots to use this material for ground scatter around the trees. Also a selection of scenic foam materials from different brands like Woodland Scenics, Noch and Faller was prepared.
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_03_24_1.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_03_24_0.jpg)
And this is the large finished forest piece with the pond I started this topic with:
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_02_13_1.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_02_13_2.jpg)
And the next group, ready for groundwork:
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_28_01_10_6_02_13_0.jpg)
That's it for today. I will now finish all remaining trees and terrain pieces and will show you some pics of the completed forest terrain in some weeks, depending on my spare time.
:)
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That pond scene... just makes me sick!
Please stop torturing us with these photos!
;)
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Green...
... with envy that is ;)
what a marvelous job. You've raised the bar, Admiral.
Damn you!
:D
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Beautiful.
Am loving your organised stocks and supplies and overall methodical approach (must be my ancestral German roots!).
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Gorgeous.
I am going to make a copy of this, clean it up a bit and then make it sticky, if that's alright.
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Gorgeous.
I am going to make a copy of this, clean it up a bit and then make it sticky, if that's alright.
Great idea!
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So, here we are again! As promised, some pics of the completed wood in action for our upcoming Thirty Years War game at the TACTICA. I will get lots of pics there of the game and table, but they will probably be published in a new thread at the Swashbuckling Board. This thread is now finished, so if you like, Hammers, you can make it sticky ...
:)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_21_02_10_10_41_59_4.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_21_02_10_10_41_59_3.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_21_02_10_10_41_59_2.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_21_02_10_10_41_59_1.jpg)
(http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/5/93_21_02_10_10_41_58_0.jpg)
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As promised, some pics of the completed wood in action for our upcoming Thirty Years War game at the TACTICA. I will get lots of pics there of the game and table, but they will probably be published in a new thread at the Swashbuckling Board.
They better had be! :-*
I'm looking forward to seeing them.
Looks just right, Michael. Great work.
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Fantastic, Michael! I'm in awe :-*
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Mein gott!
That's so awesome! >_< Thank you for sharing that with us!