Lead Adventure Forum
Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: Modhail on July 22, 2013, 09:17:38 PM
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And back again! :D
Those six months of me being out of town during the weekdays have finally past!
No more coming home on friday evenings, leaving again sunday afternoon and cramming my entire social/family/everything life in those 1.5 days!
Which means I actually have time for my hobby again.
I decided to celebrate by building some hills. (You see, despite wargaming for close to 20 years now, I've never had any proper wargaming hills, just books stacked under the terrain sheet. :'( That needed to be remedied).
They would also tie in nicely to the amalgamated Warhammer Quest/Generic Dungeoneering/Chivalrous and Heroic Questing Project that is one of the (attempted) areas of (wavering) focus I'm trying to stick to, hobby-wise.
I will, somewhere in the coming weeks/months, also try to build a creepy/haunted forest, to match the hills. Because, as everyone knows, all the proper quests and heroic journeys lead you to either a hilly uneven area, a scary forest or a combination of the both. Apparently it's where all the "cool" monsters live...
Anyway, on to a picture report of last week's progress:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/WP_000558.jpg)
Cutting the rough shapes of the hills.
This is actually day two, day one consisted of buying the foam, cutting the bases, cleaning their edges and finding replacement wire for the foam cutter.
The tree you see is a test of concept for the "scary forest" plans.
And here is one of the hills after sanding it and glued to the base:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/WP_000559.jpg)
As you will see in later pics, the majority of the hills are rather flat and flowing. They're just a single layer of 30mm XPS, on top of a 2mm layer of foamed PVC. Total height is then 32mm. This is one of the exceptions:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000562.jpg)
With the rough structure done, it was time to start prettying them up:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000560.jpg)
Glueing on bark to represent rocky surfaces, and filling out the tree.
After this, I covered the foam with a layer of wall filler. Once dried I then filed it smooth(ish) again, to get rid of the rough spots. (sadly no pics of this, I preferred not to get wall filler dust in my electronics....)
Once that was done, it was time to put some texture on.
I started with just my basic basing sand, glued with thinned PVA (I added some black paint to this. That way, it was easier to see what I had covered already, it gave me some more info on how fast the mixture dried, and it will prevent light spots showing through in areas where primer or paint don't cover completely)
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000567.jpg)
This I followed with my cork rocks and rougher basin grit:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000570.jpg)
As an experiment, I also covered some areas with talcum powder, to see if this could give me a finer texture, and just a bit more variation. It wouldn't stick properly, but I'm hoping it will still be visible after painting.
And that's where I'm at now, a week later.
The hills have been primered, and I hope to have time to paint them somewhere around next weekend.
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Those are really rather effective. Nice job!
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Very well done so far. Good to see you back in the Hobby, Erik!
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Great start! now get concentrated on the color scheme! that's everything!
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Great hills, I'm somehow to stupid for hills myself and have to keep to buying GW hills :(
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Thanks guys! It's good to be back...
It's a shame to hear that Glitzer. There are lots of tutorials online, could one of those help you overcome your reliance on GW hills?
(If I build some more, I'll try and remember to take step-by-step pictures.)
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Remember how I said that I'd paint those hills this weekend?
Well, the last few days the weather has been somewhat... wet. Which meant no painting on the hills.
You see, painting hills (at least the way I do it) I anticipate to be rather messy.
As I want to keep the living room, kitchen and sewing/games room clean of paint-splattered walls, that means painting outside.
Not something I want to do in the rain, especially not during a summer storm!
So, I had a nice sit inside today with my paints instead. Which resulted in this miniature getting finished:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/WP_000588.jpg)
I believe that a while ago I told you about the Dungeoneering/Chivalry/Questing-all-rolled-into-one project I was working on, as a companion to painting the misses' Warhammer Quest?
Well, this is the second hero to get finished for that! (Number one was the female Dwarf Slayer).
As he is not a hill, I will not go on about him, but you can find more on my blog (http://modhails-meanderings.blogspot.nl/)
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Well, with knights like that as the result, let it rain, I say! :-*
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Nice heraldry Erik. Interesting use of colours too.
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Thanks!
Cheery, isn't he? Quite a bit different from my usual fare...
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Nice knight. I always like mounted/dismounted pairs of minis. Where is this one from? Mordheim?
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I like mounted/dismounted pairs as well. Shame it's often so hard to find a matching pair these days. :'(
They're both from GW's Bretonnian range of the late 90's, I think 5th edition? The one with plastic Bretonnians in the starter box. Back when they still looked proper, instead of current day over the top sillines.
I believe you can still find the dismounted one on their website.
Edit: Just had a quick peek: here he is (http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440036a&prodId=prod780915). And as an added bonus, still in proper metal!
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Look what I did today!
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000599.jpg)
I'm rather happy with the way the rocky faces turned out:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000598.jpg)
Especially the cave:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000601.jpg)
Ofcourse, creepy caves like this attract a certain type of crowd:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000612.jpg)
Luckily I have a knight ready and painted to come and pick her up. :-) (I may even have a monster somewhere for him to defeat, and really "earn" her.)
The hills and rocks were painted with simple crafts paints and simple large flat crafts brushes (a 2" and 1" wide if I guess correctly). I had a medium brown, a medium tan, black and white, and just mixed them to taste. The rocks were done by adding black to the lightest shade of sand I mixed, giving me a slightly warm, more natural shade of grey. I then added white to that for consecutive drybrushes.
I still need to paint the creepy trees, maybe add some washes to the rocks for variation.
Once those last bits of painting are done and dry, I can proceed and cover the majority of my paintjob back up again with flock.* :-D
These hills are meant to fit onto a verdant green wargames table after all...
*: Speaking of which, does anyone know of a way to get a nice, thick covering of static grass that actually stands up?
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Very effective. I really like these.
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Nice set of rocks.
Other then using tufts or adding static grass on patches of superglue and then holding the object upside down and tapping it, no idea how to get proper static grass. Well, a static grass applicator might do it, but I never used one, plus it is yet another expense.
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They look great. The cave and other rock features are outstanding.
Top work there fella.
From personal experience I have to say that I found making hills and other natural terrain features really satisfying.
The knight is bloody good too.
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Those look great, nice job. Is that 'Kingspan' foam with the silver layer removed?
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Stunning work :o
Subscribed ;)
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Johan, I actually fond a site somewhere that showed how to build a static grass applicator from an electric flyswatter and a metal tea sieve. I tried that last year, but it shorted out on first use. Haven't yet bothered/dared to buy a second one and try again...
Dewbakuk; nope, it's just "regular" XPS foam, except that, instead of blue, the stuff I can get locally is peach-coloured for some odd reason.
Spent the entire afternoon trying to buy flock for the hills... o_o
The local modelshop in my city has closed, so I headed to the next city over. Only to discover that the (formerly excellent) shop there had dropped the entirety of their model train and scenery assortment. >:(
Luckily they knew of a specialist model train shop in the next town over again.
Managed to find that place, a quaint little shed of a shop, and they had flock to boot!
So hopefully, I should be able to start flocking next time I have some hobby-time.
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Arrows has closed? Noo, that really is the end of an era started at the end of WW2 then (The owner sometimes talked to me about the war)
Toemen has been crap for years I'm afraid (and expensive to boot), I thought you knew he dumped his trains. I don't bother going there anymore. Did you go to Eindhoven or Breda for the flock?
Since I moved to Boxtel I just order out for stuff like that, just getting to a good modelshop takes a day in travel and half the time they don't even have what I need anymore. Which reminds me, got a good source for plasticcard?
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Yup... Sad but true.
I ended up in Rosmalen.... Next time I'll save myself the hassle and go to Breda immediately. The shop is Rosmalen is nice, but quite small and doesn't have too much in the way of terrain making stuff.
Nope, haven't found a good source for plasticard yet. Then again Arrow left some mighty big shoes to fill in that regard.
Sad really, I'd like to support the local stores (both modelshop and LGS), but they're making it so damn hard to do so. They either don't stock what I want to buy or have ceased to exist entirely. :'(
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Dropped by the art supply store in Den Bosch today and spent some time looking at the constructions made with a sort of wallpaper paste and brown packaging paper. Wondering if it would be possible to make a semi decent mountain ridge with that, the crumpled paper seemed good for that. But maybe I'm treading into the railway enthusiasts area now and should stick to a few low hills to start with at first. Must stop thinking about a hydro electric dam as well, I already made one in the only scale sensible enough to have one (1/600).
Hmm, better send you a PM now.
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Great work!
I like the variety in the hills. I don't think you need to go too crazy with static grass!
Cheers
Andy
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Well, I can't not go crazy... For me, that's just not an option when building stuff. ;D
I got the flocking done today:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000629.jpg)
Here's an aerial view:
(http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h213/Modhail/WIP/Terrain/WP_000626.jpg)
The flocking was rather straightforward. I made a mix consisting of 2 colours medium turf: medium and light green, earth colour fine turf and static grass. Then I just painted on PVA where I wanted flock. Poured the flock on, let it dry a bit and shook the excess of. Just like very big miniature bases...
Once it had dried a bit, I dolled up the hills with some grass and flowering grass tufts here and there.
The clump foliage on the trees was less straightforward... I tried just gluing it on with PVA, that was not a succes. It simply dried far too slow, and didn't have enough "tack". In the end I resorted to using a construction glue. Nasty smell, threads of glue went everywhere, but the clumps stayed on!
Now comes the next challenge, and a cry for help: How do I keep the stuff in place?
From the moment I put a hill away after flocking, it started slowly shedding...
How do I fix the stuff in place, without ruining the look of the hills as they are now?
I'm rather hesitant to "just try something" and, for example, douse them in watered down PVA. I'm really pleased with how they turned out, and wouldn't dare mess it all up in the final phase.
Do any of the terrain veterans around here have sage advice for me?
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Well, my small scale trees (which are basically a ball of tin foil with flock stuck onto it with superglue) get a single coating with 50% water and 50% woodglue. When dry, they won't shed. It hardly changes the shade either.
First shot of your hills with the hedge on the background is really awesome Erik! :o
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Greta work on the trees. I will use your idea for making & flocking trees as well :)
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Great looking terrain pieces.
I think the rocky outcrops are fantastic. Very well done.
As far as flocking coming off. I don't think there is a fool-proof method.
Try adding some washing up liquid to your glue and allow the flocking to be absorbed by the glue before shaking off.
I have also heard of fixative spray being applied over the top. I find it easier to re-flock every so often.
Good luck.
Tony
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This is really great work, given me a lot of ideas!
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I like the way those rocks tuned out. What are they made of? Cork bark chips from pine?
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Thank you guys!
Glitzer, yes, it's exactly that.
Got a big old bag of it at the local garden centre. Even with the bits that are not useable as rocks, it will probably still last me a lifetime. All the rejects, I can simply use for the garden...