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Author Topic: ECW Scenery - Cottages - 16 Feb 2018  (Read 7842 times)

Offline Wirelizard

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Glad people are enjoying these, I've been doing pretty much nothing but science fiction scenery and some hills and such for the last year or two, so it's nice to get back to some rougher, different buildings like these ones.

I wrote up a blog post on the farmhouse that has some different photos.

For the church, I'm thinking of reddish stone with grey accents, something like this one from Shropshire:


Or this one, also I think from Shropshire:


Shropshire has been on my mind because I've got a copy of To Settle The Crown: Waging Civil War in Shropshire, 1642-1648 coming from NMP; it looked like an interesting more detailed look at the ECW on a local level.

Offline Wirelizard

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The farmhouse and dovecote both have paint!



More details over on the blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/05/11/half-timber-ecw-buildings-11-may/

I've also started a little stone-walled storehouse or hovel. It might be a bit more Dark Ages than English Civil War/17th C but stone buildings last a long time and it's been a fun quick build so far.



2" wide by 3" long or so, a few bits of scrap styrofoam insulation and a piece of cardboard from the recycling bin. Towel thatch over the cardboard in due course.

Offline Wirelizard

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Got the small stone building finished earlier this week.

Blog thing here: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/05/17/stone-outbuilding-finished/

Here's what it looks like all finished except for the door, which went on after I took this photo.


The thatch is towel over corrugated cardboard, which gives it a nice thickness compared to just plain towel. A solid layer of black paint and glue was used for the basecoat after the towel was hot-glued down, and after that dried everything was drybrushed brown, tan, then white.

Stonework was drybrushed up from black through various shades of grey to white, with a few blotches of other colours over the black to add a bit of variety.

This sort of little stone building is quick, easy, and satisfying to make, it's a nice change from the bigger, more complicated buildings like the farmhouse!

Offline Wirelizard

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Some progress on the Warbases church. Just a super-quick update here, will expand it later!

However, photo:


And a blog post: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/05/27/warbases-church-in-progress/

More later...

Offline von Lucky

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Nice work, and the Warbases tiles look effective too.
- Karsten

"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Blog: Donner und Blitzen

Offline Wirelizard

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Nice work, and the Warbases tiles look effective too.

Yeah, I'm impressed with the Warbase tiles. They're nicely cut, easy to use, and the paper/card itself has a bit of a texture to it, so it drybrushes up really nicely! They're a lot easier than cutting your own slate tiles, which I've done before and will do again, but for a roof this big the precut tiles are a godsend!

Painting of the outside of the church is just about done, the main roof is mostly painted, the tower roof  has been basecoated, and the porch and porch roof has been installed and painting has started.

Main thing left to do is the flock, tufts, and such around the outside of the building to get it basically table-ready, but I still have some decisions to make about the interior and windows... Still, I really like the way it's coming together.

Here's an overhead view, from before the porch roof was glued in:


Full article with 10 photos over on the blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/06/08/warbases-church-part-two/
« Last Edit: June 19, 2017, 04:48:23 PM by Wirelizard »

Offline Vagabond

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The church is coming on well but I am not a big fan of the finger joints on the corners of these MDF builds.

However I really like the small stone built house you scratched, the texture on the stone as well as your painting of it has come out well.

Offline Wirelizard

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The church is coming on well but I am not a big fan of the finger joints on the corners of these MDF builds.

However I really like the small stone built house you scratched, the texture on the stone as well as your painting of it has come out well.

On a stone block building like this, I figure the finger joints are forgivable. I agree they can look odd on a building that's supposed to be plank-sided or something, though.

The little stone building was a fun, quick build. I might well do another cottage or something in a similar style, or a mix of stone and half-timber/wattle.

Meanwhile, this weekend I put together a little stone circle to add a touch of strangeness to some corner of our ECW battlefields. Nothing grand and brooding like Stonehenge, just four stumpy stones in a rough circle... but why do the flowers grow like that, never inside the stones?



28mm Warlord officer in the back there for scale on a 25mm wide base. The largest stone is just shorter than him; the three stubby stones are about thigh-to-waist-high. The base is a CD, of course.

Offline Hupp n at em

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Your pink foam stonework really looks the part!   :-*

Offline tin shed gamer

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Really enjoying this,as its one of my favourite subjects.For some reason I've no longer a civil war collection to game with.
I've toyed with buying the church for a while but wasn't sure of its size but your pictures helped no end.So I've one on they way.

I'm not a fan of the mdf joints myself so I'll be covering them with waste card from cereals ,I normally use the ridges formed by the corners and cut 5mm one side of it and 7mm the other. It forms great 'L' shaped pieces to wrap around the corners.

I've a couple of pots of liquid green stuff lying around .How much coverage do you get from a pot ? As I prefer to have enough of everything in stock rather than downing tools halfway through to restock.

Mark.

Offline Wirelizard

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Really enjoying this,as its one of my favourite subjects.For some reason I've no longer a civil war collection to game with.
I've toyed with buying the church for a while but wasn't sure of its size but your pictures helped no end.So I've one on they way.

I'm not a fan of the mdf joints myself so I'll be covering them with waste card from cereals ,I normally use the ridges formed by the corners and cut 5mm one side of it and 7mm the other. It forms great 'L' shaped pieces to wrap around the corners.

I thought about redoing the corners, then skipped it. I've done card corners on other buildings, though.

I'm really liking the Warbases church, even without dressing it up it's a nice solid building with good proportions. Need to get on with the greenery around the outside of the thing so it can hit the table, even if I haven't finished the windows and the interior yet!

Quote
I've a couple of pots of liquid green stuff lying around .How much coverage do you get from a pot ? As I prefer to have enough of everything in stock rather than downing tools halfway through to restock.

I'm not actually sure. After doing the plaster panels on the dovecote and farmhouse as well as the farmhouse chimney I don't seem to have made much of a visible dent in the one pot of liquid greenstuff, so I think a pot will go a long way even if you start using it for scenery texturing on lots of projects.

A batch of Warbases' lasercut diamond-pane windows were in the last order to them, so I think this week I'll try and get the windows installed in the farmhouse; the openings are cut to take the Warbases windows... hopefully I got that part right, trimming them wider will be a bit of a nuisance...

Offline tin shed gamer

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Thank you,it's good to know,as I a cunning plan in mind for late July.

I'll keep an eye out for your updates,and enjoy the way this project is unfolding.

Mark.

Offline Wirelizard

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So in classic butterfly wargamer style the church is still unfinished, the farmhouse still lacks windows and a roof, I've not started the additional cottages and outbuildings I want, and I'm neglecting the ECW figures needed to actually play games, but I've started another related scenery project!  ;D

I've wanted to do a modular river set for years, did a small one that has since vanished (I think I left it up at the wargaming club and it went home with someone...) so this weekend I picked up a sheet of 1mm (.040) sheet plastic at the local plastic wholesaler and went at it!

The six main modules are 12" long, 6" wide, and not quite straight. The river banks are 1.5" wide and the actual river is 3" at the ends.

The two small modules are 6" long; one of them will have a bridge on it and the other a ford. The two curve pieces are 3 or 4" wide at the widest point.



For the river banks I used cheap air drying clay, working it down over a layer of white glue so it stays attached to the plastic card. I want the whole thing to be as low-profile as possible, so the clay doesn't got right to the outer edges of the plastic.



The smaller piece in the lower right corner is a pond or swamp (haven't decided yet) I started a few days ago to test how well the plastic card + clay combo was going to hold together. It should be OK, although I am a bit concerned about the longer modules flexing when handled or in transport. We'll see how rigid they get when all the clay, glue, sand, &c &c is on them!

For water I'm thinking about using resin, possibly doing thinned 5 minute epoxy glue (it thins with paint thinner apparently?) as that's potentially cheaper than buying "proper" casting resin. I'll be experimenting with that on the pond/swamp piece long before I tackle all the river sections.

Running the numbers on the amount of resin I'll need... 7.5 linear feet (roughly) = 90" by 3" wide nominally by 1/8" deep nominally = ~33 3/4 cubic inches/557ml/~19 US fluid ounces... I might actually be better off buying resin. Will need to investigate prices.

Offline Wirelizard

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Re: ECW Buildings - River! (was A Harwoodian Dovecote) - Update 17 July
« Reply #28 on: July 19, 2017, 05:36:30 PM »
Construction of the stone arch bridge for my river modules is basically done.

The roadway is a couple layers of light card laminated together with glue, covered in more little card squares to look like flagstone, and then curved into place. The sides are pink styrofoam, the capping stones are matboard framing card.



The stonework was carved with my usual technique of Xacto knife and pencil, and then the styrofoam was covered with GW Liquid Greenstuff for additional texture and some protection.



River banks next!

Offline Wirelizard

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Re: ECW Buildings - River! (was A Harwoodian Dovecote) - Update 17 July
« Reply #29 on: July 20, 2017, 09:48:48 PM »
More photos than I posed here over at a pair of blog posts!

One on the river modules: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/07/18/modular-river-part-one/

A 2nd on the bridge: http://www.warbard.ca/2017/07/20/modular-river-part-two-the-bridge-begun/

I'm not sure how much gaming time I'll have over the next week, as we're hosting my girlfriend's niece from out of town. She'll be staying in our spare room, normally my hobby cave, and I expect we'll spend a lot of time showing a nine year old from a very small village the "big city" sights!

 

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