15mm Diablo Project update: Updated hero 8/17

[CookAndrewB]

Love the look of the painted building. Using cork for walls is a new one on me but seems obvious now i think about it! And I was painting the same Alternative Armies skellies last night!

Not sure where you are located, but cork seems to be more readily available in Europe (closer to the source) and cork can be oddly expensive here in the USA. Still, I have purchased some here and there when I find it at a decent price. Mostly this means buying something like a cork board DIY kit with 4-8 square tiles. It isn't what I would call high quality cork, and I've had some issues with it being flimsy for larger builds unless I have given it some structure with craft sticks, etc. But, for this size of build, it is actually pretty reasonable. I'm also not trying to cut open windows or doors. Making small cuts with the stuff I have (or using a dull razor blade) can tend to make it go to bits, like polystyrene foam. The good news is that anything that crumbles off can easily be used for basing elsewhere. Waste not, want not!

[CookAndrewB]

More lovely stuff. I like the skeletons I have them too.

As to your printing question. If I were to do it (long way off) I'd create them no bigger than 10cm x 10cm, so 4" as you were saying. But that is a long way off I reckon, of I ever do it.

These were my first 15mm figures to paint. It is a bit different than the normal 28mm stuff I paint. Less detail, but even the "big" surfaces are fine details. They don't lack any character though!

I really need to get a 3d printer. It sounds like a great way to build some things without spreading tools and cutting boards all over the dining room table 

[CookAndrewB]

Two updates in one, today. First up is Gillian's home.

Weathering and timber painting went as well as before. I think it has a rather nice look about it and I like the high contrast between the mud and wood.


The chimney probably needs another wash and another dry brush, but overall I'm pleased with the sculpt of it.


I'm going to work on the windows this weekend. Below will be the hard set to paint up because the panes are quite small.


Onto the Blacksmith:

Finished building the windows. After getting the hang of the construction process, I can work through bulk windows without a lot of time.

The basic production steps, in case anyone is curious, are to cut a cardboard shape, then trim some craft sticks/stir sticks to size for the frame. These I glue on "precisely" by which I really mean that I use very little glue so it doesn't ooze out of the edges. Once these are dry (takes maybe 30 minutes) I fill the frame insides with glue. From there I trim three pieces of wire. One long, and two short, for a standard 4 pane window. Then I just drop the wire cuttings into the glue puddle, push them into position, and let that dry out. Then I hit the frame one more time with a light PVA to cover over the frame wire so that it is sandwiched in between two layers of PVA. Depending on how goopy the first fill is, I might be waiting 60-90 minutes to do the second overcoat. The result is that the little wires are at no risk of popping out/off and they can handle a decent amount of fussing without coming loose. On the better fit windows the wire is also wedged in place a bit, which doesn't hurt anything.


This isn't as fidgety as it felt when I first started making windows this way.

Some work done on the forge:

The dark timber with the dark forge were not going to work, so I went with lighter wood stain for the floor.

And painted a nice glow perfect for forging weapons to defeat a demonic army.


Over the weekend I'm going to try and get started on painting my fighters (three variants depending on the character's gear). I have my sorcerer figures and rogue figures also purchased and washed up, so in the end there will be three variants of each. From a gaming standpoint, I think the variants for each will look something like:
Fighter variants: Tank (heavy armor, lower damage), balanced damage/armor, and light armor heavy damage.
Sorcerer variants: Fire damage (weak area damage and damage over time), Cold damage (moderate damage and slow/freeze effect), lighting (high damage single target, or straight line damage)
Rogue variants: dual blade (fast attack speed, sneak attack extra damage), Bow (medium speed attack, cone area effect), Spear (slow attack, knock back)

... Something like that. I also want to develop some magic spells for each figure, regardless of the variant. Basically a dumbed down version of the game, though a lot of these ideas are more in line with Diablo II than DI.

[CookAndrewB]

I did some work on finishing up the blacksmith's shop, and undercoated the mystical emporium this weekend. I'll snap some pictures of all that tonight. I wanted to get this posted last week, but ran out of time...

The Cathedral of Tristram:


Work in progress, of course.



Windows will be more stained glass, but I am thinking about painting these fully, rather than trying to create a picture with wire and fill it in.


I am going to do one of two things with the entrance (tube) portion. One, I will try to thinly slice the foam blocks so I can get them to conform to the curve a bit. If that doesn't work, I'll mimic some of the brick inconsistency by using 2-3 different thicknesses of cardboard. I'm thinking that if the foam is thin enough it should work. I'll build out an entrance alcove so the door doesn't need to be rounded. I'm also thinking that I will make the roof removable so I can store scenery bits inside.

[peleset]

A long long time since I played Diablo, I don't remember a great deal other than that music and that Cathedral.

[CookAndrewB]

A long long time since I played Diablo, I don't remember a great deal other than that music and that Cathedral.

I'll get you caught up on everything you have forgotten... You kill stuff and pick up what they drop in an attempt to win the loot drop lottery. I'm pretty sure these games are the video game equivalent of crack. I can't even fathom how many times I said "I'm just going to run one more time this area so I can farm this boss and hope I get the gear I've been hunting for." 

[CookAndrewB]

Made some progress on the Whizzing Dragon Inn (mostly windows and framing):


The lower framing on the side wall helps keep the top aligned when in place.


I started work on the three Fighter variants (defense/balance/attack). I've started thinking them as the Red Bulwark, the Golden Harmony, and the Birr-Zerker (Birr is a whirring noise or forward momentum. Learned a new word and it fit perfectly. Double score!)

Red Bulwark before paint:


And now:


Back:


Some touch up work to do, but overall I'm pretty happy.

Next up will be to make some progress on the Cathedral, as the 1-2 layers of brick work at a time is tedious, and get some paint on the Mystical Emporium and Blacksmith's shop. Once the Blacksmith and Mystical Emporium are ready to have windows painted, I think I'll do a group paint of windows so that the first four buildings are pretty consistent. After having done four buildings, I should be able to replicate the windows on the Inn, and the Cathedral is an entirely different thing anyway.

[CookAndrewB]

Got the Mystical emporium primed and the tower coated in pva/spackle mix. Just the right mix of filling the holes in the cork bricks and leaving the brick shapes.




The next couple pictures are a bit washed out, but the camera was hating the black of the building and the relatively light surface of the roof.


Once the building is painted, I'll get my health/mana barrels painted up and installed on the flat space above.

I am thinking that the window frames on this build should be colorful, or metallic. The deck and the roof will remain a more natural wood, but I feel like the grey stone sides could use some pops of color and I'm worried that a dark wood won't look right.

[CookAndrewB]

So, I've been lazy about getting updates posted and I have a lot of ground to make up here.

WIP picture of the blacksmith slate roof:


Jump forward to the blacksmith walls painted and dry brushed, wood has been stained, and the windows painted:


Rear wall/window:


Windows were just a simple light/mid/dark blue with a gloss varnish (lightly tinted with blue wash) painted over the top. I've been going back and forth on what color to paint the wire panes. Some builds look better in black, others look better in silver so there has been a mix.

For example, Farnham's house looked better with black panes:


Gillian's home too. Maybe it is because of the high contrast of the walls?


So that pretty much catches up some older projects getting some finishing touches added. The rest of the week will be mostly new stuff.

[CookAndrewB]

Mystical emporium has been painted.


The stones in the tower didn't end up standing out quite as much as I would have liked, but the painted on stone works for me.


FIrst step in the stained glass window is done.


Next step is to go over these with gloss varnish with just a bit of like color tint, and then maybe just a bit of white mixed in to the varnish to lighten some areas as highlights. I'll see how that goes.


In the meantime, I've been working on the first of a couple tiles for the above ground portion of the game. This is the basic mapping, and the start of texturing the ground sections.


With the buildings in their proper footprints.


And, lastly, with the texture in progress of getting painted up, and the buildings in place. I will be adding some sparse vegetation here and there once I work out the paths. Right now I'm thinking I will leave the cork bare and just paint the paths grey with some wash/dry brush work to help the cork stand out as cobblestones. If that doesn't work... probably acrylic paste to give the paths a worn smooth appearance, and paint them a slightly lighter shade from the rest of the earth color.

The town center marker will be swappable so there can be a poisoned well, and a drinkable well after that particular story line is completed. Likewise, I'm going to work out how to make a removable sign for the inn so I can include the fetch-the-sign plot into my game as well.

I will do a specific post for building the hill around the Inn, tomorrow.   

[CookAndrewB]

This is the WIP pictures for the hill build situated around the Inn.

Basic start is to layer some corrugated cardboard:


Really, just about anything can be tossed in there to provide some contour. This also has wine cork and sand/glue mix. Since this hill wraps around the inn, I provided a flat back to the hill. If you were making plain old hills, that would hardly be necessary.

So, it fits like this.




After the initial build has dried, then I go over the contour with glue/spackle mix. You could do glue/spackle/sand etc. In this case I mostly wanted it to be smooth up to the cork and then I wanted it to look like boulders and rocks.

This is partially painted (duh).


This is a bit washed out, but it allows you to see the state of things with the rock/boulder sections.


And lastly you can see how the hill footprint sits on the terrain tile.


Next week I'll post up some tree builds.

[gibby64]

Those look fantastic!... can't wait to see the finished board!

[CookAndrewB]

Thanks!

I made a little progress dry brushing the dirt sections this weekend. I'm going to try and get the paths painted up this evening. I got distracted by a couple other projects and this didn't make a ton of forward progress.

In the meantime, I did do a little scratch built tree project.

I whipped up a couple test trees, fairly small in size.


Trees were constructed using pipe cleaners for the armature. I liked this for a couple reasons. First, the fibers in the pipe cleaner seemed to help fill out some of the body of the trees. Two, in hindsight, these things are pretty well bomb proof (which is good for my clumsy self). So I gave the trees an initial coat with wood glue/PVA, and then once that was dry I hit them again with a spackle/PVA mix. The fibers seemed to keep everything laced together once it dries out.

To get these started I just wrapped them around the base, like so:


Total time to make these four trees (armature) was less than five minutes. glue and second coat take a bit longer, but mostly that is just wait time while things dry.


The original four have all dried out and I'm starting to get paint on them. Once the first coat of glue dries, I do snip the wrapped-under pieces of the pipe cleaner. The pipe cleaner along the base goes a fair job of looking like exposed root structure. I'm pretty pleased with how this quick little addition turned out. Enough so that I'm working on some 28mm versions as well. Right now I'm undecided as to whether these will get some greenery or just stay dead trees.

[tjub]

Cool, the terrain looks great so far!

[CookAndrewB]

Cool, the terrain looks great so far!

Thanks, tjub.

For today, a couple small updates on my Fighter class gear. This is the Golden Harmony. A balanced attack/defense equipment set.


I feel like I need to yellow up the gold a bit, and potentially paint the "head" atop his helmet. Not sure what is going on up there. Perhaps it is a blessed artifact from the craftsman who created the armor. So in-tune with the natural ebb and flow, rise and fall, of life that in creating the armor the armor equally destroyed the man. Thus ensuring a perfect harmony in the universe.


I really need to get cracking on some of these figures. I have the first bit of terrain mostly finished. I need to wrap up the cathedral and finish off the Inn, but otherwise I'm pretty well finished with the town. Now I need inhabitants!

The actual dungeon set is staled to be here in June, which means I have a little bit of time to mess around before there are any games to be played. I really need to find some good 15mm set dressing for the dungeon. I've picked up some dead adventurer objective markers, and some little piles of skulls, little piles of gold... but I would love to have a few demonic statue/plinth types of things to throw in there as well. I'll probably try my hand at scratch building a couple little items as well.