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Author Topic: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Mirambo (Heaps of Corpses) painted.  (Read 65892 times)

Offline Hammers

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Another new gaming board
« Reply #375 on: April 16, 2021, 07:06:26 AM »
What a gorgeous board!

Offline Diablo Jon

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Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Another new gaming board
« Reply #377 on: April 17, 2021, 08:07:08 PM »
I’m soldiering on with more tiles, roads tiles mainly, for my new gaming board. As some one asked if I could do a “how to” post on the tiles, I’m taking photos, and trying to catalogue my processes as I’m going along and hopefully soon I’ll having something to post. In the mean time I wanted to experiment with 2 part epoxy resin to form water features. I have a number of river tiles to complete but before tackling those I wanted to practice so I made an African watering hole tile for my board as a place to practise using the resin.

It didn’t quite come out as I’d hoped I ended up using a lot more resin, than I’d planned, as the first couple of layers I poured I struggled with air bubbles. I tried tinting the resin, with ink, which I overdid so that my carefully modelled mud, at the bottom of the hole, that was supposed to be visible through the resin didn’t really show up. Lastly I used to much resin on the mud edges to the watering hole so instead of puddles in the mud I ended up covering most of the mud up. In the end I’m not to upset this was always meant to be a learning project, and I up gaining some useful experience of working with resin, and while it didn’t turn out as I’d hoped its a serviceable enough piece of scenery. Any way here are a few pictures.








Offline has.been

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #378 on: April 17, 2021, 08:20:41 PM »
I now have a strong desire to sing a Flanders & Swan song.

"Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood."

Offline marianas_gamer

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #379 on: April 17, 2021, 11:19:37 PM »
No matter the pain of the learning process I think that this came out grand! :-*
Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Offline Jack Jones

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #380 on: April 18, 2021, 10:09:49 AM »
I think the result looks great. Well done!

Offline Dr. The Viking

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #381 on: April 19, 2021, 05:35:42 AM »
Amazing work that you share with us in this thread. Thank you.  :)
My Empire - where everything I ever did is collected:

http://www.c0wabunga.com

Offline Mad Guru

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #382 on: April 19, 2021, 07:55:23 AM »
Diablo Jon,

I have tremendous sympathy for you, having mixed, ink-tinted, and poured two-part clear epoxy resin to make a 2'x4' swamp board and 10' of river boards.  Being a bit of an OCD perfectionist type, I found it a very challenging, even grueling, process.  As you say, the only way to really learn how it works is by doing.  I think you had a great idea starting out with your watering-hole board.  I know the feeling when you realize you mixed too much green and/or blue ink into the pour and lost sight of your carefully modeled underwater floor!  Re: those pesky little air bubbles -- you probably are already aware but in my experience they can be dispatched with a small butane lighter typically used to light BBQs, fireplaces, etc., as seen here:



You hold the lighter close to the bubbles and the heat reduces surface tension and also speeds up evaporation, causing them to pop.  This method worked well for me.  You just have to be extra careful if you planted any REEDS or SWAMP GRASS on the floor of your water feature and which you have poured your resin all around, as these can easily catch fire.  Another difficult challenge I had, in addition to figuring out a formula for how much ink to add while maintaining some transparency, was exactly how long into the curing process to stop dragging a popsicle stick through the resin, in order to get some visible wave action in the surface when it had completely dry.  Again, you probably know this already, and from the looks of your watering-hole you already know how to do an excellent job of it, but if you want a slightly more "active" looking surface when you make your river boards, I suggest dragging a bit deeper into the poured resin, and also a bit later in the curing process, which will allow the "waves" to stay a bit more pronounced when they finish curing.  I did my tests on small cut-off pieces built expressly for that purpose.  They were somewhat useful but will never appear in a single game, unlike your "test piece," which as everyone else has already noted, turned out awesome!  I have no doubt your rivers will too, and am excited to see them when the time comes.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2021, 08:04:46 AM by Mad Guru »
"We shall see what wisdom lies beneath my madness!"

Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #383 on: April 19, 2021, 08:15:41 AM »
Thanks for the kind comments guys

Mad Guru@ Thanks for the tips. I had read about the heat idea I used a small flexible table lamp with an old school bulb close to the surface to provide heat after my first pour turned into a bubbly nightmare. With regards to texturing the surface (I used a cheap plastic fork to try and texture mine) it seems you have to get the drying time just right. Go to soon and resin smooths out again go to late and instead of nice smooth water ripples you end up with a bit of a mess. In the end I textured mine with a thin layer of clear PVA glue which was much easier to work with but I have seen a youtube tutorial where  a guy used a clear glue/grip in a cartridge gun to make rough water over resin it looked pretty good so I'm thinking of trying that on my rivers.

Offline bc99

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #384 on: April 19, 2021, 02:29:53 PM »
If either of you have any suggestions for time regarding when to try and texture I would be all ears.. I’m planning to make a small water feature for a fantasy board. Great stuff on this some of my favorite terrain projects you’ve documented.

Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #385 on: April 21, 2021, 04:54:03 AM »
If either of you have any suggestions for time regarding when to try and texture I would be all ears.. I’m planning to make a small water feature for a fantasy board. Great stuff on this some of my favorite terrain projects you’ve documented.

Thanks bc, I wish I could suggest a good time, I found texturing the resin its self quite hard, I think finding a different medium to texture over the top of the resin is the way to go.

Offline JBaumal

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board waterhole tile
« Reply #386 on: April 21, 2021, 12:18:11 PM »
Diablo Jon, that’s a great idea. You could use a clear and smooth acrylic  type medium to apply over its for ripples or texture. Check out the river the Mad Guru made a few years ago. This stuff may work.

http://maiwandday.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-canal-too-far-for-operation-market.html?m=0



Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Another new gaming board
« Reply #387 on: April 24, 2021, 08:34:46 PM »
Those boards look great, excellent execution! They certainly look the business for Africa. I’m looking forward to what you do with the rest of the boards. Do you have any WIP pics?

You asked so here we go  :)

I’ve managed another five tiles for my new board I did get a request for some WIP photos so this post is it. By necessity this going to be quite a long post, but working on a picture paints a thousand words principle, I’ll try and keep the word count low and use pictures to illustrate how I did things.

A few thoughts before I get started. I can’t take credit for anything here the techniques I used where all found online and YouTube has a wealth of useful videos in particular I recommend watching the Geek Gaming channel but don’t discount they model railway guys as they have some great ideas and techniques. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, leave plenty of drying time between stages or you could well end up with a big wet mess.

So my whole new gaming board is built using the Sally 4th Terra-former range. I won’t spend a lot of time talking about it, needless to say I’m a big fan, if you want to know more I suggest popping along to Sally 4ths website here https://wargamesbuildings.co.uk/epages/950003459.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/950003459/Categories/TerraFormers

1. So having built my Terra-formers and stuck in the earth magnets the first job is to fill them with polystyrene I got mine from the local DIY store. Sally 4th gave me a handy template to cut the polystyrene to the right size and then I secured it place using No More Nails.





2. These tiles are road and track tiles so I needed to mark them out, a task made much easier as the Terraformers have laser cut slots, that pop out, evenly spaced out around the sides. I used a chefs blow torch to melt the road and tracks into the polystyrene. Be really careful when you this as you only need a low heat, very briefly, linger to long and instead of a track you’ll have a huge crater.





3. The next step is apply texture and fill any gaps (that come from your dodgy cutting). You could probably use a whole range of different products but I chose a home made mixture of brown, flexible, tile grout, sand, PVA glue and some orange brown paint mixed with water into a…. errrr gloop. I applied this gloop with a spatula and some cheap pound land paint brushes (because the paint brushes get ruined very quickly). I tried to sculpt the roads and tracks while the mixture is wet.







4. Once the texturing is full dry (I found this took a couple of days) I then took a brown spray can and gave the edges a couple of coats you could of course paint them with a brush.



5. Next I painted the tiles an orange/brown to fit in with my African dry season theme but obviously you could go with whatever colour you feel fits your chosen theatre of operations. My basic colour was supplied by the local DIY Shop and for the base coat I added a touch of dark brown craft paint. Once the base coat was dry I dry brushed the tiles with the original colour and then the original colour mixed with a sand yellow. The final part of the paint job was to use a red-brown wash to give some shade and depth especially on the roads and tracks



6. Once the paint is dry its time to add the foam flock. I used four different coloured foam flocks, applied using a cooking sieve, and fixed in place using watered down scenery cement from Woodland Scenics. To start I applied neat PVA to areas I wanted the flock to sit on an added my darkest foam flock. Then I sprayed it with a mixture of water and rubbing alcohol as a wetting agent. spray with the watered down scenic cement and then sprinkle on the next darkest foam flock and repeat until your happy. After my final and lightest coloured foam flock layer I added a, yellow, fine turf sawdust flock and some of my darker foam flock as a blending layer. At this point you will look at the whole thing and think ” What the hell have I done? This is a horrible wet mess!” but once it dries out (and this can take several days) it actually looks pretty good. I used browns and yellows but the whole technique would work just as well with various shades of green.












7. Once the foam flock is thoroughly dry (which takes a while as the foam flock acts like a sponge) we can move on to adding patches of static grass. I Used three sizes (2mm.3mm and 4.mm) in yellow and brown colour. I use a static grass applicator which I picked up cheap on eBay I’d love some of the better ones but they can be rather expensive. I started with more PVA glue where I wanted patches of grass and then applied my 2mm dark brown grass with the applicator I then sprayed it with a matt spray varnish. While the spray varnish was still wet I added patches of light brown 3mm grass sprayed that with matt varnish and added more patches of yellow 4mm grass a final spray of varnish was followed up by a light dusting of 2mm brown flock as a blending layer.





8. The final stage was break out my collection self adhesive of grass tufts and bushes and add a few to the the tracks, roads and open spaces to finish the look



And that’s it. All pretty simple really with the right equipment and materials. Next up I’m starting on the high ground tiles so I can have ridge lines, large hills and so on.

Offline JBaumal

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board some WIP pictures
« Reply #388 on: April 25, 2021, 01:22:49 PM »
Wow, those really look great!!!! Thanks for the WIP steps, it’s really interesting how it was done.

Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - New gaming board some WIP pictures
« Reply #389 on: April 26, 2021, 08:02:28 AM »
Wow, those really look great!!!! Thanks for the WIP steps, it’s really interesting how it was done.

Your welcome if even one gamer can pick up a useful tip or two for their own projects, from my  efforts, I'm happy to share.

 

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