Swamp Land - Looking for help and advice

[brotherAkkyshan]

I'm looking for help and advice on building a Blood Bowl pitch and making it resemble a swamp. I'd originally intended to make the whole board water based but I can't come up with a suitable way of marking out the grid and keeping the 'swampy' feel. I'm thinking maybe to make the pitch itself solid ground, perhaps surrounding it with stagnant water. Therefore I am looking for tips on water effects and also using static grasses for the pitch. Also any ideas on dugouts? I was maybe thinking of those little run-down bayou cabins... anyone done anything similar? 

[Smokeyrone]

Such a cool idea!   I will think on this and get back if I come up with anything worthy of such a grand scheme!

[Red Orc]

Are 'dugouts' the little huts that the team/managers sit in? Because to me a 'dugout' is a kind of rough canoe, a log split in half with the centre hacked out... quite fitting for a swamp I think.

[al will]

I really like the all water board idea! Have you thought of using sunken logs, lilly pads, cattails or gators to mark out the grid? To mark out the grid edges maybe just the gator noses sticking out of the water with the rest of the gator below the water surface. Just a thought.

[brotherAkkyshan]

I had thought of this but the grid has so many cross sections that need to be marked out that I think the effect would be lost. I may go with a couple of large 'puddles' marked out with reeds in the middle of the pitch. I love the idea of the sunken 'gators too! Already eyeing up a couple of the Otherworld giant frogs as turn markers and such like.

[Andym]

Cool idea! I would go with the raised playing field personally and just put a couple of shallow puddles with maybe some reeds around the edges of them to make them look more swampy. A stagant moat around the field wood look cool then you could add the logs, gators, reeds and lillypads. The wee circles you get from hole punchs with a small notch cut out make good lillypads. What about some twisted twigs as uprights for either end of the pitch?. Maybe even use the same idea to make a run down scoreboard. For the actual board, pink insulating foam with your grid cut or scored into it would work.

Drew up a wee picture seen as I'm crap at trying to describe what I mean...


Hope this helps.

[Ettrick]

Golden Gel Mediums will offer you a variety of ways to get the finish and texture you want.

http://www.goldenpaints.com/products/medsadds/gels/gels.php  There are other names available but this is the one I happen to use in fine art.  They can be added to your pigment and upon curing give the end result.  There are some that produce a sort of concrete/pavement texture, another that would create a dried mud surface with cracks, but for you, I would recommend creating the colour surface with the greens and browns you want then mix up a batch of the highgloss medium with a bit of the pigments you'd like to bring up a bit like algae or mosses floating in the water.

I know that there are specific products for modeling water effects but you're not wanting waves or rapids since it's a pitch showing markings if I understood correctly.  You could, in fact, lay out a grid with moss, creepers and vines on your initial colour level then cover that with the gloss medium.

Remember that the most important visual aspect will be vanishing depth.  Most of our light is reflected off the top of the water when we look in.  Much of this pitch should look quite black with only areas of reflection, foliage, fauna, flotsam and jetsam for interest.

In the land of Pre-digital I had swamp terrain which looked quite good with no clear elements at all, just black and greens.  The green was a glossy, metallic that had separated so I dabbed off the top carefully avoiding the metallic.  A hint of green with glossiness.  I've since given the whole set away.

Have fun.