Last of the Mohicans-esque cliff terrain? -- Finished, 9/14/13

[Goosegog]

Wow. They look really good.

[anevilgiraffe]

yep, how do they fit together?

[von Lucky]

I'll be honest - they've come up a lot better than I thought they would. The overall shape and details look really natural - a credit to your foresight.

[mikedemana]

Thanks. Or it could just be lucky first try...!

The pieces fit together well. I made the styrene bases have almost no "lip" where I wanted them to fit together. Everywhere else, I gave myself an inch to half inch or so. This is a holiday weekend here in the States, so hopefully I'll get the dry brushing stage done by Monday evening...

I have 19 days before I have to run my game using them...!

Mike Demana

[mikedemana]

Okay...so I didn't take intermediate pictures during the dry brushing process. Laziness, I think. But I tried something different than I usually do. Instead of picking one basic tone for the rocks, I looked over my friend's hiking pictures from southern Ohio. There seemed to be a regular mix of browns and grays in the rock face. So, I wet brushed dark gray over it, then did a wet brush of Autumn brown over patches of it. Once dry, I drybrushed it light gray, then khaki, purposely trying to blend the brown and gray rocks to come up with a more uniform, mottled look.

Not sure if it worked out...and you may not really be able to tell until I am finished and stage an appropriately lighted photo shoot. I was in a hurry, so I also went ahead and did my first layer of coarse gravel in the cracks between the pine bark pieces, followed by medium ballast. Next up is sand, then grass flocking.

Comments? Criticisms? Oohs and aahs? Bored sighs?


The smallest cliff piece


The medium sized cliff piece


The central largest piece

Mike Demana

[Poiter50]

I like the actual rock/cliff face but I think your gravel is too coarse (and needs more colour variation). 

[von Lucky]

I agree with Poiter50, though I think that just painting the gravel different colours and using some different types/colour flock over it will solve it. Regardless - very nice work so far!

[Goosegog]

Looks very good. I like the blending on the rock face, but agree with the others the gravel/sand doesn't look quite right.

[mikedemana]

My bad...didn't clarify. The gravel is about to be covered by sand, which will then be covered up by grass flocking. You won't see that gravel in the finished product. It is just a way to build up some substance.

Mike Demana

[Goosegog]

My bad...didn't clarify. The gravel is about to be covered by sand, which will then be covered up by grass flocking. You won't see that gravel in the finished product. It is just a way to build up some substance.

Mike Demana

Ahhh! makes sense now!

[mikedemana]

Okay...so I left off with the coarse ballast on the cliffs. This provides the foundation for a finer ballast, sand, and then finally Woodland Scenics blended green turf flocking. After these stages were all done, I added in clump foliage for bushes and scrubs. I also did some work on the trees that are on each of the cliff sections, though I am not finished with them. I intend to sprinkle green flocking over the foliage to tone down the autumn red. The trees are Woodland Scenics bare branch plastic ones. I trimmed a number of the branches off. This was done to be able to slip on plastic plant pieces, which slide right over the branch. I also am going to do a spot of dry brushing on the trunk to give them a more realistic look, as well.

The cliffs are almost done, so these pictures are a pretty good indication of what they will look like when complete. I will do a better photo shoot with miniatures for scale when they are all complete. As always, comments and suggestions greatly appreciated. I'm pretty happy with how they are looking so far...just under two weeks from when I will be running a game with them!









Mike Demana

 

[Poiter50]

Nice. That takes away the coarseness of the underlying gravel, great improvement.

[eilif]

Good Heavens, those are beautiful. I think I've seen similar looking formations in Indiana and Wisconsin.

I really like the look of bark. I've recently started using it for basing my bad-guy Chaos army, and it' really looks like rock and is so easy to work with.

[Mitch K]

Mike, this looks REALLY good. Fantastic stuff - I will keep this in mind for when I need cliffs (I'm bound to sooner or later).

[Captain Blood]

They've turned out very well. Great effect