S.H.I.V.A Board (Finished!!! 28/3)

[Sangennaru]

greeeat start!

You may get some neat tips and ideas from the 3TF project done in a very similar vein. Check it out:
Part 1 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2151
Part 2 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2257
Part 3 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2307
Part 4 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2364
Part 5 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2333
Part 6 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2461
Part 7 - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2498
Final - http://www.3t-studios.com/archives/2558

Man this is much more than just inspiration! the work you did is SIMPLY AWESOME!

[FramFramson]

 

Sorry to disappoint you Sangennaru! I had no involvement in that project whatsoever!

[Andym]

Awesome! I'm going to follow this with great interest (and not just because my brother's cat is named Shiva, too). Cannot wait to see how you'll do mangroves/jungle foliage.

If you could spare the time, how did you do the depth on the brickwork? Did you add slices of foam or did you impress individual bricks using a stamp?

No probs Chris, I hope this helps.

I use a highly technical accurate tool.......a wee rock!



Just start off by marking out your brick pattern in pencil/pen and cut with a brand new, really sharp knife (this stops the foam 'tearing').



Then use a pencil again and open up the knife cuts you've made.



Next, using my special wee rock, I press all over the surface to give it a stony texture. With the corners of the rock I push a few of the bricks down, into the surface. This makes some look sunken and gives the various depths on the stone.



The jungle might cause me a problem. I'm not sure, on the bigger trees, if I should be putting in the foliage. My thinking is that it might get in the road of gameplay? The tree roots I'll do in a combination of cheap, air-dry, clay and green stuff. I've made a start on the one in the temple ruin. I've just rolled up 'sausages' of clay and stuck them on and just used a sculpting tool to give some wood grain texture. I plan to have more roots running through/over a wall and roof I've still to build.





Thanks very much for all the inspiration and comments guys!! Paul and Fram, those are great! I don't know if mine will be anywhere near as good as those guys though!!

[Suber]

Wooow! You make every project a piece of art and inspiration. Looking forward to see it!

[ink the troll]

I'm not sure, on the bigger trees, if I should be putting in the foliage. My thinking is that it might get in the road of gameplay?

You could make the canopies of the big trees removable via magnets. Insert magnet in treetrunk, on top goes a smaller bit of matching trunk (that has another magnet glued into the bottom section) with the branches & foliage attached.

Or just add canopies to big trees close to the edges of the board, should still give a jungely impression if you add smaller plants around the bigger trees and especially if you'd add some of those 'hanging roots' to the trunks as well. Easier to build and less time consuming as well.

[Westfalia Chris]

Grand, just grand! Thanks for taking the time to clear that up.

I am positively amazed by the good result; the bricks (or rather, blocks) looked so regular I assumed you had a rectangular stamp, but using that grainy rock with a sharp corner actually seems to work wonders. For engraving bricks, I pretty much use the same method (altough I usually pencil them in first, then use a steel awl to deepen the lining), but I usually just sand them over using various grains of sandpaper to get a rougher texture. Then again, I mostly did brick, and for hewn blocks, your method looks rather superior. Have to try it myself.

Regarding foliage, I see your dilemma, and given some recent experience using bonsai twigs and railway foliage to make trees, I'd think twice on if and how to use foliage. The magnet suggestion sounds quite good! An interesting solution I saw some time on the Spartan Games boards was to have the jungle canopy as a single piece, made by placing foliage on some textile net, then soaking the whole thing in thinned PVA. It dries to a single mass of foliage. I don't know how well it would work for 28mm, though; but you could adapt it by creating leaf cover "segments" which could be removed in places as needed.

[Braz]

Great start as usual. Where do you find the time? Thanks for the mini-tutorial on the blocks. Very informative.

[uti long smile]

Tree looks good!

[Brummie Thug]

Nice tutorial for the stone block effect

[grant]

Really like that rock tutorial!

This is just an excellent dose of daily epicness. Or something. Yes, epicness.

[Commander Roj]

Always wanted to do an island/secret sub pen base myself as a child. (Who am i fooling, i still do!") Watching with anticipation and hoping to see it at a show.

[Iain R]

Just sat and read the entire London board thread, and that is beyond bloody awesome mate!

This one's looking like it's going to be more of the same; the kettle's on and my chair is comfy, crack on that man!

Cheers
Iain

[Andym]

So I reckon I've got a big bit of a problem! I bought an off cutting of sofa foam to make up my cliff face. It's only a couple of quid and all you do is tear it up and coat it in finishing skim, which it soaks up and goes hard. It ends up looking something like this.....



 Here's the dilemma, with it in place the board feels WAY too crowded...







I think the plan would work on a bigger board, but I'm restricted to 600x600mm.

Please help?

[von Lucky]

Firstly - man up! Start by not drinking any more pink juice.

Secondly - go back to your original drawings which had a good layout. Unfortunately your Hindu ruins seems to be too big. Could solve it by moving it to the corner and a smaller jungle piece in the middle of the open space. Otherwise move the alignement of the dividing wall to allow more outside space.

[Westfalia Chris]

From the top-down view, the cliff face looks rather massive - 4" or something like that? That may be an optical issue, but as von Lucky pointed out, with the area terrain pieces in front, there isn't too much space left over on the outside.

I wonder if you could just thin down the cliff-face wall to a total of 2" for the walls and 3" for the entry area. You could add the impression of depth by adding a thin layer of foliage on top of the wall and maybe some carvings to surround the entry area.

That said, a jungle IS usually a bit crowded (although often less so than people imagine, me included), so the main issue would be to increase the physical space (to allow for movement and figure placement) while keeping an optical impression of density.

I agree that moving the ruin piece a bit more off-centre, or replacing it with a less massive version could work. It looks, essentially, like a rather large block, so you could instead do the (cliché, I admit) L-shaped ruin wall with just a piece of ceiling remaining - it will still be an LOS blocker, but look less massive and allow figures to enter the piece if needed.