My space combat DIY gaming mat

[sundayhero]

Hi,


In this topic I'll show you my space combat gaming mat. I recently bought 5150:StarNavy rule from TwoHourWargames (as a solo gamer, I'm probably one of the best THW customers  ).

Like the textured mat I made for Force On Force, the goal is to recycle old material and paint, make some room in the modelling materials, and not spend a dime on these side projects.

So I first painted a yellow cotton cloth (black is better, but I don't have any cloth of this color...Remember that it's recycling) with 3 coats of acrylic black paint.


Then, using an old purple spray can with some paint left, I painted some halos of light.


I finally correct some defects with a black spray paint I had (some paint I bought to undercoat minis but wich was not good enough).


Here's the result. I still have to add some stars, I'll make them with the famous toothbrush technic.The mat measurements are around 130cms x 100cms. 

[The Voivod]

Looks nice.
Interested on how the toothbrush technique works.
Don't the stars line up to much doing that?

[sundayhero]

Thanks,


In fact you use the toothbrush to spray the paint. You tap the brush in white paint, then with your finger, you randomly spray it.

The difficult is to not make too much big spots, and evenly spread the stars all around.

[smokezombie]

A cracking start. This is on my to-do list also so I'm inter instead in seeing how you do the stars.

Only white?

[The Voivod]

Yeah, I know the technique.
Making a cloth myself at the moment.
My worries are, with the toothbrush, you get a arc that originates from one point, creating lines of stars.
I'm not sure how better to explain it.

I know of this other technique: coverring the cloth with  foil with holes in it and hitting it with a spraycan.
I get the feeling this will look more natural, but the toothbrush is way easier.

[sundayhero]

I just finished the stars, I don't think you see a "scheme" in their position. The unique problem is the big "splotches" of paint I did sometimes 

I tried to remove some of them in the fresh paint. Awfull  Now my mat is more 110cm x100cm 

We'll see once it's dry to scratch the defects with Xacto and make a few corrections with fine brush.

[sundayhero]

Here's some pics of the stars. On the first pics, you can see the randomness of their positions. On the last 2pics, you can see what mistakes you may try to avoid (last pic I tried to remove the paint with a sponge...) 

Too much paint on the brush = mistakes. But not enough paint = mist instead of plain dots.

[The Voivod]

That looks far better the I thought it would.
Might reconsider my method, allthough I allready have the cheap spray can and foil.

I've got untill the missus stitches up the cloth for me to think about it though.

Nice starfield and thanks for the info.

[Andrew May]

Great work, the purple is a really neat idea. 

[sundayhero]

Thanks !

Now I have to scratchbuild some fleets 

[Hitman]

That is awesome. So much talent on this website. Your game mat looks like it will be fantastic to play games on. Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Hitman
 

[sundayhero]

Thank you !

I finished the mat, cutting the edges and correcting defects (mostly reducing too big white dots).

It's very difficult to make a good pic of the mat. In real it's significantly darker. I used only 2 colors, flat black and purple.

[The_Beast]

Impressive, indeed!

I was going to suggest toothbrush 'spraying' a light coat/sparse stars, rotating the canvas, putting down some more, ad nauseum, but yours looks just great!

Has anyone tried speckle airbrush tips for star spray?

Doug

[Cosmotiger]

When I asked about the toothbrush spatter method, someone on the Starship Combat forum mentioned using an eyedropper to paint stars on his mat. That sounds like it would give more control (but would take longer, I assume).

[sundayhero]

Eye dropper will be good only for biggest stars : you can barely see on my bad pics, there is literally thousands of stars on the mat, of diferent size, from 1/10mm to 2 or 3mm.

The diferent sizes bring the mat an interesting deepness.

And don't forget the fact the toothbrush spray random positions, with an eyedropper you may create (without really thinking of it) some kind of scheme.