'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

Corrupt Cliffs
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Showing posts with label Terrain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrain. Show all posts

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Fenced in.

After building the farm/frontier house and looking at it for awhile and thought it would be unlikely they would have no fenced pens, no way to keep some small amount of livestock.

I have seen many fences build, and I doubt mine are revolutionary, that being said, here is a modular fence system.

Supplies:
Wide craft sticks
Wooden stir sticks.
Wooden match sticks.
Hot glue.
Cutters.
Pumice paste or PVA and sand.


Step 1: Take 2 match sticks and cut them in half

Step 1: Match sticks cut in half. These will be your fence uprights.

Step 2: Cut the end off a stir stick, so that it is flat and then cut to length, slightly shorter than the jumbo craft stick.  These will be your long fence boards.

Step 3: Using hot glue, glue the upright posts to each end of the fence board and then fill in the other two.  You can measure or eyeball.  I just put them approximately in the correct place.

Step 4:  Put a small dab of hot glue on each of the upright posts to attach the second fence board.

Step 4 Cont: Attach the second fence board to the uprights to give you your fence.

Step 5: Place a thick bead of glue along the length of the jumbo craft stick, this will be the base.  Alternatively you could place the glue only in the 4 places your uprights attach.

Step 5 Cont:  Place the uprights into the hot glue and hold it in place till the glue cools.

Step 6: Texture the base either with PVA and sand, or a pumice paste like Vallejo's and let dry.
Step 7: Paint the base colors:  Light brown on the fence and a dark green over the textured base.


Step 8: Add a dark wash over the wood and dry brush the base with a light green.





Tuesday, April 19, 2016

YouTube Channels

One of the greatest things the Internet & computers has given us, in my opinion, is the ability for the average guy to create content and stream that content to the world.  If you were like me and you enjoyed shows as a youth that showed you how to draw or how things worked, then seeing ideas people have is awesome.  YouTube has all kinds of videos from sample clips to full on walk throughs of all sorts of projects, from electronics to jewelry to woodworking to gaming and everything in-between.

Sometimes this results in channels that start, have a little content and die, channels with poor content, or channels that some people just don't enjoy, but there are many good channels available, and I wanted to go through a list of the channels that I enjoy and find useful as far as terrain, miniatures and gaming go.

Some of these channels are aimed at wargaming and others are aimed more at a roleplaying environment, but all have some pretty good ideas for building terrain.

These channels are aimed at war games terrain.


Terrain Tutor
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTerrainTutor

Excellent overview channels, many ideas and concepts.  Intro to terrain building, making flock etc.

Comissar Gamza
https://www.youtube.com/user/GamzaTheEternal

Aimed largely at Warhammer, some good tutorials on found object terrain.

TerranScapes
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCotNwY5c3SD_sDjejcFJ_7Q
Some beautiful terrain, mostly a commercial site though.

The following channels are aimed more at D&D but all contain some excellent construction ideas on the cheap.

DMs Craft

https://www.youtube.com/user/theDMsCraft

Black Magic Craft
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2Rlv-ug-mtnXuMwlpcqFgg


Drunken & Dragons
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCh5vto8JFstb9Sma9zV25g


Wyloch
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrKJd7jQ989DZvtf5C69mYA

DMG Info
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheDMGinfo

Dungeons and Gluesticks
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZvZvalRLgkGXmFTpHEJBiw

I am sure there are other great channels out there, please leave links to any channels you like or find interesting.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Frontier Cabin

"He hurried down the road, crossed Scalp Creek and came in sight of the first settler's cabin—a, long, low structure of ax-hewn logs. In an instant he was pounding on the door. A sleepy voice inquired his pleasure."

-Beyond the Black River
Robert E Howard.

The following is a build of a frontier cabin, maybe something that might fit into the Aquilonian frontier as found in Beyond the Black River.  In the end the logs on this cabin have a more rounded look than perhaps axe hewn logs should have, but I think it gets the point across.


Experimenting with log texture on foam core.

Dimensions for cabin end.

Dimensions for the main wall.

Main pieces laid out with textured piece.  Paper removed from foam core in preparation for texturing.

Lines were drawn with a ball point pen and then these are pushed in to form the crevasses between the logs using a rounded clay tool.

Textured cabin glued with PVA and pinned to wait for it to dry.

Cabin with 25mm Bones Pirate for scale.  Glue is dry, main structure is complete.  I end up putting in a floor and an interior wall to combat some of the bowing I was seeing in the main walls.  I also reinforced the wall joints with hot glue on the inside.

Simple chimney.  Styrene with ball point pen texture.  The texturing could have been deeper, I lost a fair bit of detail when I painted.

Main cabin now with card roof cut from box can boxes (12 packs).  Doors and windows framed with stir sticks.  Cabin walls painted dark brown and dry brushed with a lighter brown.

Cutting the shingles.

Each shingle was cut and glued on with PVA.

First row of shingles.

Completed side.

Shingled roof on the cabin.

More or less finished cabin with various scatter terrain.  Inside of the cabin has been painted black.  Stone door step has been added as well as a door made from stir sticks.  Ridge beams added along the top of the building to join the two shingled sides, this was hot glued into place.  Roof is removable, if players need to be inside, but the inside is unfinished. 

Monday, April 4, 2016

Aquarium Bushes

This is a pretty basic piece of terrain, simple scatter terrain to give the feeling of underbrush/jungle for 28mm or perhaps towering jungle vegetation in 15mm.

Start with a washer about the size you want to make your plant base, mine were probably 1 1/2" - 2"

Cut a piece of card to fir over the washer and cover the hole.
  
I used hot glue to glue the card to the base of the washer.

Poke three or so holes in the card to accept the aquarium plant stems.  You may wish to texture and paint your base at this time.  I was in a hurry and experimenting so I didn't both at this point.
 
Insert plants into the holes.

Wire the plants into a standing position.

Fill the bottom hole where the stems are with hot glue.  Be careful to make sure your plants don't pop out of the glue as you let it set.

Sample bushes/vegetation around a bridge I am working on.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Bones for Terrain.

Recently I came across a few cool pieces of terrain that features large exposed skeletons.  It reminded me of something from Star Wars or the bone yard from Pitch Black.  I wanted to build some terrain that features large bones.

I was planning on going local to pick up something at Michaels.  Before I did I hit the internet, and came across the following item:

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B013DISYEE?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

$10.99... Canadian.  Free shipping?  I gave them a shot and they arrived quickly.

I haven't built anything with them yet, but I thought I would post a few photos so you could all see them in scale with a 15mm as well as see how they take paint.


The packaging they come shipped in is minimal.  Just the packing box and plastic bones in the bags. Nothing special, nothing to add to the cost.
The scale of these is large.  Dinos are big, yes, but these will do the job at 15mm of being extra large.  Here is a Rebel Minis Sahadeen trooper standing on the rib cage of the Triceratops skeleton.
Close up the skull.  It is split in two, like the rib cage.  This will allow you to potentially build twice as many skeletons.  Also note the cool cracked texture, this is on all of the bones.
This will be my painting test piece.  I plan on just giving it a quick wash and then dry brushing it.
The bone with the initial wash.  The wash brought out the cracks decently, but also identified a solid mold line that will need to be cleaned off.  Not a big deal, I just hadn't noticed it till the wash.
Finished with the drybrush, next to an unpainted.  I think, I would use a darker wash next time, but overall the extra detail provided by the cracks are a nice touch.

Overall for a random bunch of plastic bones for $11, I am pretty happy with the product.  If you are looking to incorporate a long dead monster in your sci-fi or even fantasy terrain, I think these are a pretty decent place to start.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Rocky Outcropping

In an effort to increase my scatter terrain collection to help cut down LoS for games I set out to build some new pieces.  This is the first of the pieces I completed for use in a Tomorrow's War game.


Materials:

Old CD
Rocks
Styrofoam
Flocking
Caulk
White glue
Hot glue
Paint

Basic layout.  White foam sealed and primed glued to the base with hot glue with a few rocks to make it more interesting.

Base built up a little with caulk to make it less smooth.  Then flocking applied; sand in some places and a tea mix in others.
After another black primer to cover everything, the base green color is added to the grassy areas.
Grey base color added to rocks, and then areas are highlighted via dry brush with a lighter color.
Finally some browns are applied to show some extra dirt around the base and some moss glued in place for bushes.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Morning Coffee, or is it?

I drink a fair bit of coffee.  Much of it is from coffee shops.  I throw a lot of cups away.  I have seen a few ideas using the "java jacket" sleeve as corrugated steel for shanty's etc.  but I wanted more.

I have had this idea rolling around in my head for a post for a couple of days before I finally got around to building it.

Goal: Create a sci-fi building (15mm) using only a coffee cup from a coffee house, plus glue and paint.

Materials:
Coffee cup
White glue
Hot glue
Texture paint(optional)
Knife and/or scissors
Ruler

Step 1: Get a coffee cup.  Drink coffee.  Clean cup.

Step 1 cont: These are the basic parts we have to work with.

Step 2:  Measure an equal distance down and cut out a segment.  NOTE:  If you make it a single floor and measure with a miniatire the top roof of the building is NOT the bottom of the cup.  I had a small issue with this.

Step 3: Cut out plastic from cup.  I had intended on using this cut out plastic for something, but I never did.

Step 4: Use the plastic ring as a base and test fit the cardboard.  This will probably only work well if your building is as about as tall as mine.
Step 5: Using exta cardboard add details and a door

Step 6: Because of the height of the building, I need an insert ring to attach it to the plastic building base so the door is not covered.

The building with the cardboard detail and riser ring for insert into base.

Step 7: Assemble building and add last bits of detailing: A ladded to allow men to get to the door and a hatch giving access to the roof.

Step 8: Use hot glue to glue the two pieces together.  I glued inside and out.  The outside will look aproximately like a VERY heavy weld line.  Gluing from the inside is probably good enough though.


Step 9: Using texture paint add further detail and fill in small spaces.  This can be used to simulate weld lines.  At this scale these will technically be huge unless you are way better at this than I am.

 

Building painted with it's base colors

Base colors plus some weathering.

Slightly different angle.