'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 Scratch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scratch. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Friday, April 7, 2017

Black Walls of Khemi

If you play any Conan RPGs and use terrain, you will probably come across the Black Walls of Khemi eventually.

This is my take on those black walls with a simple construction tutorial.

Enjoy!

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Monday, December 5, 2016

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Jungle Vegetation: Aquarium plants revisited.

Another look at aquarium plants.

This is my first attempt at a tutorial video hopefully people find it useful....


Thursday, November 3, 2016

Lost in the Jungle: Ruined Huts

And so our brave band, after being shipwrecked on some lost coast of the Black Kingdoms and fighting their way past hostile tribes have come to a once open settlement that is now overgrown with jungle and in ruins.

The village huts, once likely thatched, only remain as rings of rough hewn stone.



Cut out a piece of foam core larger than you want the stone hut to be.

Shave the edges down to create a nice slope.

Draw a circle approximately where you would like the hut to sit.



Cut polystyrene blocks for the structure.  These blocks are about 1" x 1/2" x 1/2".

Begin fitting the stones to your circle by cutting corners at appropriate so they fit together.

Glue the blocks into place.  I used hot glue, but the high temperatures melted the foam in some places.  Next use your x-acto knife to distress the first level of stones.

Repeat with the second layer of blocks: fit, glue and distress.

Base coat the entire project in black.

Roughly paint the stones with a dark grey.

Add a lighter grey over the dark a little heavier than a dry brush.



Use a white to hit the edges of the stones.
Cover the base in white glue to prepare it for a covering of sand
Base covered in sand.  Once it is dry add more watered down white glue to cement it in place.
Paint base sand with a dark brown.
Dry brush with a lighter brown to bring out detail.
Add some moss flock to the edges.
Completed ruin.









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.