Ikwen Rock Village WIP - Part Two

For folks following this project, here is my second video commenting on the process of this build.

15mm Anime Robot Scratchbuild

By Eli

I posted pictures of a model I built out of bits and pieces and got some questions about it, so I decided to make a little video...

Alien Trees - Tutorial

By: Umpapa
From: http://umpapas.blogspot.com/

Many people have asked how I made the tree visible in the pictures.

 

1. chose the colors : purple (instead of brown) and orange (instead of green) with blue detailing. It goes well with my beloved fur of Kilrathi / Kzin /Felids .
2. Find (preferably in late summer) tiny cones.
3. You may try to put the additional steel nail to the bottom of  bottom of bigger of cones.
4. Push gently 2 cm steel nails into spraying board.
5. Hot glue nails and cones.
6 Spray the cheapest strong color, may be automotive, in my case - orange, only the side and top, not too much - make sure the paint does not get between the petals cones, so that there is some natural shadow.
7. Optional zenithal highlighting: from the top you can spray a bit of lighter colour, such as yellow.
8. Gently pull the nails out of boards with a narrow pliers .
9. Hot glue nails and cones to weights  - the steel nuts and to some cardboard. Position cone standing vertically on "tuber" glue, nails and bolts. Wait till cool. Take care that weights were at ground level, at the bottom. As a result, trees can be stored in standard containers lined magnetic foil.
10. With glue gun form successive layers of hot glue (preferably colored , but can be transparent): roots , trunk folds, branches. Let congeal on the carton. Once cooled, gently peel-away /cut from cardboard.
11. Optionally you may scratch the surface of the trunk with a file.
12. Paint gluetrunk, f.ex. violet . Lighten. Black wash.
13. Colorize grains of rice or wheat with a contrasting color, f.ex. ultramarine. After drying wet grains in glue and stick between the petals cones, creating exotic fruit or flowers.
14. Lacquer spray.

Learning Experiences - Electrical Box Terrain

By Raymond Ford

From Over The Hill Gaming

Editor's Note: You may be wondering, "Eli, why another electrical box terrain piece?" I found this two-part piece to be a very well through out, yet brief look at a hobbyist's first experiences with electrical box terrain. He points out some things some of us might not consider and I know I learned a thing or two.

PART ONE

This is project that got started after doing a little reading on the Internet. The idea is simple – take a blue plastic box normally used for electrical work and modify it to look like a futuristic building suitable for a smaller scale sci-fi game.This article on the Reaper Miniatures site and this post on TMP do a good job of presenting the concept. The boxes and bits were inexpensive and everything looked like it would be within my skill level.

But, as they say, experience is the best teacher.

The first step was getting all the materials. A quick trip to the local Home Depot and a few dollars made me the owner of a couple of promising looking electrical boxes. A few minutes of sorting through my bits boxes yielded enough plastic doodads to provide some additional details like doors. I already had plenty of paints.

There were a few things on the electrical boxes that needed to be removed. Basically, anything that made them look more like electrical boxes and less like buildings. A few minutes work with my trusty Dremel took care of that.

Next was assembly. I washed everything in soap and water and let it all dry completely. Then I sat down to work.

First Point of Failure – Plastic Cement. I decided to use plastic cement since I was assembling plastic bits on plastic bodies. The only exception was a metal bit that I used super glue on. This proved critical awhile later.

After everything was put together, I let everything sit until the next day.

Since I had two electrical boxes, I decided to try two different approaches to painting and see which worked best. The smaller box got sprayed with some Krylon Fusion left over from a home improvement project from last year. The bigger box got hit with some craft store primer left over from one of my wife's projects, also from last year.

Second Point of Failure (Smaller Box) – Spraying on a base coat without primer. I noticed I wasn't getting good coverage on the smaller box. The original colors of the plastic box and bits were showing through the light gray of the spray paint. I applied more paint to correct for this, ultimately spraying down two fairly thick layers. This turned out to be a mistake. The second layer never really set correctly – it was still tacky to the touch after a couple of days. The age of the paint may have also been a factor.

Second Point of Failure (Larger Box) – Cheap primer. I had a much easier time spraying down the primer on the larger box, although multiple thin coats were needed for good coverage. The primer set overnight and was ready for painting. Unfortunately, it didn't do a good job of holding on to the paint. I have some experience with painting large, flat surfaces on miniatures – shields and larger pieces like Warjacks – so I knew the need to thin down the paints and go for multiple thin layers. But the paint refused to flow properly on the surface of the primer. It either pooled or ran down the sides. In any case, the results were unpleasant.

At this point, I had two unusable terrain pieces – one with paint that wouldn't set, the other with paint too ugly to put on the table. Hoping that everything would look better in the morning, I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning revealed even more horror. At some point during the night, one of the boxes was knocked to the floor. (Ah, the joys of letting my wife keep cats around.) As I leaned down to pick up the wayward terrain piece, I noticed that a few of the plastic bits had come off. A little experimenting revealed that the plastic cement had failed to provide a strong bond. I could break the plastic bits off the boxes with little effort. On the other hand, the metal bit I had super glued on refused to budge. These pieces wouldn't have lasted long if they had made it to the table.

Lessons Learned:

• Both pieces have taken a long soak in a solution of Simple Green and water. The paint and primer came off after a good scrubbing. They need another wash in soap and water to get rid of any residue from the Simple Green, but are otherwise ready for assembly.
• First Lesson Learned – Assembly. I will be using super glue to assemble everything with time around. The bond is much stronger than plastic cement on this material.
• Second Lesson Learned – Priming. Both pieces will be primed a dark gray with an auto body primer. The dark color will cover up the original colors of the plastic better. I've also had good results with auto body primer providing a good surface for paints on large, flat surfaces. Multiple layers of thinly applied primer will be used to provide good coverage.
• Third Lesson Learned – Painting. I'll try a slightly thicker paint mix when I get started. The paint mix I used before didn't seem too thin, but it's best to be sure. It's easier to thin down a paint than thicken it back up, anyway.

PART TWO

This is a fresh start incorporating the lessons learned from my previous attempt.

 

First Lesson Learned – I used super glue to reassemble the piece this time. Some tugging and a short drop served to test the bonds after the glue set. It should stand up to normal use - place it on the table, remove it from the table, put it in a box, maybe drop it on the way a couple of times - just fine.

Second Lesson Learned – I got out the auto body primer and started spraying. Sandable auto body primer is good stuff - it leaves a surface that holds on well to paint and bonds to plastic, metal, and resin. It took two thin layers to get a good, even coat that covered up the original colors of the plastic.

Third Lesson Learned – A darker color for better coverage seemed like a good idea. I also went back to the tried and true method of paint large, flat surfaces - multiple layers of thinned down paint. The paint dried smoothly.

The end result wasn't bad, but it looked dull and flat. Applying a thinned down dark wash brought out the details, but the piece was still missing something. I highlighted the corners and top with the original base color. Finally, I applied a thinned down brown wash to weather the piece. Small steps like these add character to a piece, but I might have gone overboard with the brown wash.

There is another, larger piece in the wings. I plan on adopting the same techniques to complete it later. For now, I've got some other projects to complete first.

Tile Based 15mm Tunnels

By LittleBrother

From Two Brothers Tales

Okay, so you can't afford a lot of nice resin terrain, have a limited space for storage and playing...what are you going to do to get those little men onto the playing field?  Here is the first set of modular terrain I am making for gaming with my older brother this winter.  It is a set of caverns that will serve double purpose for games of FUBAR and Songs of Blades and Heroes to start with.  Here is the first tile:

The tiles are 12 x 12 and are completely modular.  They can be rotated in any direction and moved around to create different lay-outs.  I started with four tiles, total cost per tile was about $3-4 US and took about an hour to make, not including waiting for things to dry.  I spent about four hours over the course of a weekend to get them to this point:

I am working on some doors for Song, and probably some little holes for critters to crawl out of for FUBAR.  Here is a shot with a 15mm mini from Splintered Light for scale. Thanks for looking!

For a Few Dollars - More Junk Building

Junk building again!

This time I will not be diagramming the build like I did last time, but giving a brief commentary on each build so you can see what I used. When it all comes down to it, it's about collecting the right stuff as you go through your day to day and applying a little basic modelling skill. In all of these projects, pre-made parts have been combined with junk and craft materials for some very basic, but effective designs.

The image above show a couple of angles on an industrial piece that I put together. The central component of this piece was a piece of plastic electrical housing (the orange parts). I built two levels of flat playable surface on to this using stiff card. The railing is plastic cross stitch canvas. the posts holding it up are plastic tubing from an architectural modelling supply. 

Various model parts, wooden blocks, dice cubes, pill bottles, candy and juice mix containers complete the build. The base is a section of old board game board that I painted with textured paint before putting it all together. Only pre-made bits are two doors from GZG that I used on the dice cubes to simulate an enclosed staircase.

Small pieces, like the communications hub (above), can be made from simple card stock for a base and discarded packaging. In this case it was the packaging for some sort of Iphone accessory or something along those lines. Add GZG doors and roof fitting and a few plastic model parts (hatches, etc.) and a quick and dirty objective marker is born. 

Which brings me to another simple point - functionality. If you are building something, it's best if you have a concept in mined. In this case, this makes for a fine objective to be defended or taken.

Plumbing parts, pill bottles, drinking straws, an electrical junction
 box and a few other bits of plastic. Plastic architectural model stairs.

Continuing on the theme of functionality, another thing to consider is playable space or surfaces. Both the industrial piece to the right and the one at the top of this post are left with plenty of usable space. Open ground and flat surfaces allow for the movement of miniatures through the terrain feature as well as leaving you the option of customising your terrain a bit by adding pieces of spot clutter or other components (shown below). 

A little thought on composition and the right bits of trash will go a long way. Soon you'll have everything you need for an industrial sprawl, alien mining operation, remote colony, or anything you can imagine.

Mechwarrior Clix miniatures cut and posed.
Model parts, balsa, cut sprue for junk.

Rattle can lid, plastic ladder and GZG satellite parts.

Junk Building By Numbers

I often see many fantastic junk builds and wonder what all goes into them. It's usually pretty obvious which parts are purchased for specific parts but it is the bits and bobs of junk and greeblies that go into it that often leave my head spinning.

Now, it's a given that not everyone will have the same stuff laying about but there are quite of a few standards that I can count on to have about all the time and expect that most gamers will too. The stuff that I don't have, can often be substituted for with something else. Once you figure out where the parts come from, it's actually pretty straight forward.

What I present to you here are three panels of a terrain piece in progress. These pictures do not constitute the final detailed piece but break down the basic components that went into making it all go together. Each picture features several numbered boxes. These boxes outline a particular part and include a number. These numbers correspond to the list below the pictures.

Parts List

1. Wood craft knob
2. Prescription bottle cap
3. Precut MDF miniatures base
4. Plastic packaging
5. Printer cartridge
6. Blood sugar test strip cartridge
7. Soda Pop candy dispenser
8. Plastic packaging
9. Metal 28mm vehicle gun
10. GZG rooftop vent
11. Board game board
12. 28mm vehicle part
13. 40K heavy flamer fuel tank
14. Decorative rhinestone
15. Flames of War plastic base
16. Door frame made from wooden coffee stir sticks
17. Textured plasticard

I hope seeing a breakdown of what went into a simple but effective piece of terrain will inspire folks and open their eyes to the every day bits and pieces that they have laying around that can be put together into a good, solid bit of terrain.

Take care,

-Eli

Scatter Terrain – Pitcher Plants (part 2)

Last time, we cut up drinking straws and chopped up DVDs. Gluing the straws to the DVDs with PVA, we coated the rest of the DVDs with a water/PVA mix and sprinkled on some sand for texture. Our goal is to create alien Pitcher plants for use as scatter terrain. Once everything was positioned and glued, some quality drying time was in order.



Drop da Bomb

The PVA was dry by the next morning, but I only had time during the following week to undercoat the terrain pieces. I use a small cardboard box as a spray box when spray-painting as otherwise the spray seems to go everywhere. Placing my terrain bases in the paint box, I spray painted them black with a cheap black paint I had bought at the hardware store. Done and dusted in seconds – I have become a real convert to spray painting undercoat. Once blacked out, I again left the terrain pieces to dry.

Bom da Base

Chris’ Red Planet terrain board article inspired my choice of colours when I finally came to paint up my scatter terrain. Using my old Military Miniatures Red (similar to Games Workshop Blood Red, though not as thick), I filled the brush and dipped it in water before painting, essentially creating a red wash that I then applied to the black undercoated base. As you can see, the overall effect is a seemingly random bright and dull red base, depending upon how much water is mixed with the paint at any one point of the painting. If the colour you get is too bright, just add some more water to thin the paint. If it looks too anaemic, then add more paint.

Stone Cold
By the time I had worked my way around all the bases, the first ones I had painted were starting to dry. Breaking out the Tamiya Dark Grey (any dark or stone grey will do), I then dry-brushed the larger sand particles. This creates the illusion of a stone field scattered over the finer red dust. Of course, I could have just PVAed on a scattering of grit, but PVA often leaves a glossy residue when it dries. This way, I could decide exactly how much stone I wanted and how much I could leave as red dust.

Pitchin’ Plants

I then had to decide what colour to paint the plants, themselves. My first versions of Pitcher Plants were painted Dark Angel Green with Catachan Green lips. Green on green looked alright close up, but was fairly dull at ‘standard wargames viewing distances’ – about 3’ away. For my second attempt, when I built my Chaos portals, I again went for Dark Angel Green (I like the colour) but with Gore Red lips. These really stood out and I was quite pleased with them. As I was painting plants for a dry-world, this time around, I decided to go for a khaki trunk with Wine Red lips (both these colours are from the Gunze Sangyo Hobby Colour range of model aeroplane paints which makes them perfect for weird plants and pants for anything else).
In the photo, the Wine Red looks more like Shocking Pink lipstick so, I guess, that’s pretty alien. Most desert plants are dull greens and browns, and if the Pitcher plants are carnivorous, they need to attract prey; so bright colours will at least make the local fauna curious.

I sealed the open ends of the two glass beads I had added to one of the bases with a blob of paint. I then painted the beads in the same colour scheme as the Pitcher plants themselves. The beads are now either pods, or Pitcher plants on the digest part of their cycle.

Finishing Off
With the plants pretty much finished, I decided to add a little flock to the bases. If we assume that the Pitcher plants tend to grow where there’s a little ground water on our dry world, and supplement their diets with little animals also looking for the ground water, then it’s likely that other, ground hugging plants might also be present. Using my manky glue brush, I dabbed some PVA and water mix in spots on the bases and sprinkled the sticky areas with some of my green flock.
I had intended to do this part of the process with my ‘dry grass’ flock but that, unfortunately, ran out a couple of weeks ago. When flocking with the darker green flock, less is definitely more.

And that’s about it. Plastic responds to heat in interesting ways. The ultra-thin drinking straws literally melt before your eyes, while the plastic of, say, drink bottles is a lot more robust and requires a lot more working. Experiment. Be careful. And let us know how you get on.

- David

Scatter Terrain - Pitcher Plants (Part 1)

So, you’ve knocked up your nice, new terrain board, and sliced up some styro hills. Now what? How about some scatter terrain.

Scatter terrain is just that, terrain objects you can scatter on a table top to break up Lines of Sight and generally make your table look a little less like the MDF plains of Alpha Prime and a little more like an actual landscape. Scatter terrain can be almost any small terrain feature – rocks, hedges, bushes, spinneys, etc.

This article is a step-by-step guide for making some inexpensive vegetation scatter terrain – alien pitcher plants. If you have happened by my website, you may have seen an earlier version of this particular process and, in both cases, I owe thanks to the talented folks who frequent the Terragenesis Forum for the original inspiration.

Useful tools and supplies
Our raw materials are two plastic drinking straws (in this case from a certain world-wide, clown-fronted, fast-food chain), two old DVDs (or CDs – I happen to work for a media company that goes through DVDs like post-it notes, so I have plenty of material to work with), and some builders’ sand (I have some fine sand I stole from my daughter’s sandpit about five years ago, but that is nearly gone now. I also have some coarser sand I bought recently for a concreting job – at under $NZ 10 for a 10 kilo bag, one could make an awful lot of terrain!).

For tools, we have some scissors for cutting up the straws, a pair of tin snips for cutting up the DVDs/CDs (I could have used the scissors to cut up the DVDs but the snips handle the heavy plastic better), a tea-light candle, a lighter, a pair of long-nosed pliers, a palette, some PVA or white woodworking glue, and a manky glue brush.

Snicker Snack

First order of business is to cut up the straws with the scissors and chop up the DVDs with the tin snips – the DVD plastic is tough but brittle, and tends to want to form sharp points. I try to round the corners off for both aesthetic as well as safety reasons. For the straws, I try to cut each section no longer than about 20mm, and with one end on an angle and the other flat. The section will stand on the flat end, while the angled end is important for the next step.

Burn, Baby, Burn

This is where the tea-light candle comes in. The hard boyz on Terragenesis talk about using a cigarette lighter to warp the plastic straws. The only draw back is that the lighter gets darn hot. Being a wimp, I discovered that one of my wife’s candles would do the job just as well. Use the pliers to hold the straw section, as both candle flames and melting plastic are hot. You really only need to dip the straw into the flame, the thin plastic rolls and warps in interesting patterns.
Try warming the sides of longer sections – if you get burn through, you’ll have created a mouth.

The first time I made these, I had a bowl of water to dip the heated straws into which worked quite well. This time I just placed the straws on the paper after I finished with each one – watch for molten plastic bonding with the newspaper!

A Sticky End

I squirted a glob of PVA (or white glue) onto each base and positioned my cut straws. I use half an old Freikorps figure blister as a palette for mixing both paint and glue – the raised sides stop runoff and keep all the messy bits in one place. Mixing some PVA with water in my palette, I used my manky glue brush to paint the bases with the glue/water mix. I then sprinkled the sticky bases with sand for texture.

Glassy Eyes

I have a bad habit of trying to run several projects in tandem – sometimes it works and sometimes you end up with twice the unfinished projects on your worktable. Glass beads, for $NZ1.00. Had to buy these, especially when I saw a post on a blog about creating alien container scatter terrain for a skirmish-in-the-souk game. While I lined the bulk of the beads up on the bases as rows of jars, I also positioned a couple along side some of my pitcher plants as some alien fruit/seed pods/immature plants/plants digesting their captured prey.

By this time, the entire construction process had taken about three hours on a wet afternoon, including a bit of faffing around time. Waiting for the glue to dry was taking longer than I had anticipated so I packed up and called it a day.

To be continued - painting and decorating

A Red Planet board

Ever since I switched to 15mm, I've been fighting battles over the same collection of desert terrain. I needed a change! Inspired by Mark's previous post and Martin's gallery, I decided to try a "red planet" terrain set of my own. This project was simple and quite inexpensive - and only took a weekend to complete. While the steps here were specific for my red planet, you could easily apply different colors and flocking methods to make any type of terrain you like.

First I needed material for the project. I wanted to start small - 24" x 24" is fine for skirmishes, or small battles with a couple squads and a vehicle or two. So I picked up a piece of 5/8" sanded plywood cut to that size. And to make the red planet I chose two colors of $1 craft paint (a base and a highlight) and two bags of Woodland Scenics flock (their fine scale works well as 15mm ground

A little experimenting with the flock led me to a blend of two parts red ore to one part black cinder. This is actually a pretty dark blend... not a true Mars but definitely something out of this world.

As with my previous desert and snow tables, I started with a test hill. I have a pile of assorted styrofoam packing sheets from furniture boxes... enough so I could cover a 24x24 table and not have to buy anything extra. So I sat down with the ol' Wonder Cutter and went to work. The first hill was simple, textured, and looked like it would work.

So I painted it. Two coats of the darker red covered it completely, and a quick drybrush with the orange brought out the carved texture. Then I brushed a 50/50 white glue/water mix and sprinkled on the flock. When flocking I let it dry for about an hour then gently go back over the whole area with the 50/50 mix. If you dab it on just right it will look like the flock is covered with milk, but not floating around. This dries to a nice solid finish that doesn't flake. Here is the result, with a GZG shanty and a Kremlin Cyberian Commando for comparison

The results were okay, but still a bit unsatisfying. I sat down to work on some taller spires, like these at TerraGenesis. When working on these I realized that the texture on my earlier hill was perpendicular to normal erosion! So I turned the ol' Wonder Cutter sideways and produced these:

I thought these were a major improvements over my first hill, and I was eager to finish them. Same formula as before... two coats of the darker red and a quick and easy drybrush with the orange.

My camera didn't catch the contrast, but the orange drybrushing does stand out well from the red. I may still go back over them with a black wash to add a bit more depth, but I'm pretty satisfied with the results.

In between coats of the hills I finished the table itself. I did use a primer on the plywood before I started painting - this helps to seal the plywood and prevents your first coat of paint from soaking in. I didn't use any drybrushing on the table - just painted it red, flocked, and sealed. I applied the sealant with a dollar-store spray bottle rather than a brush, and gave it two extra coats. Right now it's solid enough that I could reverse it and make a two-sided board. The table took longer to make just because of the extra coats of glue needing to dry, but was still a very simple process. If you want to do this project at home, I'd say paint and flock the table first, then add the sealant coats while you work on hills, spires, crags, or whatever else you're including.

All that remained was to flock and seal the rest of the hills. Since the hills would need to dry overnight I had to leave them aside... but the test hill and the spires were ready now! I set out the table, deployed a quick mining settlement (combination of GZG shanties and BWS Startown Slums), scattered the finished terrain bits, and had a battlefield ready to play a quick game of FUBAR!

So... who wants to see the report from that battle?

Cheers,
Chris

Taxi For Mr Horizon! Taxi Office WIP

I'm revamping Mudd Eisley. There's a distinct lack of domes and I mean to fix that. So I've been collecting interesting packaging - helps working next to the IT department - to replace my current stock of buildings before I put them in for a Sarah Beeney.

Mudd Eisley Taxi Office WIP

L: Star Wars Action Fleet 'Echo Base Trooper'

(makes a decent desert trooper too)

R: CMG Light Recon, Mudd Eisley style

The 'domes'  are mini plastic footballs used for Easter egg hunts (apparently)  - pack of 6 which could be split into 12 halves was £1 from Poundland in Aberdeen. Since seen similar in Hobbycraft.

The underneath of the 'roof' is reinforced by a sheet of card glued into place. I then ran big globs of PVA glue around the inside lip of the dome halves, before repeating on the outside. Once the dome was laid on the roof, I ran the glue for about a centimeter around the base of the dome to ensure that it had a good footprint. It was only at this point I remembered that I had a hotglue gun - DOH!

Once dry - well, once the PVA had turned transparent at least, I mixed sand, PVA and 'quick dry' exterior Polyfilla (1 PVA : 3 Polyfilla) and brushed, yes brushed on with an old Size 2 brush. Took minutes.

Dome Closeup

The garage door is from GZG's Building Fittings. Mike at TheScene has similar, equally good, but I already had the GZG door spare. It would be easy to go mad with windows and door on these scratchbuilt models - but you have to bear in mind this is Mudd Eisley - fierce heat and even fiercer sandstorms.

What does make a difference though is 'industrialising' the building - just one or two accessories such as vents, exhausts, aircon units or pipes. And here can I say that I wish someone would produce 90 degree pipes in a couple of sizes, in pairs and triples, that can be rested against a building.

The 'taxi' is a really nice GEV APC from Scotty at Combat Wombat. It seemed just right to fulfill the role of a rugged desert taxi-bus in addition to it's intended purpose.

Still very much a work in progress but I'll keep you updated.

Cheers

Mark