Terrain – Grimmleigh's Lab

Scratch-Built Fantasy Village, Part 6

The first building is finally finished, and I could’nt be happier with how it turned out!

After the flock and shrubbery was secure, I added a couple of plastic railroad trees that I was able to twist in extremely twisty ways by soaking them in boiling water.

The rest of the piece was just a matter of concealing joins and gaps with shrubs.

After all of the flock was set, I poured clear resin into the moat for a water effect.

It’s a really fun piece, and will make for a thematic center-point for my games!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Built Fantasy Village, Part 5

Things start to come together quick at this point in a project! Now that the base is dry, I brushed on a solid coat of cheap brown acrylic craft paint. This is about the only thing that I use cheap craft paint on– it’s perfect for this kind of job!

Now that the base color is down, a couple of dry-brush passes bring the base closer to what I’m looking for. I also paint in a layer of green for the moat, which will get filled with clear resin later. The stone work that I carved in earlier gets a coat of grey paint, which will get some highlights and shading later.

Color blocking is done, so now it’s time for flock. I use a couple of different colors of flocking, and will use some tufts, too. Foliage is never a uniform color or height, right?

I took some ground up dried leaves and stuck them to the bottom of the moat with watered down white glue. Shrubbery is the last step here, which has to be glued down using super glue.

Next up, it’s time to fill that moat and glue down the building!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 4

The bulk of the first building is done, but it was looking kind of sad on its own. This here project was in pretty dire need of some elevation. Lucky me, there is quite a bit of MDF just hanging out in the garage looking for a project connection!

First things first, I cut some blocks of blue insulation foam with my trusty Proxon foam cutter. Then I cut a deep recess into one of those blocks, and cut up the recess to make some narrow stairs. I used a ballpoint pen to carve in some stone detail.

I place used the building to make sure that the separate blocks were far enough apart, and glued them down to the MDF. Then it was time to use some Celluclay to bulk out the base to make the whole thing look like mounds of earth.

Next, I shaped the MDF with a saw and a small detail sander. Once I got the shape down, it was time to build up some more earthen mounds around the stairs leading to the tower.

Now to wait for everything to dry, and then get some paint down on this!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 3

After the tower was sealed in a couple of coats of wood glue and black paint, it was time to get some color on the tower!

I blocked in most of the major color areas with my airbrush, then went to town with a cheap wash made of equal parts black acrylic, brown acrylic, and clear acrylic medium.

After the first coat of wash dried, I went through with a light dry brush over the whole model. This helped bring out a lot of the raised details.

Then I picked out some individual stones to paint lighter colors, and added some wood grain to the timbers. Then everything got another series of washes, with either a moss green with clear acrylic, or Payne’s Grey with clear acrylic. This aged everything up a bit, and added a more lived-in feeling to the model.

Something this big and cool looking needs a base to tie it all together, so that will be the next step in the project!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village, Part 2

Confession time– I just invested in a new FDM printer and a pretty amazing series of files for terrain building, so it’s hard to say how much of this kind of building I will be doing in the future. That being said, I love a good scratch build, so I’m almost certain I’ll keep at it to some capacity.

Plus, western civilization collapsed a few years back. It’s hard to say how long we’ll be able to pick up spools of plastic for printing. You can decide whether I am joking or not, because I sure the hell don’t know anymore.

With the base of the building established, it was time to get to work on some components for the rest of the structure. I am using really cheap foamcore that I picked up at Dollar Tree, because the paper peels off super easy, leaving a dense, easy to carve foam ready to play. For the shingles on the roof sections, I just carved my shapes with a ballpoint pen, then went at it with a blade to get the slopes and shaping.

This technique allows me to do some pretty cool effects, like this dormer that I put in on the lower floor of the tower:

All of the detail is just carved directly into the foam, either with a balloint pen or a good pencil. The ballpoint gives crisper detail, and I think it might be my favorite technique. This is also the first time I assembled a building like this with hot glue, which sped up the whole process incredibly.

It was time to add the next floor up. I opted to go with a full interior at first, but changed my mind as I went along.

I decided to go ahead and do the support beams in foamcore, too, since everything will get a couple of coats of wood glue to seal up the foam and strengthen the sculpt. Wood glue has a bit of resin in it, so it will help toughen stuff up quite a bit.

The whole build took about four hours, and ended up being pretty cool!

I put in a balcony for snipers in a skirmish style game, and plenty of exposed brick and timber to go with the stucco.

The chimney was easier than any that I have ever done before. I used Gorilla Glue to bind to pieces of foamcore together, which is easier to carve into than traditional glue. Plus, the foaming action of the glue really binds the foamcore together. A little hot glue to add the top, and it’s pretty spiffy!

My other favorite detail of this piece is the curved slant in the roof, which throws the “safe” feeling of the building completely out the window. It’s something that I was never able to to with traditional foamcore building, but without the paper holding things in place, the foam form was easy to bend into place. Hot glue just made it stay there once it got there!

Next up, the whole thing gets sealed in a mix of black paint and wood glue, then it’s time to paint!

Terrain, Workbench

Scratch-Build Fantasy Village Peoject

We’re self-quarantining through the apocalypse, but I also work in social services. So, I really can’t stay home and completely avoid human contact. So, I’m building a little escape.

My spare time is wide open, so I’ll be building a village to play games in when the End Times are over. And I want to test myself in the process.

I have built a lot of terrain in my life. This time around, I’m going with peeled foam coat as a base, and using hot glue to bind everything. I already love this as an alternative to glue!

I used a pencil to carve in the details, and an emery board to smooth things out. I decided to use wood glue to seal the foam, which I mixed with black paint so I could see if I missed anything.

After getting the test piece done, I decided to paint up the front to see how it looked… and I’m really, really happy!

I airbrushed a light coat of white from an angle, then washed the whole front with a simple glaze made from cheap paint, airbrush thinner, and acrylic floor polish. I went over certain areas with a similar glaze made from green ink to age things up a bit!

Next up I’ll go ahead and finish up the base since the experiment has made me happy!

Terrain, Workbench

The Great Yu-Jing Project, Part Five

Here it is, folks; the single largest terrain project I have ever finished!u

Terrain, Workbench

The Great Yu-Jing Project, Part Four

With less than a month left on the clock I can proudly claim to be 95% done with this project. It’s been a lot of fun and a huge learning experience for me! Enjoy the pretty pictures!

Miniatures, Terrain, Workbench

The Great Yu-Jing Project, Part Three

I finished up a few pieces for the big Yu-Jing table we’re building for the Salt Lake City Showdown in May 10th!

The big gate will be the entrance to a walled temple district, which will be on a separate platform made from insulation foam:

I also finished up a few pieces of scatter terrain, which can be placed on different parts of the table depending on the scenario:

Miniatures, Terrain, Workbench

The Great Yu-Jing Table, Part Two

This next piece took about four hours to put together, I think it might have taken a little less time but the PDF instructions were on the other end of a dead link…

This is the Xiguan Office Building from Warsenal, and it’s a beast of a model. I taped the insides together to hold everything in place, and then let the adventure build itself.

Office1

First off, it’s BIG. It’s also two models, since it comes with a set of stairs that you can put pretty much anywhere you want. There are some really neat details, too, from the window shutters down to the food kiosk out front.

Office 2

Oh, lordy. These stairs go right through the building, which means there is a lot of cover for models, and some cool strategic elements come into play, too. The molding above the roof is a really nice touch!

Office 3

Here you can see the top of the previous staircase, coming out on the back of the building. The narrow set of stairs goes to the top floor…

Office 4

… which is completely accessible by removing the roof. I think I see a nice spot for my Sin Eater to hang out when this is finished!

The Xiguan Office Building is one of the pricier kits Warsenal has, clocking in at $65 US. It’s a serious bit of kit, though, and I really think you’ll get plenty of return on your investment.

More pics to come as the model progresses!