World Building

[EricF]

I've always been a strong believer in putting toilets in your dungeon. Everybody has needs. Even Smaug.

Details like that are what I used to love in the older dioramas you used to see - all those little tiny humorous details that were snuck into an otherwise serious diorama.

So ... the next piece is a small ruined drinking den. The core of this piece is the Ruined House from Spellcrow.

I added some barrels from MOM miniatures and the sign and broken crates and bits are from Zealot Miniatures.

I forget where the tree came from. Then lots and lots of clump foliage.

A simple paint job mostly laid down with the airbrush. Then some shading with washes and highlights just with dry brushing. I tried to get some reasonable staining with the washes to make the wood more interesting and concentrated on pin washing to bring out the boards.

 

[EricF]

And back to sci-fi again! This is a resin fuel depot from Micro Arts Studio.

These are much more in scale than the GW ones I used in my scratch built barrier, but somehow look a little odd being a more realistic size!
I put these on small plasticard bases and textured them with some Vallejo Dark Earth. Yellows were done with the airbrush and the greens then hand painted. Lots of washes to get the tarps to look right and I'm quite pleased with how they came out. Then some rust effects and pigments and the like to make it a bit more interesting. The chipping on the barrels was just done with a sponge.

 

[twisted moon]

more nice work. i'm especially impressed with the ruin.

 

[EricF]

Thanks, the ruin came together nicely, I probably need to build a few ruins. When I next feel like scratch building I think I might tackle some more ruins.

Lets go for a big bit of terrain - this is a limited edition guard/watch tower from Mini Monsters, they still have a newer version of the model. Anyhow lets start with a shot of the whole thing:

The model is resin and made up from cast panels. I put it on top of a resin hill from Tabletop World, it's long out of production alas, you can see the original model here. I had to pack out the hill a little and add a few odd stones and some green stuff to get it all level. To make it nice and solid I pinned it in place. The whole thing is about 14" tall.

Lets start with the roof, this needed a lot of work. The castings are quite thick and I felt that made the edge of the roof - ie the ends of the tiles far too thick. It just looked very wrong. So I had to slice the edge back until I got the edge thin enough that it looked okay. I then notched in between the tiles. Other than that, there was just a reasonable amount of greenstuff to get the pieces to align properly.

The top of the ledge running around the tower top didn't have any texture (due to the orientation of the mold), so I had to add some greenstuff stones and carve a some notching around that lip to complete the design.

I left the roof removable. The inside of the tower top had a textured floor, but the walls were not textured. I happened to have some stone effect plasticard so I used that to apply some texture to the inside walls. The scale is off compared to the outside stonework, but it provides a bit of texture when viewing through the windows and for when you happen to have the roof off, otherwise I think it would have just looked odd.

Lower down the tower there was one internal floor, but I've not left that in place for now. The top section does still lift off and I may put a floor in at some point.

So a few more close ups. I thought I'd do the stonework correctly on this one and so put mortar lines in.

Alas that door is fixed!

Painting wise I started with the hill putting down some black/white highlighting on the stone work using the airbrush. I think laid over some thin browns on the stone and some yellow/browns no the path. The edges were done with a green/brown base for behind the flock. The hill was finished up with washes to pick out the shadows on the rocks and then some dry brushing for the highlights. The path was just drybrushed up to get a rough sandy stone look.

The tower itself was brush painted with a large selection of various brown-grey and blue-greys to pick out individual stones. Then washes and drybrush highlights to bring out the stonework. Once I was happy with the stone work I did the mortar lines using a mortar line product from Model Mates, which needed running carefully into the stonework mortar lines.

Lots fo flock and tufts and clump foliage to help blend it all together finished it off.

 

[EricF]

This is the lovely Firetower Hill piece from Fenris Games. It's a resin model and did require a bit of TLC with the green stuff prior to priming and painting. The fire cauldron/beacon is actually a piece from Zealot Miniatures.

I magnetised the tower onto the base since it has a trapdoor in the design I didn't really want to cover. I also magnetised the fire cauldron/beacon on the top so that can come on and off. I tried out a new painting technique for the fire - I based it in yellow with the airbrush then just sprayed some orange and red down from the top. Seemed to work okay as a quick way of painting fire.

 

[EricF]

Right some 40k ruins. Now these are the ones from the 3rd edition of 40K I think (please correct me if wrong). I found them some time back base coated black in a box of random bits and pieces and tidied them up a little with some green stuff. Then threw on some Zandri dust spray and quickly painted them up. Now I'm not sure I'd personally count 3rd 40K as oldhammer, but I guess it must be getting on in years now!

I threw on some Reikland flesh shade to tone a few areas of the brickwork to give it a little bit more interest, but otherwise left them fairly plain so they remain background against any miniatures.

 

[EricF]

Well finally got the camera out again and got a few pictures taken of a couple more pieces. First up we'll stick with the 40k stuff, but jump forward to much newer pieces.

I managed to get this piece off eBay. I always thought it was a great piece of terrain. It was from one of the Heresy era plastic game boxes.

The pieces were semi painted and had been primed in black. I stripped off the worst of the paint, but the primer layer stayed put quite well. I used salt weathering on this piece so initially laid down some silver, followed by a salt crust, then a layer of brown/red "primer" and another layer of salt before applying the yellow base coat with my airbrush. I also did the initial highlighting and shading at this point using white for the highlights and brown for the shading and to just add a bit of interest to the large flat panels.

Once all that was dry I brushed off the salt crusts leaving sections of the red and silver showing. The model then had a yellow ink wash to make the yellows more vivid - basically the same recipe I use for my marines. I then re-primed all the details in black went over them in their appropriate colours.

Areas of the model then had pin washes added to bring out the panel lines and increase contrast. Edge highlights were painted on to bring out some of the edges and the other details picked out. The mud/rock around the model was brought up with dry brushes of various greys and browns.

The canopy I pondered for a while before settling on doing it in blues. I masked off the yellow and did the basic blend quickly with the airbrush. I then finished it up with brushes and tried to take the highlight up high enough to suggest reflection. The transfers (ones I had printed) were then applied, a few tufts added and the whole thing had a couple of coats of matte varnish before the cockpit glass had some gloss varnish applied.

And everything together

One day I might scratch build some machinery to go inside the crashed cockpit section (which is open at the back), but for now the underside is just primed in a flat matte black.

 

[Captain Brown]

Some more nice work.

Cheers,

CB

 

[twisted moon]

yeah, that's a good bit of scenery.

 

[EricF]

Thank you!

Lets keep with some of the newer 40K terrain, although I think these fuel pipes are now old enough to have been surpassed by newer models from GW.

I filled these with some railway model weighting (Liquid Gravity from Deluxe Materials) so they stayed put a little better on the tabletop. They were primed in black and painted with a dark terracotta. After which they were lightly drybrushed with a gunmetal. Seams and details were then picked out in cleaner metallics. Not much more to say for these!

 

[Sleepysod]

phenomenal set of scenery on display here. Incredibly jealous

 

[EricF]

Thank you.

Now if only I actually had a couple of armies painted to go with it all Hopefully back to some painting again in a month or two!

I just have a thing for terrain, I've got plenty unpainted (still some painted to show!) and plenty of scratch build ideas in my notebook (some to use up "cool" bits my willpower let me down on - hello Dwarf statues/pillars, we're looking at you...) a decent set of hedges and finally building some good woods and hills are on the todo list if I can think of somewhere to store them!

 

[symphonicpoet]

^The crashed flyer is one of the few pieces of GW official terrain I actually like. Mostly their stuff runs far too much into "more skullz" territory for my taste, but the wreck is gorgeous. And your paint job really brings it out. Very nice!

 

[EricF]

Mostly their stuff runs far too much into "more skullz" territory for my taste

Pah, GW don't know what more skulls really mean, this is more skull

This is the Skull Altar from MOM Miniatures. It's about 3" tall. Painted some years ago now, mostly airbrushed and then lots and lots pigments and weathering potions from various companies to get an aged look.

Thank you for the nice comments on the flyer, one day I might treat myself to an intact flyer from Forge World (always fancied the stumpy Arvus Lighter)!

 

[twisted moon]

Now if only I actually had a couple of armies painted to go with it all

i imagine you'd be able to persuade a few people on here to bring their figures around to your gaff for a game.

nice giant skull, too.

 

[EricF]

Since it's been quiet here the last day or so I thought I'd best break out the camera and take a few snaps. I also did actually manage to get some painting done on on some of my rather old now work in progress.

Anyhow onto some pictures of the Aquila from the Honoured Imperium set. The set is quite old now, nice bit of terrain, but the casting detail is a little soft I think. I painted this up as a fallen piece of metal with plenty of rust. It's looking like it might do with a small going over again with the rust effects (model mates), they seem to have dulled down a little.

 

[EricF]

Finally as promised some oldhammer terrain, or rather terrain I made for Warhammer as a youngster, which makes it old-hammer! These have survived quite well, other than the flock fading. Balsa wood and car body mesh mounted on some plywood.

So I think I might re-flock these and keep in the terrain pile, beyond probably making them a tad more dainty and on much thinner bases I'm not sure I'd change a great deal if I was remaking them again.

 

[twisted moon]

good work on the fences (although,, yes, they could be daintier).
i need to make some of my own.

 

[EricF]

Thanks, I think the fences still look quite good even after a few decades! I'm trying to think what other old terrain I might still have, my brother must have some of it, I've got a few unfinished bunkers I must photograph.

But until that day comes, here it a temple from Mini Monsters. It's a nice piece, but I sometimes wonder if it is a tad too large for 28mm models - I don't think it's actually out of scale, more that often terrain is often undersized when compared to the models, so this feels big. Anyhow it's a nice model that I mounted on a piece of foamed PVC.

Lots of bits of clump foliage and other bits to give it an overgrown abandoned feel. The trees need a little more work on the trunks. I keep meaning to paint over the trunks to make them a bit smarter. I did shorten one by a few mm just so they were slightly less identical!

The piece itself is resin and I magnetised the top onto the columns so I could easily remove it for painting.

Painting was primarily trying to bring out the cracks and make it look like marble. So I used various grey, yellow and a few purple washes in both the modelled cracks and to draw in lot hand painted veins. As a first attempt at painting marble I think it came out okay.

 

[twisted moon]

As a first attempt at painting marble I think it came out okay.

better than that i'd say.