DM Michael
Paint Manipulator
Preparing for 'In the spider's web' part of LMOP
Posts: 169
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Post by DM Michael on Dec 11, 2017 16:49:09 GMT
I just felt like sharing today. So, have you ever had a terrain project go completely and utterly wrong? I have. This is my biggest terrain failure to date. My story is from 2006. I was unemployed and had a lot of free time on my hand. I found an article on the Games Workshop homepage on how to make a guard tower from pink foam. They made it look so simple. So I thought, I am not gonna make a small guard tower like that. I am goanna make a huge tower. This tower should be modulized, so you can make different configurations. You should be able to turn it into a ruin to use in Mordheim games, and you should be able to use it as a complete tower for use in D&D. So far, so good.
First problem: I didn’t have any pink foam (XPS); - I’ll just use white foam (EPS) instead. Pink foam and white foam are not the same. For one thing pink foam is a lot stronger, and you can cut it more precise. (I didn’t have a hot wire foam cutter back then, only a hacksaw.) The result was that my central structure was leaning heavily to one side. Eventually I solved the problem by sanding of some of the EPS. I was using white glue, and it takes time to cure, so I couldn’t work on it all the time, so I started working on small side projects. The first was a guard tower made from cereal box cardboard and EPS for the crenulation.
Second Problem: The article only showed the outside of the tower, and I wanted my tower to have an inside as well. I’ll just use cereal box cardboard for the floors. Bad idea. First of all, if you have walls that are almost an inch thick a cardboard floor looks way to thin compared to the walls. Second, because of the size, the cardboard would bend if you put a lead mini on it. If you put a big lead mini on it, say a dragon, it would bend so much that other models would start to slide towards the dragon. Third to fit the cardboard floors inside the tower I would make slots for it in the walls. It was hard enough to get the tower to stand straight, it was impossible to make the floors straight. The only way to solve that problem was to chop the tower into individual floors and make them one at a time. I had already made the slots, for the floors, so now I had to fill those slots with polyfilla. I had already made several cereal box cardboard guard tower, when I noticed that I had some packing foam with a round inside. Hmm? I’ll make some city wall sections to go with the guard towers.
Third problem: Sawing in EPS. It was no longer just EPS, it was a big mess of EPS, white glue and polyfilla. It was impossible to make pretty windows in this stuff. So I decided to disassemble the tower. Saw off a few mm on all sides to get rid of the polyfilla and white glue mess. With my big clumsy hacksaw I couldn’t the sides the same thickness, so I had to re-cut the walls, so now my walls were only half an inch thick. And I had small white EPS pellets and dust all over my house. I decided to rethink my project. While I was rethinking my project, my brother requested an inn. So I started making an inn. To avoid messing the inn up, I made several smaller prototype houses, to try out various techniques in small scale first.
Fourth problem: Ruin and complete. I wanted to be able to set up the tower as a ruin and as a complete tower. I couldn’t cut the EPS precise enough to make a broken wall part, and another wall part that would be the inverse of the broken part so that you could just slap it on top of the broken part and it would form a complete wall. The only way to make it work was to make duplicate sections of walls, some broken others complete. I now had 4 guard towers and 5 wall sections; - I should make a city gate.
Fifth problem: Basing. I had made some ruins for Mordheim, earlier with corrugate cardstock as base material, and it warped a lot. With the tower not being a single structure but several smaller pieces, I was worried that the whole thing would just be too wobbly and delicate to work in real life. You might knock over a section. And it would look more like a 3d puzzle than a cool piece of terrain.
So I finally gave up. I repurposed the crennelation to yet another guard tower. The walls were repurposed for dungeon modules. I finished the small side tower that I had started on, in such a way that it could be placed alone.
All the side projects turned out to be 1 inn, 2 farmhouse, 1 warehouse, 1 city gate, 6 wall sections, 6 guard towers, and a small ruined tower. And I learned a lot about working with EPS.
Feel free to post projects that went wrong for you.
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Post by erho on Dec 11, 2017 20:11:00 GMT
I think yours turned out fabulously! I think I speak for most when I say 90% of players at the table dont notice or appreciate the forethought us crafters put into the level of detail on our pieces! I dont have any pics of the big disasters, but I do have the one that haunts be the most. The Tower.... This beautiful disaster, this beauty with poison lips, her rainments cover all her ills! Building the Tower diaryEverything was going great, from covering seams and gaps to my first attempt at using coffee-flock. Almost done painting, and I notice something is off...wait, the whole tower is off... what the...?? While it may not be as noticable to many except me, I see it everytime and am reminded of the mystery of levelling. Did I mount it crooked, or did it settle while I wasnt looking? I'll never know!
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Post by skunkape on Dec 12, 2017 13:55:35 GMT
Your terrain pieces look fine guys. Yes, I see the slight lean in the your tower erho, but as I said, it's slight. I know I always notice the little errors I make while working on a terrain project, but most often the players won't see it.
DM Michael, I hear you as far as players are concerned, but I'm fortunate that both groups of people I play with appreciate the hard work I put into my terrain projects. I know they anticipate my displaying new pieces when running. Still haven't gotten the other GMs to craft their own stuff, but they like using the terrain I've crafted!
Also, finally got my gaming room back. After about a month of cleaning up after the previous occupant, I've gotten the walls and ceiling repainted, most of the trim around the floor done, all the furniture in and some of my terrain into the bookshelf. Still need to get the new window shades and get the floor redone, but I'm not too worried about that at the moment. Window shades are the next addition, should get them in this weekend I hope!
Best part, my Wednesday night group has been using it for the past 4 game sessions, so it is seeing a lot of use! Can't wait till I can build the new gaming table, but that might not be until summer, really want to get the floor redone first!
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Post by tauster on Dec 12, 2017 17:52:32 GMT
Apart from agreeing with the guys that your stuff looks very cool (and certainly good enough to game with), I like the idea to share failures and discussions based on mistakes. That's a great way to learn.
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Post by bobtheskull on Dec 15, 2017 19:18:08 GMT
This thread got me thinking about my first terrain project. Now, I've had several failed projects that didn't make it to the table, but these horrible things did. I hadn't really seen any terrain videos at that time, and I didn't know much about it. For Christmas that year, I got a set of hirst arts molds, and I set about casting pieces. I don't get a lot of craft time during the week (I have a baby) and with all the mixing and drying time, it took me months to cast enough pieces for my project. I assembled them into dwarven forge-style tiles complete with doorways, and functional secret doors. The first real problem came when I painted them. I didn't really know how to dry brush, and I thought a wash was something you did in the tub. The paint job was awful. I don't really have a good picture that shows how bad the paint was, but trust me. Gross. Once I got them to the table, I realized they were a huge pain to assemble, the doors didn't fit in the doorways, and the walls were so high, my players couldn't see the battlefield half the time. What's more, after this picture was taken, the box they were in fell from a counter and they shattered. May they rest in pieces.
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Post by tauster on Dec 15, 2017 21:52:47 GMT
After a first brief look (without having read the story behind the picture) my thoughts were 'wow, what a great idea making a white dungeon!' I haven't seen this kind of color pallette on a dungeon set before, and it really doesn't look bad at all. Reminds me of bleached bones...
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Post by bobtheskull on Dec 15, 2017 22:59:53 GMT
Thanks for the positive feedback, but it really wasn't what I was going for. In person, the color is more of an earwaxy off-white.
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Post by deafnala on Dec 15, 2017 23:46:17 GMT
Everyone who does terrain, especially ambitious terrain, winds up with a few White Elephants; i.e. projects that may be Oh-So-Coll, but are never going to be finished. These are three of mine (photos taken exclusively for this thread). Two Tall Taverns: Temerity O'Leery's Tower: There are others, but these are the BIG THREE...in more ways than one.
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Post by bobtheskull on Dec 18, 2017 6:41:31 GMT
You know, when I saw those the first time, I thought it was a really cool idea to get some more vertical terrain. But I can see how playability would be an issue with all the little platforms. We have one player in particular who can't move her figurine without at least knocking over a tree or hill giant. I can only imagine one of these going down and shotgunning figures halfway across the room.
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Post by deafnala on Dec 18, 2017 12:51:12 GMT
Gamers come in all sizes, shapes, & both genders, but they are almost universally ham fisted oafs.
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Post by bobtheskull on Dec 18, 2017 23:09:46 GMT
Very true. I've definitely whacked my fare share of goblin patrols into orbit.
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Lynq
Tool Gatherer
Posts: 75
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Post by Lynq on Dec 19, 2017 20:54:46 GMT
I love the idea of showing mistakes, things gone wrong or even completely scrapped projects. It helps everyone and all these projects still looking awesome, my players appreciated my small mushroom scatter terrain more than an electronic controlled tower they could move themselves! So mistakes won't really matter unless they are pretty serious, even then, anything can be turned into a ruin!
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