Tauster'sTiles

[skunkape]

Great looking modification to your Proxxon! Hope it gives you the benefit that you wanted!

[tauster]

May 28, 2019 19:14:26 GMT sgtslag said:

The only hitch I can see, is if the Power Supply can handle the extra resistance of the longer nichrome wire. As the resistance increases, the current flowing through the wire, decreases. You will definitely have to turn up the heat. Question is, will it go high enough, to cut at the speed you desire? Honestly, I suspect it will.

Turned out exactly as you thought... I think I need a stronger power supply.

It works, barely -I can make cuts over the full height of the new frame, but even on the highest setting I have to push the foam through at a snail's pace.

I suspect that sooner or later the wire will snap, which happens even with the original frame from time to time. But this time it will be almost 40cm of hot wire snapping - I'm not looking forward to getting that anywhere near my skin! Although at a second thought, snapping wires are usually stuck withing the foam, so I should be safe...

So now I need a friendly electrician helping me with upping the power supply. But that's low on my list - I don't really 'need' this right now, and there's so much more stuff waiting to be begun, continued and let alone finished. Add to that the gardening season that is in ful swing and enthusiasticaly gobbling up most of my free time and you'll see that this wil be a project for fall or winter to be continued.

[erho]

I didnt realize they cut through the foam mats too!

[tauster]

Jun 4, 2019 17:22:08 GMT erho said:

I didnt realize they cut through the foam mats too!

Not sure what foam mats are...

I was referring to the large isolation tiles you get at the hardware store, like these (125 cm x 600 cm, thickness 50 mm).

With the extended frame, I can now cut the 60cm into 40 (or make it 2x 30cm), then strip the with down to whatever I want. I've made cuts that were 1mm thin. 2mm thickness can be textured with a rolling pin with no problems.

With one such tile, in theory, I could make ten 5mm thin, 300 mm broad strips, then go over them with the large texture rolling pin and have 7.5 m² of pavement tiles (each 5mm thick, enough for gaming purposes), costing me less than 8€. Not sure what I would do with 7,5m² of pavement, but the thought is nice.

...oh I know - I could make a ton of modular dungeon tiles of various standardized sizes. One day... *sigh*

By the way: Amazon just threw some foam cutter ads my way (those marketing emails can be a pain, but sometimes they're actually interesting).

130€

www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07M683MQJ

136€

www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07KPFMX4F

I wasn't aware that there are other stationary foam cutters out there. They cost a good deal more than Proxxon's Thermocut (82€), but they seem to come with jigs that will make different shapes, like the ones from shiftinglands.com. If you add those (here and here, each 28€), then we're in the same range. I won't buy those just to compare them, but if someone around here is considering getting a foam cutter, you might give it a thought.

On the other hand, buidling one of those from scratch can't be that difficult: Sawing MDF to size, bending a bar of metal in shape and mounting it to the board, plus a variable transformer and the correct cutting wire (I'd just buy proxxon's wire spool). Who dares?

[skunkape]

I'm jealous, thickest foam I can get from the corner store is 1/4 to 1/2 inch. While I prefer living in the south, it cramps my crafting style!

[tauster]

I had a made whole bunch of steampunk terrain foam strips that were sitting on the attich for a few months now as other things became more important, and then the strips became semi-forgotten. No more!

The idea was to use them as a kind of dungeon floor, i.e. corridors where the walls aren't shown for better playability.

I didn't take lots of W.I.P. shots, but there's no point of showing all the steps again. They were made the same way I did the first batch.

Waiting until the wash has dried. I will go over some spots on each board with a golden drybrush, to add a bit more variety.

Close-up:

More eye candy...

[tauster]

I love the extended arm on the Thermocut! Now I can finally cut those large foam plates in half and make giant terrain plates!

I needed a set of lava tiles, and I wanted to cover the whole game table (sans a 10-15 cm strip all around where we roll dice and put our stuff on), so here's what I came up with:

I started with a large sheet of 50mm thick foam,...

...then cut it in half length-wise and stripped it in half again, then cut off the diamond-texture on both sides.  I ended up with very unregular edges because for the first cut I had no guide, and cutting foam free-handedly didn't get better results:

That's half of the sheet; I still have the other half for other projects left. So this one cost me about 5€. Not bad for a gametable-filling terrain set.

So I used a guide to get clean edges, on each sheet. You'll notice that each sheet has a different heigth - I should  have checked my guide before stripping them from 50mm to 25mm that I really cut them half-way.

The wavey texture comes from the wire being not hot enough, which is caused by the arm extension (as discussed in previous posts). That's something I definitely don't like; I can explain it away on a lava field as ripples, but with other textures this would just look plain ugly. So I need a stronger power supply eventually.

I took the sheets out in the garden, looked for a large stone and banged on them until I liked the texture. Sounds probably as funny as it looked, me banging away with a stone on foam. Hope the neighbour didn't notice.

Some WIP shots from the painting process. Nothing new or surprising here. Yellow basepaint, then several layers of drybrushing: orange, dark red, black and finally a metallic black to give the cooled lava an obsidian-like sheed.

 

...finished. I'm really happy with the result, apart from the waves. Now all that's to do is rummaging through my boxes and taking stock of all the fire- and lave-themed stuff I made throughout the years, and coming up with some cool adventures.

[tauster]

Just stmbled over Dwarven Forge's ongoing kickstarter:

Hellscape - Modular Lava Terrain from Dwarven Forge

Years ago, I got two of their Cavern Tiles sets for an apple and an egg, and while I absolutely love the level of detail that went into DF's tiles, it takes far too long for me to set up a decent sized cavern with a few tunnels, and even with two sets the amount of space you can cover is a bit ...underwhelming for me.

But if you cut your own tiles, out of foam and in a much larger size that theirs - see my lava tiles posting just above this one - then you could cover the majority of the table with DIY tiles and use their stuff as beautiful accents and details inbetween. You'l get your whole game table covered in terrain, and the eyes will still overflow with the level of detail from their tiles. My guess is that, if made well, the 'blend in'-effect will let you forget that some of the terrain pieces are different from the rest, and your brain will see a whole table full of terrain goodness.

You just had to strip the foam to a thickness compatible with their tiles to make them blend in, and use multiples of their square size.

This goes for all stiles: Hellspace, Caverns, Dungeons, Cityscape. Just a thought...

[tauster]

Just in time for my next game session, Wyloch shared yet another great tutorial, showing how to do volcanic scatter terrain:

I immediately started myking a batch.

Instead of cardstock, I used 5mm MDF as bases and cut it out with the jigsaw. Reasons:

- MDF doesn't warp later on when the wet Scultamold will be slapped on,

- it is generally more sturdy and heavier, making it an ideal material for bases

- I had it lying around in the workshop.

I traced out irregular shapes, then sawed them out, loosely following those lines.

Note that jigsawing MDF produces an incredible amount od MDF dust that gets in,on and under everything. On the bright side, the jigsaw cuts through the material like butter and you can easily sand the edges afterwards, giving you clean bases in practically no time. so I'll definitely use that stuff more in the future. Gone are the days of warped bases!

I added a pringles can to the mix of volcanic pipes, and a plastic yoghurt cup to have more diversity in the shapes and sizes. Otherwise, not much different from Wyloch 's method.

Glued the lids in. I immedeately liked Wylochs idea of adding a removable cardboard handle, but I underestimated how much a gamechanger this idea is! Glueing the lids in without a handle would be next to impossible without serious damage to your sanity, as you would have to fight the cardstock tube, the lid and the hot glue, which is an unholy alliance you'd have no chance against. The handles make it a breeze pushing the lid in and positioning it however I want them.

Textred the lids with hotglue:

Next will be the sculptamold. I never used this stuff before, so I'm quite curious how this works out.

[edit]

Wyloch is right, this stuff is supercool. However it is quite expensive, a 3lb bag costs about 17€!

I had ordered two bags, to get over amazons 30€ threshold for free shipping, so I would have plenty of material. However I realized that most of the stuff would go into the corners between the vertical vents and the bases, which would be a total waste. So I filled out those corners with crumpled tin foil that I hotglued in. The idea was to use the sculptamold only as texturing layer. It worked out, and my guestimate is that it saved me at least 30-50% of material. Instead of aluminum foil, I could have used crumpled paper, but I realized that only in hindsight.

The sculptamold starts to harden after 5-10 minutes (I worked outside, temp was about 25°C), becoming hard enough to add a second layer if I wanted.

So that's where I'll leave it for today. I want to give it at least 24hrs to dry. If everything goes right, I'll prime it tomorrow night, and depending on how fast acrylics dry on the sculptamold, maybe add the drybrushing.

I know that there are a few 'make your own sculptamold' tutorials out there (like here), and I'll probably revisit them soon-ish. The stuff is too cool not to work with in the future but too expensive to buy on a regular basis. Let's see how much work goes into making it myself...

[tauster]

The lava hils are still unfinished, but another set of terrain tiles made it to the top of the to-do list: I need some woodland themedand quite  harmless scatter terrrain tiles that will rise during the encounter and become several shambling mounds.

This is another simple build where there's not much skill required.

I normaly use crumpled tinfoil to sculpt the general shape of the hills in the first step. This time I used cumpled paper and cardboard strips left over from rounding the corners of the the cardboard bases, as I try to reduce the use of tinfoil in general. A thin layer of hotglue, smeared flat on the complete surface of the cardboard, prevents moisture from the PVA from warping the cardboard bases.

I added some tree stumps that I bought and made hotglue copies of. Some of them have faces in the bark - I wonder if the players will take that for pieces of art made by the forest's natives or if they become paranoid and avoid the hills. 

A generous coat of PVA  over everything so that the grass and moss sticks properly without falling off...

DMScotty's pencil shavings moss is a great technique, however I hate having to shave my pencils just to get some properly sized wood chips. So this time I try sawdust from my table saw, a mix of fine and coarse dust. If that works, I'll never have to sacrifice my pencils again...

I worked the sawdust into the nooks and crannies so that the hotglue roots peak through the moss when painted. Not sure this works out the way in hope, but I'll give it a try...

[tauster]

Using sawdust instead of pencil shavings works great. Thexture is a tiny bit different but you really have to concentrate on spotting the difference. No need to kill pencils from now on.

Brown basecoat with stipples of two additional brown shades

Hotglue tentacles vines added, plus a few premade mushrooms.

Side note:

Like my box of tentacles, I love the premade mushrooms. They are super handy to quickly add some eye candy to a project. I think I'll use more premade details in the future, it really improves the quality of the finished pieces without adding too much time. ...of course this is a naive fallacy because actually making premade stuff takes time too, which has to be added to whatever you use them for. Still, having a large box full of premade mushrooms available is better than having to start all over and make a handfull of toadstools just for one project.

From here on it's only a matter of drybrushing different green shades, four layers in total.

Second green shade:

Citadel's Mood Green:

Final green layer (Citadel Camo Green)

What's left? Just a gloss varnish coat over the vines, then it's off to taking pics and playing with depth of field.

The stuff in this posting (i.e. the vines, mushrooms and painting) took a little over one hour. Painting them up was very satisfying and relaxing, I always love when the details start popping out and the piece nears completion.

I absolutely love how these pieces turned out, and will probably start making a larger collection of forest-themed terrain. I might mix some overgrown ruins in, just for fun and mood. ...oh, and I already have the Mirror Prime tile set that will go perfectly with these!

[tauster]

Finishing the Skeletal Giant reminded me that I needed more bonesey terrain tiles, so I finally broke out the plastic bin with the stuff I had started collecting a few years ago, and never stopped accumulating.

This should be enough material to decorate half a dozen scatter terrain pieces. The large pieces that look like spine fragments are made with PVA-soaked paper, pressed into shape simply by making a fist. You could do sevaral dozen in under one hour if you're so inclined. Giant bones palace, anyone?

I also collected large skeletal figures, which would make truly memorable foes. Not in the shape they are now, they all need some upgrades to make them go from cheap to necromantic cool.

Anyway, here's the first terrain tile. I used a MDF tile I had lying around as a base, hotglued several large pieces on to make the general layout. The idea behind this tile's layout was to form a giant spine with the fragments and let the end in a smaller pine-like piece, which ends in a tiny* skull. These bones do very obviously not fit to any known creature, which will make my players speculate what the heck has died here, and hope that it will stay dead.

* Tiny only in relation to the giant spine fragments - the skull itself would be almost half the size of a human.

Rock flocking

PVA-soaked sawdust to hide al the seams and transitions with vegetation.

I never painted sick and decaying vegetation, so this will be something new. Shure, I could paint it as green as the Shambling Mound terrain pieces, but that would prevent the tile set from being generic.

Still... a battlefield overgrown with lush vegetation does really have a certain allure... Damn. I've just started a new tile set and already have another one lined up!

[margaret]

That's a truly impressive collection of skeletons you have! Still shaking my head over the lobsteroid endoskeleton, though. Some designer has apparently never eaten a lobster or crayfish.

[tauster]

Nov 13, 2019 4:42:45 GMT margaret said:

That's a truly impressive collection of skeletons you have! Still shaking my head over the lobsteroid endoskeleton, though. Some designer has apparently never eaten a lobster or crayfish.

I know it is horribly anatomically wrong, and my players probably too. But honestly? Who cares. As an educational toy it is a catastrophe, but it looks cool, and that's enough for using it on the table. And finally, I can always frankenstein it into something else.

[margaret]

I was sure you knew it was wrong - just had to comment on the weirdness. As a source of materials, it's worth it for the claws alone!

[tauster]

Some afterthoughts:

- it could be just a different type of monster scorpion, one with an endosceleton
- ...or with both endo- and exosceleton - the endosceleton could be required due to the giant size to the beast, and the exosceleton could have rotted away after death
- the necromantic transmutation caused the chitine to shift into a bone structure, simply because the necromancer was more familiar with bone structures than with chitine armor.

The more I think about it, the more I like the fact that this beast has been designed screamingly wrong. It comes with free story hooks!

[tauster]

Coming along nicely! 

I managed not only to color-block the tiles but also do most of the layers, which I really didn't expect because I totally underestimated the color-drying power of our tile stove who dried the color blocks in about 1 hour.

I didn't prime them and started straight with painting one main color to each area: a wet-in wet blending of beige and white on the bones, black on the ground and brown on earth that will later become green areas.

Four layers of green drybrush. My original intention was to have the vegetation decayed and dying, going for less lush greens and more sick yellows. But this fresher colour pallette will make the tiles blend better in another tile set I made, so I changed the plan.

I should have done the beige drybrushing on the wood and rocky parts before the greens, but I wanted to see what happens when you do the greens first. I'll probably go with the regular order next time (i.e. greens after rock & wood)

A very light drybrushing of a warm & bright green tone (Mood Green, which I really love for fresh grass) in the center of the green areas.

If I leave it at that, the greens will look too vibrant, so I done the Mood Green areas down with Camo Green, which is more olive and very similar to the second gren shade I had applied. You see the difference on the front left tile:

...done. Before I apply the washes, I'll let the colors dry completely. Patience pays here, I've made the mistake of applying a wash to not thouroughly dried layers often enough that the lesson should stick by now, I hope...

Some more eye candy. Fors and Cale meet a giant skeleton and seem to have a good time. Or maybe they're just parlaying for their lives?

[tauster]

Washing's done. Enjoy a couple of before/after shots, while the color's still fresh.

[tauster]

Started the second large 'Battle of Bones'-themed tile.

I want each of those large tiles to tell it's own story, or hint at the past of that place.

I got the idea of naming each of the large tiles. Not sure how the first tile would be named, but this place on the battlefield should be called something along the lines of 'the three-headed dragon't demise' or 'Hydra's demise. The giant skeleton might have been the dragon's rider, or the slayer of the hydra. Ideas welcome!

After I felt that I had slapped on enough hotglue castings, I filled the rest of the board with the usual mix of slightly watered-down PVA and sawdust, taking care to cove anyting where the hotglue meets the board.

I tried to 'bury' a few hotglue places with the mix, and if I did it right, it should look like the vegetation is slowly covering everything.

It should be dry and ready for color-blocking tomorrow evening.

[tauster]

Painting is much the same as the first tile, so I'll spare you most of the details...

Color blocking finished, starting the green drybrush layers.

Drybrushing is done. I'll leave the colors to thoroughly dry overnight so I can savely swamp everything with a black-ish brown-ish wash in the morning.

I really like the layout of this tile, although I forgot to add some pebbles, rocks and tree stumps. Can't be helped now...