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Post by tauster on Dec 1, 2019 21:04:25 GMT
Finished tile no. two, and started the next one. 
Hydras Rest:
The dead giant might be the killer of the hydra who succumbed to his/her injuries, or the rider of the beast. We'lle never know. Without a speak with the dead spell, that is.
Both tiles for comparison:
And here's the next tile:
I want to hide this beast in plain sight - while the party searches amidst the bones and ruins for treasure, or out of fun climbs the giant skull, the bones will start to move, pull themselves out of the earth and form this beastie:
I'll take some eye candy shots when the terrain is done, together with the beast.
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Post by Draklith on Dec 9, 2019 15:45:59 GMT
Very cool Tauster... I did a room once with a pile of what looked like bones... until the party entered, I rotated a hidden metal bar, and a dracolich stands up from the bones right in front of everyone, the looks on their faces was priceless  |
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Post by tauster on Dec 9, 2019 16:17:57 GMT
Very cool Tauster... I did a room once with a pile of what looked like bones... until the party entered, I rotated a hidden metal bar, and a dracolich stands up from the bones right in front of everyone, the looks on their faces was priceless
I'd love to see a video of that tile! |
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Post by tauster on Dec 15, 2019 19:20:11 GMT
'nother spontaneous project shouldering it's way to the top of the to-do list and pushing the started ones aside until it has my full attention... seems like that sort of thing never stops to happen.  I've seen dice towers shaped like spiral stairs for a long time now, and always wanted to make one (or two, or three) myself. Recently I found some cheap scrap pieces of acrylic tube on ebay (buying acrylic tubes new is just too expensive for my taste), so now I have everything to get this project going.
I don't have a 2D printer (yet), so printing one like these models below is no option. But they are good examples to look at and get a grip on the overall design.
 
I took inspiration from this printed model - I love how the steps seem to be hewn from the rock. That's something I'm going to try, and that's also what pushed me over the edge and got me started today.
I cut rings with an outer diameter fitting inside the acrylic tube (15cm minus 1cm, to give room for the hotglue that holds the steps and other uncertainties) I forgot to take shots from the next steps, but cutting the half-rings into roughtly 1cm thick disks and then making 30° segments isn't that hard to imagine, I imagine. Then I glued the steps together like so:
It turned out that they were too wide and flat for the dice to roll down reliably, especially D4 and D6 stop quite often. Lesson learned: The steps have to be higher and more narrow, for a better overall slope. The minimum depth should be sufficient for a standard miniature base to stand on, because I want to double-use the dice tower as terrain piece. On the left side is the second attempt. As you can see, Fors' standard base is just barely standing, while the smaller Cale stands easily on the small step. I then made the rock beneath the steps with cumpled tin foil, hotglued in place...
...then gave it all a covering with sculptamold. Not sure this will be enough to look like natural rock when painted, so I'll probably add another layer of sculptamold when the first has thouroughly dried and take care of the rock texture then. Future spiral staircase dice towers might have a thinner axle (or whatever the proper name for that central inner pillar is), but that would mean buying another acrylic tube with a smaller diameter. For now, I (try to) concentrate on getting this thing done before something new shoulders it aside. Which is too often the case than I'd like to admit.
The next design idea for dice towers is already waiting: A set of zig-zag stairs, or slopes, between too parallel acrylic sheets. Imagine a very flat ant farm, just deep enough for the largest die in your bag. Not sure this works, as I have never seen this simple design anywhere online...
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Post by margaret on Dec 15, 2019 19:29:50 GMT
Lovely build! For your next try, you might consider spiraling the stairs in the other direction, as the 3D-print example you showed. There's a reason the wide side of the stair is on the right of the person [defender] facing down. Of course, your stairs could have a different reason for having the defender be the person facing up.
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Post by tauster on Dec 15, 2019 19:31:44 GMT
Wow, I totally overlooked that. Never occured to me that the direction of the spiral would have a meaning, but it makes so much sense. Thanks for pointing it out, margaret! |
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Post by sgtslag on Dec 16, 2019 14:13:50 GMT
Historically, they did this, and other nasty little things. They would make stairs uneven, different heights: the defenders knew it, from daily use, and it was automatic for them. For attackers, it was a nightmare, throwing them off as they fought their way up the uneven steps. They had some really ingenious, nasty little tricks they employed...
Nice work. Looking forward to seeing it finished. Cheers!
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Post by tauster on Feb 6, 2020 12:59:36 GMT
'nother spontaneous terrain project...
Months ago, I found pics of the Cyber Defence Platform myde by TTCombat, and instantly liked the design idea behind it. Even though it isn't really expensive, I didn't buy the thing but let the idea bubble for a while. Today I wanted to fool around with the proxxon foam cutter and decided to give it a try.
I decided to use the Necron texture pin and a pavement roll for the support pillars.
In addition to hotglue, I pinned the pieces with wooden skewers.
The additional pillars won't stand...
...so I glued on poker chips as bases. Always remember to remove the protective plastic foil on the upper side of the chip, or it will later peel off and separate the terrain pice from the actual chip!
This was going quickly so far, I think it took about 30-45 minutes. Painting shouldn't be that hard ...IF I could decide on a color scheme! 
Several classics lend themselves to the design, copper/brass & verdigris is my favourite, rusted iron might work too (but I'm not sure it will jive with the design well). The stonework will be painted as soiled white shimmering marble (white primer, pearlescent sheen, dark brown wash) so that it blends in my Mirrorspace terrain set.
How would you paint the necron pieces? Actual necrons aren't in my game, so the black-silver-green is more or less out of the question. Also, glowing effects over all the tines are probably too much effort.
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Post by tauster on Feb 7, 2020 22:00:36 GMT
Made up my mind and painted the pieces in a simple ancient copper with a double verdigris wash, plus a Gehenna Gold drybrush to bring some of the sheen back.
Primed in black
Stippled in gold (cheap acrylic craft paints, a 50/50 mix of gold and aluminum silver)
First verdigris wash
After the second verdigris wash. The part where the brush rests on is drybrushed with Gehenna Gold. The difference is subtle but vital.
The left piece is finished (i.e. 2x verdigris wash, then drybrushed in gold), the underside of the centerpiece on the right is only washed once and not drybrushed.
The whole bunch
Next steps is painting up the stone-tiled tripod legs. I'll go for a white basecoat, a perlescent drybrush and a dark brown wash, aiming at an 'ancient marble' effect or something like that...
Now I have two small golden pieces left where I can play with. I have a number of interesting metallic colors and want to see how accents of those look. I don't think it will be better than how it looks now, but there's only one way to find out. 
Also, I intended to wash everything with a dark brown wash. This will probably kill the golden sheen (which would have to be done all over again), but I'm not sure this will really improve the look.
Whatever the outcome, the lesson learned is: Always make a few pieces more than intended.
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Post by tauster on Feb 9, 2020 15:57:16 GMT
.....aaaaand finished!  This project turned out more fun than expected, especially the painting part. After assembling, I was - as is typical for me - totally in the dark how to paint this set up. I wanted it to stand out, but not glaringly. Turned out that 'glaringly' wasn't so wrong... My intention was to use very strong metallic colors to set some accents, but I suspected these would be too bold. So I decided to give Greenstuffworld's Colorshift Metal a try. I got two different bottles recently, and felt that green and purple would ge well together. Turns out I was right, at least by my personal verdict. Metallic colors are notoriously hard to fotograph, so I took a few shots to give you an idea how they look. The color shifting works best on large areas, but it does well on the small dots too.
The white pillars were washed with a watered-down green wash, and after drying, with a black wash. The subtle green has been obliteraded by the black, but I can live with that. The dirty grey makes it fit in quite well with my other ruined pieces, so overall I'm very happy with it all. The circular pillars can be set up in different configurations, and provide lots of line-of-sight blocking options in combat. Also, I'll describe the color of the unknown material as being really hard to look at, causing headaches and nausea. If the PC linger too long and too close to this weird apparatus, these affects will worsen and their skin will begin to blister. This thing might have been created by aboleth or illithid, or a some obscure but powerful sect with ties to the Far Realm. I treat Far Realm effects like radioactivity, which will, when it finally dawns on the players, give them a nice shock.  There will be a strong incentive to get - and stay for a while - near this thing, as it's failing arcane/psionic(?) technology can be used as a crude weapon: They can try to overload the arcane/psionic(?) circuits, and cause powerful energy discharges to strike the battlefield, with various degrees of precision. I'll present a group of very powerful enemies to give the party an incentive to use every weapon available, and don't look too closely at the prices that are to be paid. I still have some never-revealed very large monsters like the walking ruin or the walking hill monster...
I might have to demonstrate this power by having enemies using it on them before, or adding a sage NPC to the party with the required knowledge. Or, more frightening: The apparatus telepathically contacts nearby beings and gives the information freely. Heck, it might even have a twisted personality...
More evil ideas? please fire away!         |
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Post by margaret on Feb 13, 2020 17:23:06 GMT
Very effective use of your texture roller and metallic paints!
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Post by tauster on Feb 28, 2020 21:16:13 GMT
So many unfinished projects, and yet another new one...
Just watched WALL-E with my boy, and took an instant liking to the countless trash cubes the little hero is piling.
I've got a foam cutter, I've got foam, and I have a texture rolling pin. What more do I need?
The cubes look too pristine...
...so I put them into an old pringles tube, add something sharp, spiky and heavy and rattle it around a bit to give the cubes some dents and cracks.
Basing them in back color with some watered-down PVS glue mixed in.
The final color scheme will probably be a rusted iron, but I might go with half of them for the well-proven ancient copper & verdigris combo, to go with the junkyard terrain set.
Nothing fancy, but quick, easy and fun!         |
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Post by tauster on Apr 9, 2021 19:53:28 GMT
Finally started another terrain set. Not that the old ones are all finished up... It's another 'junkyard' themed set, three large pieces that will be used mainly on Clockwork, a completely mechanical and artificial moon older than the rest of the crystal sphere it is set in, and probably as old as the multiverse itself. It's a central part of the metaplot of a campaign that started in 2002 and after a few sleepy periods is still/again going strong. And if that's not enough reason to put a more-than-average amount of work into it, than it is because mechanical terrain is always cool like hell. Construction foam, gears from an old inkjet printer, leftover foam bits (styrofoam and construction foam) plus
other odds and ends. Never throw such junk away if you have the storage space, and a concept of keeping your pile of material more or less organized. I also added a few LEGO Bionicle parts. I bought a 10kg crate of random bionicle parts for an apple and an egg a few years back. I have been giving this stuff to the kids who absolutely love it, and have been building quite a number of robots, terrain pieces and stuff with it so far.
What did I just say about never throwing stuff away...? A while back I had another little project where I drilled lots and lots of holes through plastic boards. I kept the crumps and even sorted the larger ones out so I had two different grain sizes. I knew I'll use that stuff for exactly this set, so keeping it around instead of throwing it away is a little less crazy than it might sound.
The messy part: Glob PVA glue over all the empty spaces and wherever dirt is going to go, then sprinkle the plastic shavings over everything.
Leave it to dry for a day or two, then knock all loose parts off (make sure you have enough newspaper under the area you're doing it, otherwise you'll find crumbs of that stuff for years after you finished!) and seal it with a good helping of watered-down PVA glue. And yes: It is as messy as it looks. That's how far I've progressed. I'll give it another day or two to dray uf, then prime the whole thing in black.
Even with simple color schemes like rusted iron and copper&verdigris, this will be a hell of a paint job due to the size of the pieces, and the awful number of details. I might have bitten off more than I can chew, but nobody rushes me, so I can take my time. I just hope this won't become another unfinished project on the crafting table. It would take up an awful amount of work space.
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Post by blaineclark on Nov 3, 2022 9:05:23 GMT
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