Tauster'sTiles

[tauster]

Painting is almost done.

I knocked the paint pot over during basepainting the column - just before the very last brush stroke, of course - and got that black paint & PVA glue mix all over my wooden floor. It left some probably permanent  stains, no matter how much I scrubbed.

Other than that, painting was easy. After the basecoat was dry I drybrushed several browns and a white on, which took 1 hr from start to finish.

(Forgive the crappy lighting. I'll take shots of the final piece in daylight.)

If you have an object with lots of unstructured (i.e. random) texture, the texture does almost all the work for you when you paint it up. All it took was heavy drybrushing with a large brush and wetblending each color into the next. Which is another way of saying 'don't wait for the paint to dry and continue to slap the next paint on'. I didn't even clean out the previous color from the pallet before putting the next one in.

I started with a dark brown and went progressively lighter, both in color and with the strength of brush strokes. Mix each new color with the previous ones to get hues that really work well together.

Detail shot:

I might or might not add a dark wash. Probably yes, but I'll wait until the paint is dry.

[erho]

Thats real cool!

Congrats on the new floor shade wash

[tauster]

The last few days were quite exciting, craft-wise: I finally dusted off and put into operation the Proxxon Thermocut I got over 3 years ago. Real live had interfered then (just started building our house), and the box got crammed in a dark corner and was forgotten. Thanks to Wyloch 's videos and some great german terrain building tutorials (how to make Moria-style pillars) I kicked myself in the behind and fired that thing up. What can I say, it is indeed the gamechanger I had it suspected to be. I already have the free-hand hot wire cutter and love it, but the Thermocut is a whole new level of awesome.

In combination with greenstuffworld's texture rolling pins you are able to churn out large sets of terrain pieces in no time. I haven't gone into mass-production, I'm still playing and experimenting, so here's some of the stuff I did recently.

Styrofoam strips with different rolling pin textures.

Front: Frozen (lava and ice)

2nd row: Mega Pavement (30cm pin for XXL terrain pieces!). Some stones painted golden, giving the players something to think.

Last row: Cobblestone

Left: Alien Hive (need to improve on the color scheme)

Unpainted, with yet another pin smuggled in (2nd on the left: Ancestral Recall)

A monolith / marking stone, cut with Thermocut, textured with the Cobblestone rolling pin, based in black and drybrushed in grey once. I guess that I could make two dozen in one hour if I wanted.

Another monolith, textured with Frozen, based in orange, stippled with yellow, then two heavy drybrushes of black and metallic black.

My two new pins just arrived: Necronic and Eldar!

Based in neon colors

Drybrushed black. Metallic black later, but the effect won't be much different.

 

 

It feels a bit weird praising a product so openly, but both Greenstuffworld's rolling pins and the Proxxon's Thermocut are just awesome. Nuff said.

[tauster]

More monoliths!

You get the little spikes when you cut the lower ends of the pillars and keep the wedges in place when cutting the other sides. Not sure what I'll do with these, but I'm happy to have them.

Textured with the Bricks rolling pin, glued to a very large washer (Ø 55 mm) and primed in grey. Which makes it a pillar instead of a monolith, but we're not splitting hairs here.

[tauster]

Finished.

The washer gives is a secure stand, no way it will be toppled by accident on the table. No idea how to paint the washer. A generic paint job to go with the generic look & feel of the pillar itself, so no dwarven runes or what have you. Probably stippling with a small piece of sponge. The washer is magnetic, so this will work well with all the small magnetic dungeon dressings I've already done.

Tomorrow I'll probably make a dozen more.

[sgtslag]

Wow!... Wow... I, too, have a Proxxon Hot Wire Table Cutter. An amazing machine. Would have never thought of making shapes like your monoliths. Thank you, for the inspiration. The rollers are amazing, as well. I hadn't realized they could be used to texturize pink insulation foam pieces -- I thought they could only be used to texture clays, and soft (before they harden...) epoxies. The brick-like pillar would be perfect in a Call of Cthulhu game.  It looks like a cult's architecture using 1920's bricks...  Fantastic inspirations! Thank you. Cheers!

[tauster]

sgtslag , you might want to search for Thermocut tutorials. I have only dne a very limited search on youtube and haven't nearly watched all the good stuff there, but even the first few vids were great:

How to make a circle jig. Or just buy it from Gerard from Shiftinglands. He invented several awesome jigs that will extend the crafting bang you get out of your crafting buck so much further. I'll probably make me a circle jig and save that money for his Multi Corner Cutter and/or the stupendous Dome Tool.

I guess that there is a whole rabbit hole of clever ideas how to make shapes with this tool, you just have to train yourself thinking geometrically (for lack of a better word). Look at how Gerard makes a roof with a dormer (here, at approx. 16min). Just a few simple cuts... At 35min he makes pipes/tubes with the circle jig, and at 37min he does cones. Oh, and look what he does from 41:20 to 43:10. Just stunning.

Painting the washers with acrylic black didn't work well because the brush leaves streaks on the metal, so I use a spraycan. The test piece was hotglued on the washer before the painting, but that leaves the problem of speedily painting the washer later on when the pillar is finished. Better way: First paint the washers and pillars completely, then glue them together.

11 large and 9 small pillars textured and painted. Time required: 45 min, which includes mixing the grey, pre-mixing the red and cleaning up everything. Key to speedy basepainting is to have lots of color on your brush, gobbing it on and then wiping the excess away. Much faster than using a brush with only a little color on and having to go over and over the foam again until every last nook and cranny is covered.

[factoriatabletop]

they look so cool!
i will try to do something similar but on my style!
i am thinking how i can make a roll for texture---lets see what i can do!
once again, those pillars look so f!reaking cool

[tauster]

Drybrushed everything in about 30min:



I really want to finish the whole batch today, but I will let it dry completely overnight. I have ruined more than one project with a wash that was applied too early...

[Draklith]

Hell Yeah bro...looks amazing, might have to pick me up some'dem there roller thingies

thanks for posting Tauster !!!

[sgtslag]

Thanks for the info, tauster! Those pillars are amazing... Cheers!

[tauster]

Sept 2, 2018 14:50:45 GMT tauster said:

I really want to finish the whole batch today, but I will let it dry completely overnight. I have ruined more than one project with a wash that was applied too early...

OK, I didn't have the patience and couldn't wait. The drybrush layer seemed to be dry enough (and it was, fortunately) so I mixed up a new batch of black wash (water, black acrylic paint, dishwasher rincse aid, Erdal Glanzer) and washed away. Time required: about 15 minutes, including mixing the wash and cleaning up.

I suspect I have added too much water, but that can't be judged as long as the paint is still wet. I can always go over them again.

[sgtslag]

Love it... Thanks again for the inspiration! Keep posting updates, too, please. Cheers!

[tauster]

The wash turned out OK, but the washers had to be redone. The stamped ground was barely good enough to game with, which would have been OK with me, but the colors did clash with the brick's read:

Since I'm normally draping a black canvas over our gaming table to act as generic ground (a great ersatz for elaborate dungeon floor!), I painted over the stamped washer with flat black. It should 'vanish' when standing on the canvas, or so I hope.

[tauster]

This piece was inspired by Torment: Tides of Numenera's first room with the moving basalt pillars...

...and a cookie cutter:

The goal is a weird terrrain piece with lots of height differences. It won't fit each and every dungeon, but if you play out psionic battles, it could be one of a handful of standard battlefields and could be used on a regular basis when your psionic character fights enemies inside the mindscape. Just a thought.

I stamped the pattern on a piece of foam, using a scrap piece of wood to protect by hand when pressing the cutter into the foam.

Then I traced the pattern on the Thermocut, trying to stay true to the lines, which I didn't do very well, but that's OK because it gives the terrain more details.

I put th whole thing on the side and pushed each piece at a different height, starting outwards, then glued them into place from behind/below.

Fors and Cale are having a talk with The Philosopher, while Lady Forscale remains at a safe distance.

[factoriatabletop]

is like a mix between heroclix and a big puzzle!
well done, very creative!
i was taking a look of the stuff you have made and i have got inspiration a lot! thanks for posting and sharing

[tauster]

Glad you took the time, and liked that stuff!

Here's a sneak peak of the primed piece (black acrylic color + PVA glue + a bit of water).

[jennifer]

The cavern piece looks very cool . Looks really strong Much better than bamboo skewer

[tauster]

No progress on the puzzle piece but I've tried new stuff on the Thermocut:

1) Bricks

Inspired by Black Magic Craft, I tried the old brick trick. It works great, and even greater if you use screws made of magnetic metal, with sharp edges. The sharp edges give the stones an even better look than rocks, and when you're done you can quickly sort the screws out of the bricks with a magnet.

2) Terrain set

Just to see if it works, I cut a few 12x12 cm squares and rolled the Flagstone rolling pin over one side of each. Now I have to decide what to do with the other sides, then off to painting. After a bit of practice with the Thermocut, you can make a huge terrain set in no time!

[skunkape]

I saw the Black Magic Craft episode for making bricks! Such an easily implemented technique! I do need to make myself a bunch of bricks using that!