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Post by tauster on Dec 17, 2014 19:14:28 GMT
Just covered six large plywood pieces (42 x 32 cm) with the grasmat I received today.  Word of advice: Don't forget tu put some old paper under your workplace (the carpet, in my case). Not only will you probably make a mess with the glue if you're unlucky,...  ...what's worse is that these grasmats have lots of loose particles (flocking material, but mainly the green static grass stuff) that fly around like dust. You'll definitely should vacuum your carpet afterwards, and it's also a very good idea to take the rolled mat outside, unpack it there and dust it off. Saves you a lot of trouble. Apart from that, I really like this new material! You get a lot of area covered in almost no time (6 plywood plates = 0.8 m² in about 1 hr, from unpacking up to and including cleaning up) and it looks quite good. Now I have stacked the plates above each other with some newspaper between them and let them dry overnight. Can't wait to see the results tomorrow! |
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Post by tauster on Dec 17, 2014 19:36:18 GMT
Some dark and medium green stippling on the faerie ruin.   Next steps: Flocking. If you look closely, you can see that the glue I put on top of the stones has somewhat taken away the edges of the stones (though most of them were round-ish to begin with), making them look a bit more covered with earth and overgrown, and the pathways between the rocks look like trampled earth (or mud, depending on your color scheme). This is a very nice effect - if you do this kind of terrain (overgrown ruins). However it might get in the way if you want rocks with sharp edges. |
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Post by tauster on Dec 18, 2014 19:04:50 GMT
Today I was shopping for corn starch... and came back with these crystals:  Each tube is 1.48€ at Thomas Philips (German equivalent to the dollarstores, I guess), which is ridiculous for such a lot of randomly shaped crystals, when you compare it to gaming products (if there is even such a thing as randomly shaped crystals for gaming terrain). Press them in bases made of clay, give them some washings, paint the bases up and your're good. Other materials than clay will probably work just as well: paper maché, rock chips on cardboard, etc... |
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Post by tauster on Dec 18, 2014 22:17:32 GMT
...finished!    ...well, almost. I'll put some grass tufts and weeds on, but these details won't change the overall effect of the piece. All four ruin terrain pieces look very similar, which I'm quite proud of because I made them not in one go. So I proved to myself that I can reproduce an many-layered effect without too much deviation.  Still I find a small fly in the ointment: Now that they're done, I find them a bit too dark... but so what.  Next ruin project: Smaller pieces that can be placed more flexibly on the battlemap than these large tiles, with more moulded stuff. |
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Post by tauster on Dec 19, 2014 18:49:56 GMT
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Post by tauster on Dec 20, 2014 18:45:03 GMT
...more moulds! While some of the new moulds I made this morning are still curing, these two were already ready for the action.  This is one of my testpieces for sculpting stone floors. I made a quick hotglue mould instead of using clay because I didn't want to wait until the clay is hard (anfd then it would have broken anyway...).   |
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Post by Sam on Dec 21, 2014 10:24:20 GMT
Love the look of these. Now have to figure out how to retrofit it onto my modular tiles.
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Post by tauster on Dec 21, 2014 10:25:23 GMT
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Post by tauster on Dec 26, 2014 21:08:19 GMT
Painting up the flagstones: White priming,...  ...then pearlescent, then black and brown washings to give it a soiled look. Then glueing it on a plywood plate, adding rubbleflocking and priming the rocks (raw umber). Oh, and some metal scraps for using magnetic stuff.  Only after that I realized that I hadn't used enough rubbleflocking to cover the edges of the clay:  I wanted the piece to look like a portion of a flagstone way that is partially overgrown and looks through the rubble here and there. What I had at that point clearly looked ...not satisfying. So I had to add more rubble, and prime it again:  Some drybrushing with lighter tones,...  ...plus some bits of green here and there, painted...  ...and flocked:  Once the flocking is dry (i.e. tomorrow), I'll drybrush that green, add some grass tufts declare it finished. Hopefulle.  |
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Post by tauster on Dec 27, 2014 9:04:32 GMT
...finished:  |
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Post by tauster on Dec 29, 2014 22:23:54 GMT
I finally touched one of those plaster statues I got in november. The original plan was to start with one I don't really need and learn what can be done with this material. But then I thought 'what the heck!', took that nice-looking meditating asian monk and gave it the usual Mirrorspace-treatment: White basing, pearlescent sheen. Later I'll wash it with black and brown to give it that soiled/dirty look.   Of course the head will have to go off, because we're talking about ruins. Plus some nasty scratches here and there. I'll try not to overdo it with the damages. But the fun of this one will be something else: I still got the moulded heads of that troll/ogre and rat action figures... [insert evil grin]  Now let the players figure out this!    A statue with three stone heads lying around. This will be fun! |
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Post by tauster on Dec 30, 2014 19:30:10 GMT
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Post by tauster on Dec 31, 2014 13:16:31 GMT
10.000 clicks for one thread... wow.
I've had this unfinished dicetower standing on my craft desk for more than a year (probably since september 2013, though I'm not quite sure). A few days back I kicked myself in the proverbial butt and started to finish it. It's not much work, since all I have to do is paint up some popsickle sticks (which I had even cut to size months ago!) and glue them on. WIP   Here's a quick tutorial how to age wood. I'm sure there are lots of different ways to get aged wood; this is just how I did it. Please post alternative tutorials if you have some! Mangle your wood with a screwdriver or other implement. Give it some streaks, cut off some edges, make it look worn and torn. Basepaint it in raw umber  Some Naples Yellow  Wash it with raw umber (same color as before, only thinned-down). That's how it looks wet:  ...and (almost) dry  Drybrush it white 
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Post by tauster on Dec 31, 2014 14:44:58 GMT
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Post by tauster on Jan 1, 2015 10:05:43 GMT
A happy new year to all of you guys! Here's another something I had lying around for more than a year (since summer 2013) and hadn't touched even once: Circular moss pads.  They have a diameter of 12 cm; it's basically moss pressed on strong paper with a little bit of glue. They were dirt cheap ( 2 dozen for 1.45 euro), and maybe you can craft it yourself: Gather some moss, let it dry thoroughly, glue it on paper and press it with a heavy weight. I got 6 dozen, so I don't feel inclined to make that myself (plus: it's winter here around, so moss isn't exactly easy to come by). If you cut off a little from the edge, you can glue them to an old CD. Which is what I did.  As is, the moss is still very loose and will come off in little tufts. So I generously soaked it in watered-down whiteglue and let it dry for a day. Now it's rock-hard, but unfortunately a bit brittle. So I have to break off all of the moss strands that come off easily. The result looks quite cool:  This stuff is ideal for dioramas or terrain pieces featuring of forest scenes ( woodland scenics, ey? *pun, pun* ). Just glue on some stones and twigs. |
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Jan 1, 2015 16:23:13 GMT
Happy New year to you Tauster, happy new year to all of you... Circular moss pads I looked at these and saw hexagons? Kev! |
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Post by tauster on Jan 1, 2015 21:09:34 GMT
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Jan 2, 2015 0:54:19 GMT
Howdy, Where do you see hexagons? My imagination...They could easily be made into hexagons. Kev! |
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Post by tauster on Jan 2, 2015 17:46:40 GMT
The Mon Cheri mxas edition has some interesting plastic inlays...  ...that can be upcycled into moulds for stones:   Due to the small amount of clay used, they harden on the heater in less than 3 hrs. They're not completely dry, but hard enough to pop them out and make the next 10 pieces. Two of them have letters and numbers engraved that have to be filed away later, but that's fine since they'll make good cracked stones. |
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Post by tauster on Jan 3, 2015 13:06:17 GMT
I'm making some more round ruin pieces, similar to the Meditating Mystery Monk, but not with CDs as base but slightly smaller MDF pieces (got a box full of them cheap). For one piece I used some of the moulds I made,...  ...the others are done with broken bricks and mortar leftovers from my neighbour's construction side, all painted with a washed, perlescent white to fit the colorscheme of my Ruined City terrain set. I didn't take pictures of each and all single steps this time, as I wanted to save time.  |
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Cheers!