Terrain Project!

[Alyster Wick]

So I'm back. Working on some terrain that can be flexible (ideally 54 or 28mm, using for GW games and Pulp Heroes).

First a question, then some pics: Anyone have a good way to spray paint (or quickly paint) white styrofoam without melting it? Was considering "painting" a quick layer of watered down glue. Really I should just stop being lazy, suck it up and get a big ol' tank brush but I have a ton of white styrofoam I'm planning to use and I don't want to kill momentum by having to hand paint everything.

Anyway, the real reason people click, pictures!

Industrial thingy (ladder isn't finished, gonna bend the stubs in):









Building 1:





Building 2:

[Sumaki]

Best way is to grab a big brush and go over the styrofoam with acrylic paint, only way to be sure before using any spray paint. Otherwise looking good!

[MarcoSkoll]

Ah, old packing materials - the terrain of kings. I've got a load I need to put to use myself.

As far as painting it, you might be able to get somewhere with a cheap airbrush?

[DapperAnarchist]

I'm loving the Star Wars-with-skulls feel of the second building - it does look like Ralph McQuarrie and HR Giger got into an argument over how to design Mos Eisley.

Can you find a house-painting brush? For a dirty base coat of glue or some base colour (grey/brown/deep red/whatever), it should be smooth enough.

[Heroka Vendile]

yeah just slap a quick base coat on with a domestic brush from a pound store and that'll work just fine.

[Alyster Wick]

Ah, old packing materials - the terrain of kings. I've got a load I need to put to use myself.

As far as painting it, you might be able to get somewhere with a cheap airbrush?

Yeah, I finally threw out a bunch of mine (which made my wife very happy) but resolved to immediately use whatever I didn't trash. There was a moment of clarity I had when looking into my "office" when I realized it looked an episode of Hoarders.

I'm still interested in the idea of an airbrush but I'm putting that purchase off, went with the cheap brush and acrylic paint.

Updates! Interesting building!



I'm making a "modular" underhive/ship hallway/space hulk/whatever thing, which is what all the six inch bits of styrofoam are. They'll be laid on their sides to form the sides of hallways, but I'm going to try and make them generic enough that that could be standalone structures or possibly even stacked up to form larger buildings. It's an ambitious idea, we'll see where it goes.



The base coated pics are just to show I'm making progress.



Also, been saving kleenex boxes for far too long, finally slapping some gubbins on them!

[DapperAnarchist]

The new "interesting" building makes me think of some kind of support buttress, deep within a hive...

[Alyster Wick]

GIB! (Gubbins in Progress)...

[Alyster Wick]

Started gluing some gubbins. Pics aren't the best, and I'm a little POed that they uploaded 90 degrees off, so just hold your head sideways...

These are the sides on what will make up "hallways" of a space ship, underhive, etc. I have 4 more "shippy" sections and four more jacked-up patched sections. Photos aren't the best, the white of the plasticard on the black undercoat makes it difficult to see the rivets, etc.

All at once:



Two at a time:

[Alyster Wick]

Started doing some initial test-paints. Not 100% pleased but they were a success in that they've been educational in terms of how to move forward. Hoping to get some more progress this week.

[Van Helser]

For simple constructs, I think they're looking pretty good. You could try doing some Necromunda style yellow and black chevrons, or dabbing on some brown and orange rust patches. It doesn't take much to bring this stuff to life a bit more.

Ruaridh

[Alyster Wick]

You could try doing some Necromunda style yellow and black chevrons, or dabbing on some brown and orange rust patches.

Ruaridh

Good call, I'll definitely look at both in my next steps. I'm moving forward with preliminary painting/testing on the "hallway/small unit" sections as well as a couple more storage containery type things. Starting the realize that I am creating a wealth of basic shaped without many distinctive pieces, though there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Once I get the simple pieces out of the way I plan to take some more time (and use the lessons I learned on the simple stuff) to create some more distinctive and interesting pieces.

Here's a look at what I can do with the simple pieces so far and the testing I did on 5 1X1 sections (I have 16 total) of game board. I have mixed feelings on the "board" sections. I wanted to make them perfectly flat so they could accommodate larger pieces of terrain without any issues with balance. This also was supposed to be an opportunity for me to experiment with painting very large, flat surfaces. At the moment I wouldn't say I'm happy with them, but I wouldn't be embarrassed to play on them. Plus since I'm just painting flat surfaces they should be really easy to spruce up down the line if I want to put the time in.

Before I put up more pictures, some specific requests for feedback:

- Chevrons sound great, what else would folks suggest? I'm thinking chevrons, graffiti, rust splotches, blood spatter, and posters. I recall someone had a pdf of some 40K posters ("Don't feed the Servitors" comes to mind), going to try and track those down. Some of the detailed pieces may get a different coat of paint as well to make the details pop.

- How do the floors look? Honest assessment. Ideas for improving? Two thoughts I had were to find some corrugated cardboard to use as "sheet metal" and maybe some plasticard pieces with "rivets" on them. I'm also considering drawing on some basic geometric designs and burrowing out some shallow grooves with a router. That and some random weathering using a ball head on my dremel tool could add some more texture.

With all that, pictures:

A fight is brewing.


"I don't trust those mechanicus..."


"...so I always use a sniper."


Unfortunately the sniper should be watching his own back.


Shotgun showdown. Why? Just because.


Next up on my docket for painting will be the remaining container and hallway sections, some catwalks, and the industrial looking buildings. After that I'll start experimenting with ways to make everything more interesting with paint (I want to create a playable table first before I make things fancy). After that I have a TON of old prescription bottles, vitamin containers and (far too many) empty 5 Hour Energy bottles that I'm going to slap some gubbins on then use for scatter terrain. Once that's all done I'll start construction on more interesting pieces.

[Heroka Vendile]

I think your base boards look just fine as they are. I wouldn't agree with adding height/depth to them unless you're going all out to have a couple "feature" boards with permanently attached terrain pieces, as otherwise you're just hamstringing the setups natural flexibility.

Rust and posters sound perfect, blood I guess depends on the feel you're wanting to create, graffiti again depends on the look/implementation.

[blacknight]

Hey

The base boards look good, ties in well with some of the ideas I have been thinking over.

Suggestion for the base boards is to paint the edges black or the same colour as the boards as seeing the mdf wood detracts a little.

In terms of adding to them posters, graffiti and blood will work wonders.  Another option to try is to use a different base colour for the buildings and blend up to the lighter grey either a washed out green or red could work and hint at different uses for the building they represent.

You are right about the pdf posters, there are a whole heap online which can be downloaded to use.  If you need, pm me and I can send you through some.

Marc

[Alyster Wick]

Phase 1 is done!!! Keep in mind, Phase 1 is where I get enough terrain done to actually play a game. The painting is not done persay, just table-worthy. Phase 2 will involve buying some new spray and acrylic paint so that I can vary things up (it may also involve biting the bullet and buying some pink insulation styrofoam because the white stuff just doesn't paint up that well in most cases).