Tag Archives: scenery

Board meeting

17 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in The Chapel

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Greetings, and happy Monday peoples! I have some cool hobby news to share with y’all today – I spent an awesome day with Mark from Heresyofus over the weekend, working on the Albino Forest board for The Chapel project. We had an awesome day, working out the details of the board, building it & talking about the fluff, our hobby philosophies, ideas, and life in general. I also got to see the excellent buildings that Luke, (aka imperial rebel ork), some gorgeous project artwork from Ahmed Alibrahing, and I got to see Mark’s awesome warband and his denizens of the Chapel first hand. I’ve always loved Mark’s work & painting style, but getting to see his minis first hand was a real treat. Another highlight was seeing the progress on the Chapel board… I’m not going to say any more for fear of spoilers, but trust me – the pictures really don’t do Mark’s work justice… suffice to say that those that answer the call are in for a treat! Anyway, with regards to the forest board, once we had finished up and stuff was mostly dry, we just had to pose a few models for the obligatory photo shoot. Hopefully these hastily snapped pics will give you guys an idea of how the Albino Forest is going to look:

One half textured, the other drybrushed & shaded

Gives you an idea of the look – diseased and grim! 

Some trees added

Mark’s Wych Cult advances through the trees

The big hitters

Corpse cart (yum!!)

Some of IRO’s scenery added

A spooky manifestation

My Eldar cautiously explore the Albino Forest

And meet a rakish Ostium Guide

A rare meeting of Guides

Mark’s cult as they stand today

 

So there we go – pretty damn cool, right? But as cool as all that was, the best bit was meeting Mark face to face – it is always good to meet a likeminded hobby buddy, and working together on a big build/paint is brilliant, but getting to put a face to the name is priceless. It helps when that face belongs to an awesome bloke, who just happens to be a creative power house, and who has a lovely family to boot. So, Mark, thanks for an awesome day mate – it was great to meet you all, and thank you for making me feel so welcome! Looking forward to repeating the experience, and you are welcome to come visit any time.

 

Oh, and speaking of family – big shout out to my Brother-in-Lead Ross, who became a Dad for the first time over the weekend. Congrats to you & Kel dude – wee man is utterly lush, and is surely your best mini yet mate 🙂

If you go down to the woods today…

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in The Chapel

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Hi guys, my delve into the world of The Chapel continues with more twisted trees to join the three test pieces that I did a few weeks back. My pal Ross donated those test pieces assembled and primed, and having now built my own, my gratitude to him has doubled! They are a pain to do – wonky bits, poor fitting in places, fiddly mold lines all over the place… but, they are still pretty good fun 🙂

Anyway, I picked up two sets and decided pretty much straight away that I wanted to convert a few for a bit variety. I ended up doing one normal tree, one extra tall tree and one stump per pack, (the leftovers from the stump going on top of a tree to make a tall one). The hollow stumps had a cup moulded and sculpted inside, and I added a load of skulls and gore – the suggestion being that this is where debased forest folk pledge their sacrifices to the Albino Wytches. The skulls came from a number of kits and there is actually quite a range of sizes involved, which gives the rather macabre impression that men, women and children are all potential sacrifices.

In terms of painting, I tried to mirror my test pieces but I couldn’t remember exactly how I did them, so there is a bit of guesswork involved. That said, they are pretty close. I also tried out some cheap brown acrylic paint I spotted in WH Smiths for the base coat – it’s almost the same colour as Dryad Bark, (if a little shiny), but it worked well once all the drybrushing & washes were finished. Here’s a few pics:

I have plans to use the many leaves that come with the kit to make some low shrub-type scatter terrain – the bark will be white again, and I thought a dark red for the leaves – I know it’s a bit of a Game of Thrones cliché, but it will look rather good I think. I’m going to buy more of these sets, but I’m struggling to think of other interesting ways to convert them… If anyone has any ideas, requests or suggestions, please add a comment below!!

 

Finally, I have made some progress on my not-exarch based on some of the feedback I got… I think I need to bulk up the cloak around the shoulders, and the fur needs to be a bit more wild looking, but he’s moving in the right direction I think – savage but not evil, strong but not bulky… Thoughts?

I too am summoned…

23 Thursday Feb 2017

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Hello chaps, just look at what came through the letter box the other day:

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Now that is exciting enough by itself, but Mark of heresyofus.com was generous enough to drop a few yummy Black Earth goodies into the box too! (Thanks Mark!)

Speaking of generosity, by brother-in-lead Ross ‘twigged’ my recent forest/woodland obsession, and gifted me an unwanted Citadel woodland set over the weekend – all built and undercoated, ready to rock! (Thanks Ross!). I’ve been dabbing away at it on and off these last few days:

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I love how this came out – I specifically wanted this to match my test dryad thingy, and I think that I managed to do that – she blends in nicely, don’t you think? This is really starting to build up my vision of the Albino Forest, and I’m looking forward to chopping and changing a few more of these kits to develop this further. I’m still not sure whether to stick some leaves & tufts on the base or not, as per the test bases I did recently… I reckon it would look awesome, but I’m worried that it’ll be overly fragile on a gaming piece. I’ll have a think on that, but I suspect that practicality may be taking a back seat on this one 😉

Anyway, that’s all for now – slowly finishing up my Ostium Guides and then on to the warband proper, with more woods & forest baddies to build and paint on the side!

Boat building tutorial

30 Sunday Oct 2016

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Hi guys, I’ve put together a quick post to show how I go about building a boat out of coffee stirrers…  A few of you were asking, so  have at it – lots of pics, and not much words 🙂

img_0882 Soak ’em

 

img_0883 Brace ’em

 

img_0884 Add boiling water & leave overnight, then pour the water away and leave the stirrers for a day to dry while braced in position

 

img_0885 Nice bend to them, still slightly damp

 

img_0886 Very flexible

 

img_0887 Braces glued on to form the sides

 

img_0888 Put them ‘back to back’ (braces out!)

 

img_0889 Cut the shape of the prow through both sides…

 

img_0890 so that it matches…

 

img_0891 Repeat at the other end

 

img_0892 switch the sides around and glue prow and stern

 

img_0893 Glue in some bracing – top…

 

img_0894 and bottom…   Let it all dry for a day or two

 

img_0900 Add planking (I planked the bottom on this one to make a rowing boat, but my first one had the planking on top to make a deck… your choice!)

 

img_0901 Add some bits…

 

img_0902 and some bobs!

 

There we go, I hope that makes the process a bit clearer. Obviously, this is just a very quick scenery project – the boats are not especially to scale, and aren’t highly detailed. This is a quick, low cost solution to address a particular need within a Frostgrave scenario, but this approach should also work for a range of games from fantasy, historical, pirates, whatever! I daresay that with more time, effort and skill, you could really create something spectacular… (Mikko, I’m lookin’ at you bud!)

Peace out dudes, catch you all at high tide!

Boaty McBoatface… a nautical interlude

20 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Side projects

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Ahoy! A quick post from me this fine morning… So, you know that thing that happens, where you casually take a look at an upcoming campaign and realise that there is a load of stuff that you neeeed but don’t have? Well, that happened to me with the Frostgrave ‘Thaw of the Lich Lord’ book… There are a few bits and bobs to sort out, (cultists, Rangifers, a cart, a big cauldron, more undead, an ‘effing big bone wheel…), but one thing that really jumped out was the need for a frozen river – complete with ice-bound boats. Now, I don’t know about you guys & gals, but I don’t have any boats in my terrain collection… never needed ‘em, never even thought about it. Given how situational the need is, I wanted to do something fairly quick and low-cost. My little brain-box has been working over the challenge in the background, and I started to wonder how practical it is to build boats from scratch with stolen coffee stirrers… Turns out that it is absolutely practical:

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Not bad for an essentially free piece of terrain, eh? I don’t know how accurate it is from a nautical perspective, but it ticks the box as a terrain item I think – a quick paint job, and this should be good to go 🙂  I reckon that I need another three to five similar or smaller sized boats, and a larger one as the scenario centre-piece…  I’ll need to work these around other stuff as and when – my enforcement droids are nearly finished, and I have some new cultists that I am dying to paint, (these are going to be really special!), so it’s a case of best endeavours with this one…

You now have five seconds to comply…

10 Monday Oct 2016

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Greetings fellow primates, hope you are well! Thank you to all those who provided constructive feedback on my latest little project – you’ve all helped me to spot the little areas for improvement, and made the end result much better than it would otherwise have been, so thank you 🙂

So just for the sake of completeness, here are my ed209s, built and undercoated, (I’ve photographed them with my PD guys to give you an indication of how I’ll be painting them up):

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I also had time to do a little scenery thing over the weekend – some fire/explosion markers for the final game in the Frostgrave Dark Alchemy expansion. These were super quick, easy and fun to do – it is just strips of cotton wool superglued to the base of one of those cheap flickering tea light thingies, a dab of PVA glue to hold the tops of the strips together, and a quick squirt of black spray. So simple, but so effective – here are a few pics of them in various states:

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It took about five minutes per marker, cost me next to nothing to produce, and look pretty darn good – even if I do say so myself! I’m playing that final Dark Alchemy game with my Brother-in-Lead on Wednesday night – hopefully my tick-tock men and fire markers will look the part on the table, and fingers crossed that I can avoid getting my wizard killed/maimed/burned/exploded! (d20’s can be such a cruel mistress)…