Stadtheim, my fantasy town in progress

Looks great!

I gotta know how you make the cobble stone/bricks of the streets (im looking at the first pic)? They look soo good, and i dont know what to use for cobble stone on top of the polystyrene i've made my streets out of :/

Thanks guys, feedback is always welcomed

Speaking of water effects, I'm sure I've seen a tutorial somewhere on how to do streams of water for fountains. Anyone know where it was?

Been a fan of terragenesis for many years, lots of great stuff. Just a pain to find things.

The flat cobbles are just textured wallpaper, and the higher ones are casts from terrascenic moulds. They don't seem to carry them anymore through I'm afraid. Hirst Arts do some nice flooring moulds though, fwiw.

Going to sort out a photo session this afternoon I think. Lots of the photos in this thread are very out of date. Nothing is finished of course , but it's all a lot further on. Started doing an interior for my warehouse too which will slow things down.

si wrote:

Thanks guys, feedback is always welcomed

Speaking of water effects, I'm sure I've seen a tutorial somewhere on how to do streams of water for fountains. Anyone know where it was?

Been a fan of terragenesis for many years, lots of great stuff. Just a pain to find things.

The flat cobbles are just textured wallpaper, and the higher ones are casts from terrascenic moulds. They don't seem to carry them anymore through I'm afraid. Hirst Arts do some nice flooring moulds though, fwiw.

Going to sort out a photo session this afternoon I think. Lots of the photos in this thread are very out of date. Nothing is finished of course , but it's all a lot further on. Started doing an interior for my warehouse too which will slow things down.

hi
it is on the thread entitled my own little corner of mordheim, gret looking work up to now, looking forward to more updates

si wrote:

Thanks for the feedback folks. I'll try and keep this updated but I do tend to only reply to my own threads when I have something to show.

Tom, definitely worth bearing in mind, although I've never played mordheim and most likely never will (don't really do gaming), I think the sense of vertical scope makes the scenery so much more impressive. And I like to think the end result would technically be playable

Anyway, quick update on the brewery. I'm planning to do the second house for this tile over the weekend. I've just finished the chimney for the brewery itself, just all needs linking together. Looking forward to actually detailing a board since that's where things come alive..


The brewery tile, as it stands.


The new chimney.

Really need a nicely painted fantasy figure for scale in these shots. I don't actually have one, all mine were painted about 15 years ago when I wasn't quite sure which end of the brush to use apparently. Perhaps a time travelling praetorian will suffice for now? hah.

Cheers for looking,
Si

the brewery is looking good, somrthing i have been meaning to do for a while

si wrote:

I'm back! Well ok I never want away, visit here several times a day, but I'm back to post about my own project.

Sorry about the slow updates, tend to be too critical of my own stuff and what I want to show, but I figured sod it, throw it out there.

This is the church board from the town. Easily my favourite piece so far.



As you can see not quite finished, the rear needs a roof and the graveyard needs railings. The whole thing is getting proper detailing at some point (like candles in the entrance way, erm doors are done but need putting in). The black cobbles will be drybrushed up to a lighter grey, don't like them at the moment. I bought some figures for statues in the alcoves, might use some but not all of them.

My favourite part though is the stained glass. I've got one in place for the photo, the rest need cutting and mounting. I finished the entire sheet I previewed earlier with a few different designs.

Needs a little tweaking positioning wise, and dusting, but I love the effect. It doesn't quite show up because of my naff lighting setup for the photo, but the light bounces off the white paper behind the window and makes it look.. well like stained glass!

As I just said in my blog, if I can get the whole town look half as good as this I've be very satisfied with the overall build. Not saying this is perfect, but it's probably indicative of my current standard. You never know, things might even improve as I progress.

Thanks again for looking, and any comments as always are appreciated.

I've got another board on the go which I'll post up later.

not normally a fan of hirst arts brick terrain but this s looking cool, i like the added graveyard and it will look great with railings
some weathering to the bricks will break up the squareness, window looks great BTW

Cheers for the feedback, shanks. Always good to get another party's input!

Right then, photo time. Lots of photos. Lots of waffle. And a review. What more could you ask from a Sunday night? Well ok a bottle of beer and the concluding episode of Sherlock will go down a treat later, but for now you're stuck with me.


The Tavern

Not shown this here before, since it wasn't really going anywhere. However I'd started work on this in earnet. It now has depron (definitely the devlan mud of the terrain world), an extra wing, too many gables and a complicated roof I'm struggling to fathom.




Canal Warehouse

This is where most of the work has gone. It even has little bits and bobs to make it more interesting. I can't wait to do this with the entire board, for me the fun starts when you reach the detailing stage.



Above you can see the various views of the board, the tall narrow warehouse tower, the teeny tiny cargo barge (for my teeny tiny canal!) and of course Brother Furlong of the mysterious Measuring Monks.



Some of the details, the barge, the human hamster powered crane (some assembly required) and a little cart. Particularly happy with the cart, half an hour well spent imho


Fountains

I wanted to build a fountain just to try out the water effects ahead of doing the canal. So I did two. The blocks are sorted, need painting then I can dive in with the water effects.



Not sure if I want to keep the lego owls or not. The whole city worships Verena, goddess of knowledge, so owls will be all over the shop. With a texture I think they might work. The other fountain will have a statue of some sort in the alcove.

I'm toying with the idea of having a balance to the Church of Verena that will worshop wholly darker powers. Then I could do cool skeleton statues as well. Could lead to a nice little religious war and so on. Plus I'd get to build a temple to balance the village church.

Mould Making

Had a go at making my own mould for the tavern windows. Did a couple of balsa masters then cast them in silicone. The results are quite hit and miss with plaster. It's not really good enough for the detail work I suspect, but I'm trying to avoid using resin if possible. It's more expensive and a bit more faff to work with.



I'll post with some finished plaster casts when I've worked out the kinks (and bubbles).

And I'll post the review in a separate entry. Phew, if you managed all that have a beer on me (over 18's only of course)

Modelling Mates Review

I recently bought a set of Modelling Mates moulds from TerraScenic, they looked like a bargain at £21.60 so I thought I'd have a go.



The photo above shows what you get for your money. Three moulds, each one 6 1/2 inches square. One is of cubes, the other blocks twice the size of the cubes, and the final miscellaneous pieces.

The variety is great and the sheer number of pieces you get per mould means you won't be casting as often.

The moulds are made from EVA foam, which to me is the stuff on my golf trolley handle, but you may know it in other ways! It's a dense, flexible foam which seems rather sturdy. The base is a softer material which is glued to the main body.



A comparison with a basic Hirst Arts block is shown above. As you can see these blocks are much bigger and therefore not interchangable with HA. Based on the number per cast though I could see you building a small tower with only two or three casts of each mould.

The texture is very different. HA blocks are sculpted and very detailed, but the pattern on MM blocks comes from the foam itself. It reminds me of a fine concrete. Texture is on sides and bottom just as with HA blocks.

The casts require a small amount of cleaning. It appears the moulds where sliced to form the cavities, and in doing so there has been a small amount of over-cut. So each cast brick will have a few mm of plaster on each corner which can be removed with a single pass of a sharp knife.



Above is a photo of my current assembly, I'll get a complete photo when done. This is going to be the lighthouse of Stadtheim bay. The misc mould has three different radius curves on it, which will work nicely for me and offers good flexibility.

Overall I'd say they offer a cheap alternative to HA and will provide nice variety of texture for the terrain builder. I doubt these will last anything like as long as HA moulds (the base seems to deform slightly at each demoulding and I'm worried about tearing the foam at some of the weaker points), but for pure value for money you can't argue. Three moulds for the same prices as only 2/3s of a Hirst Arts one seems like too good a deal to me.

I'll post a finished model when I've got one, and let you know how I get on with the long term survivability of the moulds. In the meantime though I'd recommend giving them a look.

Wow, quite some cool progress here!

I must insist, please show us more pictures of the crane (so I can steal it!)...

Very detailed and inspiring work - looks really great !

VERY COOL! I LOVE the Gerbil Wheel Crane...VERY in character for Mordheim. GREAT STUFF!

Cheers guys. Trying to keep going with this although back to work on monday which sucks up pretty much all my time and energy.

I've started painting the canal warehouse:



The hoist has just been started, the whole roof is very much wip (hence the masking tape holding it till the glue dries!). Quite happy with the drybrushing, though I think I'll give the tower another coat lighter to try and distinguish between flat and vertical more clearly.

As you can probably tell from the first pic I've cut the tower in two. I decided half way through the build I wanted to do an interior, so finally did something about it. The roof will lift off giving access to the top floor, then the tower splits to let you at the first floor, and the first floor is removable to get at the ground floor. Phew.

As requested a few pics of the crane. I've done some more work on that. When I thought about it I realised it didn't have the clearance to reach the barge over the tow path. Hrm. So rather than lengthen the arms I built a small platform that can hang over the edge of the path.



The crane is just balanced at the moment, but using various plasticard washers I've made it so it will swivel. I'm going to freeze the rope "in action" when I build and paint it though, in the process of loading the barge with a crate or two.

Cheers for looking,
Si

Thanks for the closeups of the crane. VERY COOL & CREATIVE idea!

Cheers. Can't take full credit of course, I was googling for medieval cranes and this link came up: http://lostbiro.com/blog/?p=1155

Hence it was suitably yoinked.

Not sure where I got this idea from, so if it was your site cheers!

Tried woodstain on the balsa wood components of the canal board, and I'm really happy with the results.



Don't they look nice in American Walnut? Bloody hell that stuff stinks, and does surprising things to the thick plastic cup I put it in!

The cabin still needs tweaking, you can't stain where superglue has been. Fairly obvious I suppose.

But yeah.

Oh on a side note, does Vallejo Still Water go off? I bought some about six months ago and have just tried using it. I poured it five days ago now and it's still soft and rubbery. That doesn't seem right. Considering it's only a 3" by 3" squard and about a quarter inch deep I thought it'd go hard a lot faster?

Cheers.

...you must have gone with a lacquer stain...I hope you avoided inhaling the fumes: could have some unpleasant health issues . It does look GREAT however; SO destroying your lungs had some beneficial results...mostly.
The Barge is a FINE piece of modeling...VERY WELL DONE!

Incredible blog about an incredible city!!! well done!
I'll be following this thread with much enthousiasme!!
I will come and visit this for ideas and inspirations for my own terrain!

It's just a pitty it will never be played upon

The whole river barge and loading crane with boathouse is very original. So fun! AND you have a brewery. I look forward to seeing what other interesting things you are adding.

Thanks guys, always motivating to get such great comments

The town is progressing, though I've got a bit distracted working on my warbands and learning the rules!

Drying behind me is the second half of the docks, going to work on the buildings for that tomorrow. I'll get some pics up then. Run out of wood and polystyrene then though so a trip to B&Q is in order to resupply.

Must remember to take one of my parents and get the old buggers discount on a wednesday

Things are movingly steadily down in Stadtheim. Keep getting distracted by warbands and actually learning the game. Oh and work n such too.

Anywho here's a few pics of the town as it stands. It's not actually correct here, snce I haven't done the turn for the canal yet so it stops at a dead end.



The boards at the front are the newest. Now I've sorted out the fluff and location for this place, I can say with some certainty that that's the river Aver. Right there, at the front. Looking a little black and brown. Hrm.

But yeah, the right front board is being worked on. It's getting a small stall in the first gap in the tiles, the other side will be a small merchants house. Then between the two will be a tower with a small courtyard. Then steps down in the gap and at the front a quay. It's all planned. Just not, you know, happening all that fast

I've also decided I need to do an interior for the church, otherwise it's just a big obstacle. Fortunately the roof is removable anyway so it just needs a floor, a few pews and a paintjob.

Stay tuned

Woah! Looking great already.

I like the building on the right the most. It has a really "sober" glow/feeling on it. Perfect for a gloomy mordheim setting. I also like the street in front of that building a lot!

Drooling over the photos delayed comments on your TERRIFIC LOOKING cityscape. I had forgotten about your OH-SO-COOL Brewery...Old Guys are subject to lapses of memory about things in the recent past. The board is turning out GREAT, UBERCOOL, WONDERFUL...and thingies along these lines. It's rather reminiscent of cianty's FINE work. FINE PROGRESS ON A BEAUTIFUL PIECE!

And we're back.

Done a bit of work on the town recently, I've posted a few shots of how it stands now to give people a nice where we're at kind of thing.


Looking down the canal from the bridge


At the church and watch tower from the warehouse


Bird's eye view with the wharf in the foreground


Merc's eye view of the watch tower


The warehouse from between the watch house and church

Desperately need some scenic images to go in the background, would really finish off the style. Oh and the paint up the three white boards of course




And just now (it's still shiny and wet) I've started on the water for the wharf. Most of it's going under the jetty which gives a lot of leeway for mistakes. The technique is ruthlessly pillaged from Mason in his thread on LAF. His stuff looks so good it was hard to resist, and the water solution seemed ingenious.

Here's where I'm at so far:
Before the water, showing the new supports for the jetty


And with the new water in place but still soaking wet


Hopefully mine will look even half as good as Mason's when it's painted!

Cheers for looking, good to be back
SI

WELCOME BACK, si! The latest additions are TERRIFIC...love tall buildings. For inspiration you can't do much better than mimicking Mason's work..excellent choice. Keep up the FINE WORK, & don't be a stranger.

That wharf looks really promising, what a great little city you are building.

Theo

Thanks guys! I've given the water it's first coat of paint. It's gone a little awry in one place, the water in the paint has got through the pva and brought out the texture of the napkin. Darn it. But should be ok once it's all drybrushed and varnished, I hope.

Just trying to plan the buildings in sketchup. I usually find it easier to think whilst making the model, but I want the town to feel vaguely cohesive so I guess preplanning is a must. Those who fail to plan and all that