My take on several mordheim buildings

Yes, but thankfully I learned my lesson

I've been improving the Tavern with wooden floors and found a really nice looking technique which I'll share with you guys

Here's how the floor looked like before my "intervention"



I took a review of your comments, and wanted to try out something new. You all know how "mouldy"-balsa wood can be, so why take advantage of that?

What I did was to score wood-veins (?) in the floor, so the appearance would be more dramatic, compared to the natural texture of the balsa wood





And here's the board finished



Afterwards all that was needed to be done, was to apply this technique to the rest of the floor





Afterwards I made sure to create a more scored edge of where the floor was damaged in the sides.



I really think this turned out great! Now it's time to do the same on first floor, and then give it all a base coat before beginning to pain the stuff

VERY NICE WORK! I usually bring out the grain by drawing a coarse jeweler's saw blade along the direction of the grain; then I use the pencil to pick out the boards & add knotholes. Keep us posted on developments.

Genius Work!

Is it less effort I wonder, than the current way I do it, which is cut out the individual floor boars. Certainly looks like it it...

Good idea on the knotholes, think that would add more realism to the floor. Though I can't imagine the trick with the jewellers saw... I'm sorry, English isn't my native language so I must insist that you elaborate I'm curious to know how you make your floor

@ghostbear:
I've tried your approach as well, but I do think this is indeed a quicker way to create the floor, and less messy

Thanks for commenting! more terrain will be posted shortly!

Zero2Hero-DK wrote:

Though I can't imagine the trick with the jewellers saw... I'm sorry, English isn't my native language so I must insist that you elaborate I'm curious to know how you make your floor

I'm not all that sure I've got English down myself, & it's my native language.
I've got to do some beams & floors in a day or two; so I'll try to do a mini-tutorial on the method. I'll give you a link when I post it.

Hehe that made me feel a lot better!


Oh thanks alot! Looking forwards to see it!

Hey again!
I've had some spare time to play around with some more building modelling, so I've tried to take advantage of every moment

I've created a destroyed piece of living quarters. The Idea was to create a piece to to symbolize an end of an alleyway, which would both be an excellent cover piece as well as a shooting position for both long ranged archers and short range pistolleers.

Here's how far I came with 3 hours work:



I speckled the walls to insure that I wouldn't do the same mistake as with my other building. Playable wise my idea was also to make an accessible piece as I've experienced that I tend to create too clustered terrain... I don't know if you have the same problem, but it seems that if there's too much floor space for movement on a 2nd story building, it's harder to move models around in the 1st story... I wanted to counter that. So the result was a fairly accessible piece, and I think it turned out alright!









As you might have noticed, I'm having a hard time finishing pieces I've begun working on, and I have several unfinished projects laying around. I WILL be painting the buildnings, that's the next step for me.. I've promised my self that I won't begin another piece untill I have at least one piece completely finished (curse my many crazy ideas! )

Thank you for watching! Please.. C & C are more than welcome, I have a lot to learn still!!

Keeping several things going at once isn't a bad idea at all. You can swap back & forth when one project starts getting tiresome...just don't get intimidated by the painting.
That said, the new piece is VERY COOL The raised section will be a nice perch for a sniper or two. Keep up the FINE WORK!

DeafNala wrote:

Keeping several things going at once isn't a bad idea at all. You can swap back & forth when one project starts getting tiresome...just don't get intimidated by the painting.
That said, the new piece is VERY COOL The raised section will be a nice perch for a sniper or two. Keep up the FINE WORK! thumbsup

Thank you soo much! Yes, that was what I went for, so glad you liked it

Yes, I've been afraid of painting my buildings, but as promised, I jumped right to it with the last mentioned building, and I'm actually really pleased with the result.. Though I might begin collecting barrels, planks and other stuff the the base to make it more detailed, but that will come with time.

Here's the building painted.



Firstly I coated the building in chaos black, as priming color, then I moved on and painted the woodwork and floorboards brown, and washed the base with brown. Then I used a bleached bone off while for the walls as a light color, so I'll be able to create some light details on the dark background. Then I washed the walls with a light brown to create a dirty look on the surface.

After that I applied some bright yellow with some brown and countered with the bleachbone color to achieve some vomit green / Yellow color, and washed the walls yet another time. Finished with drybrushing with bleachbone for highlighting



The shrubs you see in the picture are actually moss gathered in the nearby forest before it began snowing. Now it's all dry and ready to be attached. I had a hard time figuring out how to attach it to the base, so I kind of improvised by gluing it down with PVA, and sprayed some hairspray on top... I might get a matt varnish spray next time, because I think it has a bit shine to it... but it do smell nice though





Here's a picture for Ghostbear. I managed to paint the floorboards which was made by the earlier mentioned technique. I think it came out rather nice!

Zero2Hero-DK wrote:

Love your work, sir. Sorry for your spray accident. One question. The bricks in this photo. are they carved foam or some other material?

Thanks a lot for the nice comment!
I've been experimenting with casting plaster bricks, to create unique features on buildings. It's inspired by the Hirst arts moulds, I just wanted to create my own
I'm in the process of casting a whole bunch, to create ruined features

Next time I'm creating a new batch I'll take some pictures if you're interested?

That really painted up VERY WELL. The woodwork looks TERRIFIC. Congratulations you've overcome your fears.
Adding little details is an most pleasurable ongoing process. Have FUN!

Hehe thanks DeafNala, though I'd love to work with some of that foam core you guys are working with. Sadly if I were to buy it here in Denmark, I'd have to payout a fortune...

I'll be posting more terrain shortly! I've been working on some trees, but still need to pain them though

These are so awesome! Sorry that the spraypaint ate through it!

I find that Gesso (available at most art stores) is cheap, covers thickly and wonderfully, and "shrinks-to-fit" and is especially useful with buildings.

Ordo Septenarius wrote:

These are so awesome! Sorry that the spraypaint ate through it!

I find that Gesso (available at most art stores) is cheap, covers thickly and wonderfully, and "shrinks-to-fit" and is especially useful with buildings.

Thanks a lot! I think I'd better try out that Gesso - sounds like the miracle product for priming jobs! Does they work on minis as well? I spray prime my minis but I always have a hard time with the first layer of paint... it seems that the surface is too smooth, instead of coarse... do you guys have the same problem? I might be using the wrong primer (Chaos black from GW spray primer)

Anyways, I've had a tryout with some trees inspired by the wonderful work of elladan.de @ http://elladan.de/028%20Bocagne%202/028.htm page on his website - I'm totally in awe of this guy and admire his style and talent!

Here's the model created







The trees are created by wrapping some steel wire around it self and then putty up the tree with Milliput and afterwards carving the bark impression in the tree.

And then with some paint on it :-P





The tree top is sculped with some special kind of filtration cotton, which I've sporadically sprayed with chaos black. Afterwards I tried to paint some Matt varnish on the cotton, in order to adhere some flock on it, for the impression of leafs. It was really messy, and won't recommend it. I found another method... HAIR SPRAY... it has really become my friend here the last few days! First off: It's really some sticky stuff before it hardens, and secondly... it smells nice!!
I sprayed the cotton with the hair spray, and then scattered some flock on the table. Afterwards I dabbed the cotton onto of the scattered flock to make the leafs appear more random... I think it worked ok... I'm not satisfied yet though, so I WILL be mastering this technique!

... and here's some "stone hedge" sculping training...









I know that there's no growing vegetation in Mordheim, but I thought I would make an exception - it really help immerse into the battlefield with these kind of terrain pieces :-)

I had a hard time replicating the feel of small twigs and stuff on the trees, mainy because I don't have the spray colours for it. My second try, will be with other spray colours for the "cotton" part of the trees

Anyone of you have some ideas of how to create the tree tops more realistic?

that's some wonderfull stuff, i'm loving the wood veins!

I like the tree idea (my Mordheim as well has live trees... thank you after Christmas sells!).

Maybe take the cotton in smaller batches (roughly a small finger/thumb pinch) and flock that up. Then add that to the tree. It may be more work but I think it will add layers to the follage.

I noticed that you were using expanded polystyrene for the walls of one of your buildings. I make a lot of buildings out of scrap packing material, but I have found that expanded polystyrene tends to be a little fragile. In my experience it holds up fine with occasional use, but the rough handling that comes with frequent transportation or general gaming store/club use can ding it up.

If you would like to add some rigidity to the material, you can coat it in a layer of fine sand. I've found that two coats of sand followed by a final coat of watered down glue makes such a piece much more durable in addition to adding weight which helps to reduce bumping/tipping disasters.

The downside is that you've got a sandy texture on the walls, but I suppose you could spackle over that. I never have, but I don't mind the texture. The process requires you to spend more time with the piece, since you have to paint it with glue, pour on sand, wait for it to dry, etc. But in terms of cost the addition of sand is virtually negligible. A big bag of play sand from the hardware store will set you back $2.50, or you can go with mason sand, which is a bit more expensive at ~ $5.00. In either case, one bag will do more terrain that you'd ever want to make. A gallon of PVA glue might set you back as much as $20.00 depending on where you go, but as it is cut with water a single gallon will go incredibly far when making terrain.

You make some great looking buildings! I'm sorry to hear about your "accident". I think we all went through it. i'm just glad I experienced it years ago with some low effort warhammer hills so not very much harm done

I like your wooden floors, it's the same technique I use much less fidely and you can add more detail than glueing some individual boards. If I may offer one piece of advice though I'd say you could "break" the floor along the lines of the boards to make it more realistic. I don't think I can describe it properly so I drew a little in paint:
on the left is what you did:

I hope this makes clear what I meant

cheers!

The stone wall & trees are EXCELLENT...VERY WELL DONE!

Very nice stuff, I will be following this with interest...

Nice terrain pieces, the wood floor looks perfect!

Hey guys and gals,
Thanks alot for your nice comments! Really appriciated!
Too long has passed since last update, but now I'm back with more improvements and a new addition to my arsenal of terrainmaking materials - Flock and static grass! I've just gone crazy with the stuff and experimenting a lot.

Now I'm more or less active terrain builder again, so there will be more updates the following days!

Pervavita wrote:

I like the tree idea (my Mordheim as well has live trees... thank you after Christmas sells!).

Maybe take the cotton in smaller batches (roughly a small finger/thumb pinch) and flock that up. Then add that to the tree. It may be more work but I think it will add layers to the follage.

Yes, that might be an idea - but I actually discarded the idea with the cotton, and tried something else... Check out the improvements!



I've found some kind of dead moss, which I thought could solve my problem with branches and such, and I think it has done the trick! I don't know what it's called, but I'll try to take a picture of the "sample" I grapped where I found it. My wife and I along with our dogs, took a vacation at the sea in some really nice summerhouses about 200m from the beach here at the west coast of Denmark. Here I found the stuff, helped my self to a small tryout sample and went to work shortly after we came home (wicked twisted scientist at work)





Last one I placed my Teclis model, used as Shadow Warrior Shadow Weaver for size comparison.

@ Captain Bernhardt: Yes, my thought was to make it cartoon like, but I must admit that that didn't went so good. I've catched up with the floor work, and you're right - it looks alot better this way!


@weeble1000: Yes, it is really fragile as it is. Actually I tried the same mix you mentioned just with a touch of plaster powder and sand. It worked wonders! It's still fragile sadly, but it is more hardend now. I'm in the process of making a large round tower, I'll have pictures shortly. On the brickwork I used this coating actually

-----


Along with improvement on the stone fence, I figured our play table needed more clutter, so I created a wooden fence as well. Here I had a chance to try out the static grass I've just bought. I still need some experience with this stuff, it seems that it is really important not to use TOO much glue for the basing, or else the grass will clump up (expression?) and not be so sticky,, Still have more to learn, and it's great! I love a new challange!





That's it for now, but more with come shortly!

Nice work on the trees. The fence is a good scenic bit as well to add detail to your collection. The thing I like about messing with wargame scenery is discovery. There is always something new to try.

LOOKIN' GOOD! I really like bot the tree/wall piece & the fence...artistic & useful at the same time. VERY WELL DONE!

The stuff your using on your trees looks to be lichen; it's great stuff for modeler. I used it a lot when I started into model railroading in my misspent youth...the wild stuff tends to dry out, but if treated it will last indefinitely...hitting it with a protective spray might work. You can get it (pretreated) in some craft & most hobby stores.