Attempting to make a mold out of terrain.

The new project this year is to make some molds of Terrain pieces. I want to start by making some Trenches and then create a enough pieces to fill an entire warmachine board with Trenches.

My first attempt was done before I took enough pictures, but the end result was a complete mess :)  I did not use enough mold release, and i used sand, which I learned has "silica" in it, which stuck to my molding material (i'm using silicone based product)

From the 2 test pieces. The first piece was using sand again, but I have layered it in 3 layers of glue before applying the mold release

For Piece #1 i just used the made the sides more textured to mimic sand.








I worked with clay borders this time, (instead of the lego mold) and I really like having a bit more freedom.





When complete both molds came out fine, and nothing stuck to the mold.  The challenge is the piece of trench i made did not hold together after I pulled it out of the mold. It is a combination of plastic card, and lots of small bits. This may be something I just need to live with






I then made 2 resin casts of each mold to see what the piece would look like and which texture style i would like.  Both images listed below.. You can tell the ends of the cast still need some work, and I have to get bet at trimming the mold when I pull t out, but I am happy with the improvement over my first attempt.






The next challenge will be finish a bigger trench piece and make it ready for the process.. This is a somewhat expensive learning process, but it has been very intersting.

July Terrain Project

July Terrain Project

 

 

I spent the majority of July working on a variety of terrain types. I wanted to give our local game stores so more terrain and  I also made some terrain for some people I know. I'm debating selling some terrain as well, so I wanted to see how much time it would take me to make various batches of terrain.

I also have some fun making a multi layered terrain piece. I like the idea of a piece of terrain really being 2 or more types of terrain. I have made rough terrain hills in the past as an example.


The sections I will cover today

• Hills
• Water pieces
• Forest pieces
• Ruins and some Stone Pillars.
• Mega Terrain - Forest/hill/water pieced

 

Hills 

I have made hills in the past that I was happy with, but they lacked a bit of style. I also am in a contest internal battle of making terrain as playable as possible, but still wanting terrain to look good.   In the past my hills have looked like this.

Going forward I want to add a bit more style.  First I simply cut out some shapes in some pink foam from Home Depot.

The hills are still fairly straight, but I have cut some angles into the side with the Hot Wire knife shown on the side.




I am going to make some different color hills as well. This is really a big experiment to see how a variety of different styles will look when done.





The dry brush phase is always pretty quick and easy.


 



I use a combination of the 2 blended turf flock from Woodland scenics. I find the result of mixing these two to look the nicest on hills/most terrain pieces
 









Here is the final result on my hills. I'm very happy with how these look. Next time I may use even less flock and make multi layer hills.











Water Pieces 


I always enjoy having some nice water pieces of terrain, and I wanted to see if I could mass product some good water pieces.

I have used some caulk I bought at Wal~Mart. It is about $5 for a tube of cualk, and I used the entire tube to make these pieces.








After the pieces dry I paint the basic colors on the terrain pieces.  I use a combination of blue/green for the base of water effects. I make the middle of the pieces a bit darker.





After the first layer drys I then add in a little more detail.





I use water effects by Woodland scenics. it costs about $20 per bottle and I used an entire bottle making these pieces.  This is layer 1 of 3.





The first layer takes 24 hours to dry. It also really things out.  The second layer is added and I put in a combination of blue/green dyes and mixed it into the water effects. This really gives some variety to the final product






You can see the difference while it dries based on how much green/blue ink I added to the water effects.




The last layer of water is added (I missed the picture, but I also lightly sprinkle some flock into the water to give it a "moss" type effect.

After that layer drys I think work on flocking the base. Here I am putting some glue on the sides of the base.





 



This is just another  picture of the mixture of 2 flocks I use.
 





I just pour this all over the sides of the base.




I like to leave the edge by the water brown. The next 2 pictures also show some other flock colors added to the piece for additional effects.










Forests

I've covered how I make forests before. This will be a brief overview.  Step 1, get all the pieces out ready to be flocked.
 




I user the darker green flock for this. i want the pieces to stand out more as a foreste.





This time I have attached all the trees to 50mm bases.






I have flocked all the bases for the trees.





I use a wide variety of materials to add in the final touches to the bases of the trees.





some examples of final tree bases.







Ruins & Standing Stones

I made a couple standing stone pieces. Sadly I did not do any in progress pictures.






I have gone over making small wall / ruin pieces many times. I am gong to just quickly show some pictures of what I have done. These were all made with Hirst Art molds.





I have applied the base colors




Drybrush on the stone is done first.





I did some more ground effects as well.

 
 Here is the final product with some additional flocking material being used on a lot of the pieces.
 














   


Forest/Hill Water Terrain Piece 

I have always liked the idea of making multi piece terrain. In the past I made some rough terrain hill pieces. This is an initial test piece. 

I put a template down to see how much space a forest piece would take, and used some Caulk to make the outline of the water piece.




I then applied the gravel bits to the piece. (except where water/forest will be)





I then painted/dry brushed the initial layers on the piece.



Here is the piece with some flock and the first layer of water.





This is the final look of the initial piece.

The Fun of Preperation

Working on terrain projects involves all sorts of "layers" of work.  Some of it is much more fun then others. Some of it is fairly tedious, but must be done.   Currently as I prepare myself to make all sorts of different terrain pieces I have to work on some of the basic "intial" layers.

For example I am going to be making some more forests, ruins, small ponds/water pieces.   I've discussed how to make many of these pieces in the past, but I have run very low on the material I use to base all these pieces.

I went to Home Depot and picked up two 2ft by 4ft 1/8 inch think Hardboard.  I then had the help of a friend "Ben Cone", (who is part of WiscoDice Podcast) and his table saw, jigsaw and sander.

Creating "bases"

 Step 1.)   I grab a magic marker and just start laying out some designs I want to cut.

Step 2.)  I have 2 sheets to fill out, so I just create all sorts of shapes I feel I can do something with later.

Step 3.)   Now the fun begins.  Ben gets out the Jigsaw and helps cut out some big chunks

Step 4.) The Table saw helps get some finer details cut. Sadly it didnt work all night, so we ended up using the jigsaw for a lot of this

Step 5.)   I then get to work sanding all the edges on the pieces.

Step 6.) Final results.. 50+ pieces all ready to go. This will keep me busy for the rest of the year at least.

Making "blocks"

There are other aspects of preparation as well.  I use a variety of Hirst arts  molds, and I am really low on my fieldstone pieces, as I used them recently for my last batch of ruins pieces and some leftovers when I made my ruined city board.



I will spend  2 weeks casting these sames molds 2 to 3 times most days until  I have replenished my supply.

Making some simple ruins and wall pieces

I have not made an update to this blog in a while. After moving I did not put a lot of time into making terrain. I did make the following wall / minor ruins pieces a couple months ago.

I am in the process of buying more materials and using Hirst arts molds to prepare for some upcoming projects, so I hope to have another update within a month or two. (hopefully a decent size post as well)

I donated these pieces to Pegasus Games.

This is a simple 4 step process to make these wall pieces. I used Hirst arts molds  #70,  #72, #73 and #75

Step 1 was just gluing the blocks together in some random shapes.





The next stage is simply too add in a lot of sand/gravel for the base..






Next stage is just some basic colors being added






The final stage is adding in some grass effects.