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 Malika2 wrote:
Man, I love the rocky landscapes! Have you considered making them with weirder shapes/patterns, to look as if they are shaped like things or have faces in them? Kinda like the face on Mars or those "stone forests" in Peru (look up 'bosque de piedras' or 'Huayllay')

I had not considered that, Malika2, until I just googles those images. Man, they are beautiful! Bookmarked image search, project logged. Thanks for the feedback.

@Dr H: thank you very much. I hope the rest will look as good when the collection is all completed. More updates tonight or tomorrow evening.

@whoever decided my photo of those rock formations were "not related to wargaming", you obviously haven't been following this blog. Sometimes inspirational photos are useful for us visual types.

Anyway, I got more work done on that store commission. I'd be brief, but that's just not how I roll.

I'll start with the walls I've been making. I finished the interiors and exteriors of them. I used slices of boxes to create the exterior sills that hide the horrible mess of the cut wallpaper:




Here's the interiors:

I put a running board on the wall that will have the staircase on it.

And a superfluous molding near the ceiling that was supposed to serve as a stop for the floor above, but I'm probably going to do something completely different that will make that detail be just there for show.


Then I glued it all together and in place:








Also, I sealed the leaning piece (and also the giant plateau, but the pictures of that came out like crap, so you'll just have to take my word for it):


Thanks for looking! Feedback always appreciated. Have a great day!

Looks brilliant all together like that, Textures are very interesting.

Thanks, Cam!

I also made some painting progress on the two mesas. The long one, sealed:



Based blue:




Brown overbrushed (sorry about the blurry pics):






Red overbrush:




Various pink and white highlights:












Flocked:




And static grassed (which of course I have just this one picture of because the rest were so blurry they were unusable):

And then the short mesa with flock and static grass:



And then a shot of what it looks like start to finish, side by side:


Thanks for looking! Feedback always appreciated. Have an awesome day.

Stuning! The mesas turned out great.
The house is coming along really nicely too, can't wait to see the finished product.

Some color to a few of those layers? Sedimentary rock tends to have different colored layers. See the Painted Desert for inspiration... I did

Excellent progress - from one to another I love the step by step progress pics, as well as the "before and after" pic - so handy for a true sense of development ! Keep it up - can't wait to see the full board....

Looking good with the added vegetation.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Dr H: I think I aspirated about a pound of static grass. I'm still coughing up tiny bits of it.

@Phutarf: yeah, me either. I don't know why, but this project is really wearing me down. I think it might be the 45 minute drive to the location and the weird limitations on materials. I'll be glad when it's all done and I have a whole table of beautiful terrain to show for it.

@Red Harvest: not all sedimentary rock looks like the painted hills. There's rock formations that look like what I've reproduced near me that are all a muddy grey. If all sedimentary rock looked like the painted hills they wouldn't be called the painted hills, they'd just be called hills.

@Jerp: thanks, I'm thinking of attaching the staircase to the second floor, but that idea is mostly a floater. I want to build the second floor with a wide balcony that overhangs the edges of the masonite base. We'll see how that works out.

Here's a bunch of photos of stuff I don't think I showed off yet. I'm having some issues with my camera regarding uploading new photos, so this will have to suffice for now.
The ramp mesa WIP:



The long and the short mesa PIP side by side:


With luck I'll have more photos to show off soon.

Mesas turned up great, and the house by the mountain side is looking good too!

Well you sure made a 'mesa' out of that one…. geddit All bad puns aside, they look great, I especially like the look of the house. Is it going to have an adobe style flat roof, or a slanted one?

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:

Or these "plants"?

That tall? or this small?

Truffula trees!

Good stuff in here! Keep 'em coming!

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. I'm still working furiously, but my camera issue turned out to require a new sync cable. It was supposed to arrive today, but it's still in California. At least the shipping was free (I didn't pay extra for the delay). So more (and I mean many more) photos to come. They just won't be up until Monday or Tuesday at least. Thanks for your patience guys!

No it's those trees from that Lorax movie!

scenery looking brilliant, great stuff.

Just make sure we get some pics soon!! LOL

Truffula trees are from the Lorax movie. U no know Dr. Seuss?

Pix when you can. Always enjoy them, even if just lurking.

Thanks guys! Tracking says the sync cable will arrive today, so when I get back from the gun show it should be in the mailbox. If I get home early enough new photos up tonight. Otherwise tomorrow.

Wow, where to start? At the beginning I guess.

So there is project stuff literally all over the place. On the computer:


In boxes:


On shelves:

And in bags:

With all guns "blazing":

I'm set to make everything:

I let some stuff "drip dry":


While I busy myself with prepping the next couple of stages (like washing these "leaves"):

And applying sand to these other bases:



And also this weird tree-thing I found completed and buried beneath a bunch of other stuff.




Now, I have plenty more to post. If you want more stuff (and I'm sure you all do), post some comments or feedback and I'll post up more photos of stuff. Thanks for looking! Have an awesome day!

I've seen many cowboy movies where the hero wields two revolvers, but three hot glue guns?

Now we all know how you manage to work so fast! Wondering if you hold it with your left foot, though...

@Littletower: Hah! No, no left foot wielding (especially since I've bought another 2 guns). I use them one after another. They get hot, I use the glue. Then the stick I'm using isn't quite melted anymore, so I switch guns.

As promised, here is more. What can it be? Why, it's a new use for bottle caps (which I have been needlessly collecting for years, trying to figure out what to do with them besides remind me what I had to drink last night).




And plastic icicles:

And gluing them together:




And also some bits of drinking straws:



And then some craft sand:



And then some indigo paint:





A stone from the texture popped off during transit (I went to a crafting party with the Missus. The girls all knit and crochet while I made terrain):



And then a whole bunch of other colors that I will get into more detail about in a subsequent post.



And then some plants:



So, uh, I feel like they are unfinished. I want to try to make the tall "icicle trees" into more tree-like...well...trees. I'm just not so such how to do that. Ideas?

Branches.

It all looks amazing.

Looking really good!
Creative use of the plastic icicles, IMHO they look rather like palm trees. If you want to make them more tree-like maybe try painting them a more brownish colour and having drooping leaves? Maybe add some craft beads as coconuts aswell.

More good stuff, I seem to be getting an underwater vibe?

Thanks for all the feedback, guys!

@Camkierhi: Branches are tough to add after all the paint is on, but I understand where you are going with that idea.

@Jerp: I was thinking of trying something with a palm feel. Interesting idea with the craft beads as coconuts. I have taller pieces that will have "alien coconuts" made from sea shells. Hmmm. You definitely have me thinking though.

@SJM: Everyone keeps saying that. Maybe I should start listening? Someone challenged me to do an underwater city a few years back and I never got around to doing it. I'm not sure if they meant like a domed city underwater (which would just essentially be a regular city except maybe with a nautical theme), or if they meant a city of buildings whose doors opened into the water. thus facilitating everyone walks around in deepsea robosuits. I don't know. Maybe I'll do a ruin that's been flooded. Or maybe, because I am crazy, I will do something that incorporates all those ideas. Hmmmm, yet again.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sooo, more work.
I decided to try to test craft sand as a texture on my lollipop stick trees, because the textured gel I normally buy has a definite shelf life and eventually turns to a rubbery substance that I have trouble reconstituting. So basically, I'm trying to cheat. I got mixed results. I'm worried the ground texture and the tree texture will "melt" together and even with paint you won't be able to tell one from the other. Anyway, here are the results:




So I picked a random base and decided to try to make a mold of it. This is the one I selected:

Obviously I've textured it. Not so obvious is the fact that I also coated it in shellac, because the rubber I choose won't solidify in the presence of wood. Weird, I know.


So I made a giant mold box out of foamcore and reinforced it with hot glue:

And then decided the box was way too big and selected 2 other pieces to copy. And then wound up mixing what I thought would be a ton of this Rubber:

But when I poured, it turned out to be just enough to fill one chamber of the box:


Sad, cold, lonely other pieces:


I'll post the results tomorrow. Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Looking good.

Building an underwater city/ building would be sick, maybe make it in a steampunk style... like Rapture from the Bioshock series.

That would be awesome *stares into distance with misty eyes*

Good luck with the moulds.

Mold came out great! I had to clean it up a lot, but aside from that, it worked like a dream. Now to cast something in it and hope that works out just as well....

Icicle trees look good. As does the rest.

Good luck with the moulding and casting exploits.

Yeah, the silicone never goes as far as you expect.
I find a good way to work out the volume of silicone required is to line the mould box with clingfilm and then use water (the clingfilm is to prevent the box from getting wet, you could just let it dry before using it) to get a good estimate of the volume.

That's pretty sound advice. Thanks, Dr H!

Indeed, excellent advice. I am curious about how well that mold will perform. I've thought about making some, especially after seeing how everybody here seems to do so well with them. Where did you get that stuff anyway?

And a novel use of bottlecaps

I live in New York City, Red Harvest, and there's a shop in downtown Manhattan called the Compleat Sculptor that sells it among many other Smooth On products. Their staff is also very knowledgeable. But one could probably also find the product online.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Moving along. I made some other kinds of "mushroomy things".
I started with packing styrofoam glued to my bases:

And some wooden draw pegs and large craft beads:

With the aid of hotglue and my hands I glued them into place:



Then I used very hot hotglue to coat the sides with widely spaced lines. The glue has to be liquid enough that it will partially merge with the other lines, but not so fluid that it just drips off. Delicate balance.




Then I just hotglue the bead to the top by pouring a dollop on one side of the bead and pressing it down so it spills out from beneath the bead to create a sort of lip.





More updates tomorrow, folks! Thanks for looking! Have an awesome day!