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So, some friends and I are going to start playing games of 40K at my house, which means I need to start focusing on making terrain pieces. I know that there's plenty of stuff you can buy from GW to make buildings and stuff, but I'm convinced with a little bit of imagination, I could make some decent terrain pieces out of the junk that I throw out every week. We certainly throw out plenty of soda cans and bottles and cardboard. I'm looking for some inspiration. Can you guys please post pics of terrain pieces you've made out of junk/trash? If possible, maybe even a brief description of how you made it? The easier and cheaper the better. I'm sure by seeing your brilliant use of throw away items, I'll get some great ideas.

Thanks in advance.

cardboard is a poor material. I highly reccomend shredding it and using it via paper mache if you absolutely insist on using it, but at this rate, news-paper is less work... and that only really gets you hills and stuff, maybe piles of rubble.

Cans can make great silos or storage tanks, but..... once you have around 8 of them, of varying sizes (redbull size, normal size and the tall beer size), then... it gets old real quick. Instead of tossing them, recycle them, keep the pocket change to go to your FLGS or art store and buy foamcore and other supplies.

take your left over sprues, clean them, and cut them into bricks. or, if you clean them right, take longer sections and glue them together to make thick-logged wood barricates (is very orky), and then glue your sections of cardstock and carcboard on that to make it look like orky plate- reinforcement

Well, I've got no pics but just by thinking for 15 seconds I can come up with at least one design that's readily made of junk.

Use a stiff cardboard sheet as base, glue down an upside down can of whatever you just ate from a can. If it's one of the kinds that are kinda wavy along the side it'll look better. It might also work with a cut off bottom for a PET bottle. Might be more immediately recognized though.

Next, get a straw, a bending kind. Bend it so that the upper part connects with the can, and the lower connects to the cardboard. Instant release valve pipe. Without the valve.... For bonus points, see if you can find something that could be used as drain pipe. Something round and pretty large. Stick it to the bottom of the can pointing outwards.

Spray, sand, paint, weather.

Done.

Most terrain is homemade, don't get GW stuff, it's not worth it.

There are many ways of making cheap and easy terrain.

This is a brilliant idea. Credit to Runer.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/329231.page

Bean cans make brilliant factory terrain if covered in cardboard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb2TYAf_k3I

Good old MiniWarGaming, they are very good.

Also miliput is a brilliant material to make sandbags out of, just roll into strips and cut up. Only £2.50 for a packet too! You can use some cork board as a base.

If you really want very cheap terrain, you could just spray a cardboard box black and say it's a building.

This is the terrain bible for new builders: http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/

One thing i used, and worked: do you know those plastic "beds" that come with cell phones and other electronics? That things have pretty good shapes for buildings.

Those are normally made with a slight "sheet" of plastic, where the electronic thing can be acomodated with ease, for travel and shipping right? Just fill the "bed" with paper mache (or just wet ragged paper) and let it dry...

Now you have a "bed" with a flat surface in one side, and a pretty nice shaped other side, just use that pretty shaped side as some building

(sry if i dont make it clear, im strugle here to find word to explain this ideia. I think i will made a tutorial for this...)

I use Tagboard for hundreds of uses. I have an un-natural, unhealthy obsession with tagboard.

what people tend to forget about tagboard:

1. It's infinately cheaper then any other material out there. it's free and usually comes with stuff you get every day. you probably throw out at least 1 pound of tag board every day. Forget mistakes, compartmentalize your projects and when you make a mistake you can't recover from, scrap it and start over. it will only cost you time and the glue you pour into it.

2. Superglue dries into a plastic-y material. most tag board has two sides, a rough and smooth side. if you apply superglue to the rough side, it will be absorbed into the card board and harden. you can also use slighty watered PVC glue for a similar effect, but it makes bit more of a mess and not nearly as easy to do (water make the tagboard tipsy so it doesn't help much unless you do this piece by piece.

3. Tagboard is much easier to use then most things out there. It doesn't require any special tools. I use a ruler, xacto knife, and scissors. With enough layers and patience, you can build a Rhino or Razorback with little trouble.

I will be making a tutorial of such a process when I get a proper camera.

And now I ask the really dumb question....What's Tagboard?

Toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls are awesome and quick ways to make silos or painted grey concrete pipes or even if painted hunter green giant industrial pipes like ones you would see stacked up in a industrial zone.

Get your self a base irregular cut the better, Pick out two toilet paper rolls paint them with some grey acrylic paint then toss a hand full of sand for texture then spray paint black and white till they are a dusty grey. Go to a local hardware store and find pvc caps in the plumbing department should be a endless size range you should easily be able to find one the size of the tubes..rather cheap too i use hex shaped ones with threading so you kinda screw it in. Paint the cap add cut drinking straws to make smoke stakes and add cotton. Find yourself some sand and gravel in a parking lot or gutter then paint your base let dry. White glue the whole thing and stick the toilet paper tubes in a position or glue them in place first either way works and texture away paint the base desired colour.

Super Cheap and can make a ton of them in a day

Here is a example of a untextured one i did that was later devoured by my dog haha the rest are safe

Blue insulation board that they use to insulate houses is great. It cuts and sands easily just dont use spray paint on it or it melts. Usually if you find a spot they are building new homes there will be some laying around that you can take for the asking. Just be sure to ask lol. Also wood chips used for landscaping make great rocks with a basecoat of black and a little grey drybrushing.

Buy some paper machee and pink foam board stuff ( youcan find it at a home depot or something). Basically, paper machee= ground (if you want ground) and you can carve the foam board into buildings.

http://terrainforhippos.blogspot.com/

You'll have to dig around the blog a bit, but trust me, you'll thank me later.

Jon

Buy some paper machee

This
Though you don't really need to buy anything. All you need is old newspapers and some flour. Get some water boiling and slowly add flour to it. Then keep this ugly mass on weak fire for ~15 minutes more. Then just tear some newspapers into small pieces and use the wheatpaste you have just prepared to glue them together (better make a shape of what you want to achieve of plasticine and put your Papier-mâché onto it - after it dries, you will be simply remove plasticine and re-use it). This is a great way of making hills/mountains of whatever-you-like shape.

Also, this "terrain" of mine is achieved with only adding a mixture of baking soda, water, PVA glue and acrylic paints to some styrofoam basement


Hope this helps.

PVC Pipe, unused fuel and oil filters, foamcore, a sharp hobby knife. GW patterns from older BRBs or WD or Paperhammer, white glue. Add imagination mix with alcohol and voila! Terrain.

The dome is a Japanese soup bowl (£1.29) with the cap from a roll-on deodorant on top.

The Sensor array is a fancy men's shampoo plastic bottle dressed up with plasticard. It's based on an old DVD.





The silos are yogurt cartons, based on old mouse mat+wrist rest holders thrown out from the office. Some parts bought from Antenociti's Workshop are used to dress it up.



The moulded pulp packaging inserts used by electronics manufacturers for packaging items can make good buildings straight out of the box. They only need bit of trimming and painting to make them awesome.

What's the concrete effect you use kilkrazy?

It's a spray-on textured paint. You can get it in various textures and colours.

Here are two UK based suppliers. I am sure you will be able to get an equivalent locally.

http://www.plasti-kote.co.uk/Product/pcode---4651/pccode---3620

http://www.rustoleumaerosols.co.uk/index.php?cPath=6&osCsid=3nbvg9ffhnepe20db7uq0c4h86

Thanks, plasti-kote sounds familiar, I'll keep an eye out for it.

I made the following rubble piles from sprue cut up:



Glued it to some plastic card. Glued a little sand in patches to the card. Spray painted black, then drybrushed.

These flames are bits of steel wool glued to a washer, then spreayed black, then yellow and red paint applied:



Sign for the entrance to my trailer park made from wood coffee stirring sticks and an old business card:



Jake

You can make alot of great terrain out of household junk, but I hightly recommend a trip to your local charity/resale/thrift shop. You'd be surprised what you can build out of what castoff and broken toys you find there.

The vehicle and buildings here are all built from toys and bits.

Each probably has about 2-3 bucks invested in it. They are based on chipboard bases that I make from chipboard (the backs of cheap cabinets) sheets that I get from the Ikea scratch and dent for about 50 cents each for a sheet a about 2-3 square feet.

The corrugated metal is one-sided corrugated cardboard, the sand base is sandstone texture paint from the hardware store and the few places I used plascard, it's cut from plastic "for sale" signs from the hardware store.

If you get interested in the toys'n'salvage method of terrain building, you need to check out terragenesis.
http://www.ironhands.com/necro.htm
It's been my terrain bible since the mid 90's.

poda_t wrote:cardboard is a poor material.

Cardboard is fantastic material.

Make a frame out of wire (old coat hangers, wire mesh, thick paperclips, regular paperclips) or sprue as a support thing (or layers of card built up) then put the sheets over it - great stuff.



The toaster uses a Sprue frame and the kettle uses 5mm wire mesh as a base and both are made from cereal boxes (specifically, Special K boxes ) and I'm currently making this:


out of 5mm mesh and card (with sprue for the 'deck').

As for terrain - Lego is great.

Get a bulk job lot of old lego off ebay / second hand store whatever and make any building you like. With a little technic you get modular buildings that can clip together, removable bridges / balconies etc. Add in cardboard and plastic sheet (from blisters / any packaging in general) for roofing and windows, and you have buildings to scale in whatever size you like. Take a soldering iron / hacksaw / powerdrill / hammer and you have ruins.

I know but is not very durable.

Ovion wrote:

poda_t wrote:cardboard is a poor material.

Cardboard is fantastic material.

cardboard or cardstock? I agree, cardstock is awesome. Cardboard however is terrible. (perhaps i ought specify, corrugated cardboard, and cereal box... the shiny side aint too useful when you need a two-sided surface)

Well, I made the toaster and kettle out of cereal boxes, and have used cardboard (thin and thick) in numerous non-warhammer related projects. With proper framework / support / construction it's strong enough.

Also the shiny side hasnt bothered me, once undercoated it's perfectly fine to paint on. Inafct on the models I put up the toaster is thepainted on matte side and the kettle is the painted on shiny side.