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2011/08/03 20:38:11
Subject: Good Quality foam for making hills and Terrain?
Anyone know a brand name, company/manufacturer or type of foam that is best suited to making wargaming Terrain, mostly for 40k. I need to make a couple of hills and the foam available here is too coarse for use without being plastered.
I dislike Smurfs.
2011/08/03 20:57:11
Subject: Good Quality foam for making hills and Terrain?
any sorrt of extruded styrene will work... barring that, foam core which can be obtained at virtualy any art supply shop
15 successful trades as a buyer;
16 successful trades as a seller;
To glimpse the future, you must look to the past and understand it. Names may change, but human behavior repeats itself. Prophetic insight is nothing more than profound hindsight.
It doesn't matter how bloody far the apple falls from the tree. If the apple fell off of a Granny Smith, that apple is going to grow into a Granny bloody Smith. The only difference is whether that apple grows in the shade of the tree it fell from.
2011/08/04 10:23:11
Subject: Good Quality foam for making hills and Terrain?
Foamular is the one used by the FX workshop at Weta and the Fox studios one for Star Wars ep3 (Mustafar was a foam sculpted miniature set composited into the shots). They used XPS (extruded polystyrene sheet) for that.
Visit Gordon Harris Art Supplies, 170 Victoria Street - they sell single tiles of blue and pink foam (can't remember which is denser, but either is far denser than the white packing stuff). It's not cheap though...
2011/08/04 21:26:36
Subject: Re:Good Quality foam for making hills and Terrain?
Paint it with house paint, it's way cheaper than craft paint in the volume you need, there's a million brands, just be sure to get water cleanup, and probably an eggshell (matte) kind of base, any hardware store can tint whatever color you want.
I just made 70 hills with this method for a local show!
US supplier 'LOWES' no idea if they have the stuff in Europe, cause you guys use thatch still right...?
Just Kidding,
good luck.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/04 21:28:56
2011/08/05 08:51:57
Subject: Good Quality foam for making hills and Terrain?
black-rabbit wrote:Augustus: wouldn't the spray adhesive melt the foam?
No, not at all.
Spray only the bottoms, the stuff is ridiculously tacky and you don't want to handle it.
This is also a great way to make a display board too.
Also if you are trying to get this sort of foam AND NOT in the US, the product is actually used as insulation, so it should be in whatever store sells home improvement or construction materials. Any hardware store or lumber yard that sells sheet goods and or home improvement or to builders ought to have something comparable. I have seen both pink and blue in my area at different retailers.
Also the stuff snap cuts, that means you can score it with a razor gash and then smack it and it breaks along the cut.
This tutorial isn't to bad,
*EDIT: (The DOW Corning Brand name can easily be seen in this video on the pink foam chunks this kid uses.)
...but a hotknife isn't necessary, the keyhole saw works great, is much faster, doesnt break and I really recommend the sand and glue coat because that makes the edges hard and better to drybrush later. Painting the foam strait away looks ok at first but gets beat up in storage play and transport.
He says hills are harder to make than cliffs but that because he only uses the wire and the knife. The key is the mini sure form, (yellow thing) where you can make realistic contours.
Here's some examples of hill images, built with the spray glue and textured yellow glue:
Double layer snow capped, with contoured ramps and cliff faces:
Multilayer plateaus with ramps and brown generic paint jobs:
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2011/08/05 16:23:37
