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Okay, so here's some WIP shots of the "mesas" I'm making. First the giant slab of pinkfoam. This has been cut roughly and then vaguely shaped to fit the masonite base I had already prepared.

Then I scored some lines along the side surface, roughly parallel with the bases. I also made a few cuts that were not so parallel on purpose to give some variety to the end product.


Then I vigorously scraped at those lines using only the tip of the exacto blade. This purposely creates all kinds of jagged tears.

Then I go back in, again only using the tip of the exacto blade and pluck away the loose bits and tear off extra chunks to create an irregular surface.

And then using a wide blade I shave the top surface ever so slightly to create an irregular surface there as well. It's important to leave it mostly flat, though, so models can still stand on it without falling off.



Here are the end results. A small Mesa and a long Mesa.


This method is time consuming but generates beautiful results.

Thanks for looking. Feedback always welcome.

Some folks have inquired as to where I get my plant fronds. I buy plastic bushes that look like this:

Pluck all the fronds off individually, getting these in the dozens (usually about 150 per "plant"):

And I'm left with this:

Which I then clip apart to use the "branches" for stuff like this:

And this:

And these things, too:






And I use the body of the bush for stuff like this:





I even save these little nubs from the bottoms of the plastic fronds and use them to create texture beneath the hotglue I use to create the landscape:


Hope this clarifies things for folks. Thanks for looking. More stuff up soon. Here's a preview of what I'm working on now:


Feedback always welcome. Have a great day!

Some really neat stuff there Waaazag. Nice work! Though I'd probably feel ill if I had a "to do" pile as big as that scenery wise.

Really cool stuff!

The mesas look really swell but have you seen this video on making rock textures? It seems to be easier/quicker to do.



Once again really nice stuff, can't wait to see more.

You are a genius with random crap sir!

Why thank you very much, inmygravenimage! I'm flattered you think so.

@angelofvengeance: that pile is typical of how I work. In fact that pile is small for me. I usually work on 100 pieces at a time. I love it.

@jerp: I've seen that technique before; used it myself even. But it creates a different effect and I'm way too detail oriented to go about things the easy way. Thanks for the tutorial, though!

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I really appreciate it!

So here's more of my current projects. Trying to turn styrofoam pumpkins into miniature trees. I start by hotgluing a styrofoam pumpkin to a wooden silhouette shape.

Then I tear out that weird "button" on the top and discover it's a toothpick that leaves a hole when it's gone. Into which I insert twisted wire that I clipped off my bushes in the above post and start coating them with hotglue.



The trick is to make them not look just like pumpkins, so I draw lines of hotglue down the sides to create...uh, anything, really. It's an alien tree. It looks like whatever I want it to.

Here is one much further along in the process.




The next step will be to coat the exterior with textured paint to give subsequent layers something to drybrush onto.

The texture in the mesas came out great, and the alien garden seems to be growing just fine!

Thanks for the feedback, Littletower!

Here are some more work in progress shots of the other terrain bases I'm working on.

I call these "Ridges" for reasons I can't personally fathom. I just go with whatever idea/name pops into my head first. This is where I started. The black and white tubes on this piece are plastic lollipop sticks I bought at a craft store in the baking section. I think they are made by a company called "Wilton".



And then coated the exterior of these straws with hot glue like so:


Here is one at stage 1 and one at stage 2, side by side for comparison:


Thanks for looking! Feedback always appreciated.

I never have good results with hot melt glue, and here you are sculpting with it. Impressive.

Edit:typos :(

Thanks Red Harvest!

Why do I suddenly want to model a forrest?

Brilliant work.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Why do I suddenly want to model a forrest?

Brilliant work.

Thanks, Cam. I'll post up another update this evening or tomorrow morning.

Great use of hot glue.
Good find with the plastic plants.

You are a florists nightmare, and i Mean that in a good way. Some really nifty ideas with the flower parts. Really like some of the plants you made a while back specifically the small seashell tree.

 Theophony wrote:
You are a florists nightmare, and i Mean that in a good way. Some really nifty ideas with the flower parts. Really like some of the plants you made a while back specifically the small seashell tree.

Thanks, Theophony! Yeah, I bought a bunch more seashells to try my hand again at that weird, spiky tree thing.

Anyway, moving on with work, I for some reason call these next pieces noodles. There really isn't a reason for it. I started them awhile back with really long straws sticking out of styrofoam like so:

But decided they would look better if I trimmed those sticks down and added some more:


Some bases were smaller than others:


Then I got adding my hotglue (these are all still work in progress):



I try to let gravity do a lot of the work for me, so I let the hotglue get really hot and then overload an edge with a huge dollop. Then it just oozes down the side of the rise and creates shapes for me.






More will be posted as I get photos of it. Thanks for looking. Feedback always appreciated! Have an awesome day!

So, remember this mountain of "to do"?

I've gotten a bunch of it done! And by a bunch I mean these 2:

Here are some detail shots to try to illustrate my "gravity flow" method.








Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I made my pile bigger:

And here is my bucket of drinking straw bits:

Crazy lavels of ingneuity going on here!

Very creative! look forward to seeing more.

Waaagh Skargor is ready to waaaaaaaaaagh!

Okay, so millions of concurrent projects. This one is vaguely entitled "clothes pins".
Here the humble wooden clothes pin:

And here hotglued onto a bunch of wooden shapes, upside down:



Here its partner in crime, the coil of 18 gauge copper coated wire:

Here that wire already starting to do its job:

Essentially I wrap the wire around the clothes pin and hotglue it into place. Then I pump some more hotglue into the gap, wait for it to cool and add another wire. Coil, glue, repeat.


Here is the beginning of a branch:

I fold the wire over on itself like so:

Then pin the two ends together with a plier:

And twist the loop to strengthen it:

Then I can position these loops in virtually any way I like:


Once that's all done, I coat the branches and trunk with hotglue lines like so:






The next step will be textured sand and then paint. More to come. Thanks for looking; feedback always welcome!

The early shots made me think "It's the legendary forest of giant exclamation marks"

Good idea and execution. Look like they will make good trees.

I did more work on that store commission. I finished the windows. The first frame was glued in solidly and I didn't want to break the thing just to fish out the sticks, but I took Red Harvest's advice on the frame with the other windows.


I did more work, too, but I wanted to share another concurrent project I am working on. Garlic trees. So, starting with a humble styrofoam garlic bulb I found at a craft store:

I take hold of the straw used to represent the roots and yank it out:



Much easier than the toothpicks buried in the pumpkins. Then I slice off the very tip of the bulb like so:



Save your nubs!

Test fit the upside down bulb to your base:

Then hot glue that sucka on:

And use your nubs. They make excellent "saplings".


Next, you need to reinforce your point of contact with the base, because as you can see it is kind of weak at the moment:

So, just pump more hotglue around the base of the garlic bulb, being sure to crawl it slightly up the sides of the shaft:


Next, stuff a suitably large tool into the top of the piece to widen the hole. I use my closed clippers:

It leaves a slightly mangled aperture:

This is the hole into which I will be inserting the "branches".
Here are a couple of size comparison shots using the pumpkin trees (that are constructed via a similar method) and a Barry Ork.



Then, after dropping a dot of hotglue into the hole you've made, jam some pre-shaped wire branches into the apex of your piece, being careful that whatever you've made doesn't make the piece topheavy in any particular direction:


This then needs to be reinforced with more hotglue:

Then, make a million of them:













Next, start hotgluing the branches and dragging the lines down the body the the bulb to the base:


Use those extensions to create roots:

Add details to the base like drinking straw bits to add other plants to the final piece:






Add branches to your saplings and hotglue them, too:


Hotglue the whole thing until you are satisfied with the outcome:

The next step on these are much the same as for the clothes pin trees and the pumpkin trees, a layer of fine sand mixed in with a base coat color for texture.

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

Sir, your work is amazing and so inspirating !

Keep this show alive !

Utterly barking... I love it!

Thanks, Luciusletroll and Phutarf. High praise from you both!

Okay, update time...again. As always, I'm working on a whole bunch of pieces simultaneously for the store commission. I go to this place maybe once or twice a week to work on stuff. A few weeks ago I glued some chunks of insulation foam together. Then some weeks after that I carved them into shape. Now I'm starting to glue them onto bases and texture them. Case in point:

And with an Ogryn for scale:


And with a 3 storey Imperial building (that I didn't make) for scale:

I had glued some random styrofoam cutoffs to the base of this smaller leaning piece a week ago:




Just in an effort to make the ground around it less flat while still making it stable enough for a model to stand on it. So this past week I coated the uneven foam with airdry clay:





And while I had some left over clay in hand, I also filled in some gaps on other pieces, too:




Then I glued down a mix of heavy aquarium gravel (one could also use Talus, if it's on hand, I suppose), pulverized walnut shell, and craft sand:








Here's a random Tau to try to illustrate scale:

And then that huge mesa with the ramp that I didn't have very many good pictures of last time got some sand texture. This is after I had covered the ramp with more air-dry clay to smooth it out. You can see cracks in the ramp bed where the clay shattered as it dried.




I didn't use any aquarium gravel on this one, except down near the bottom edges, because I wanted the surface to remain largely flat.







This yet needs to be sealed, but here is someone else's unpainted killa kan to show scale:




And the reason to keep the top of this thing flat is so that one could place other terrain on top of it:



Moe updates soon. Thanks for looking! Feedback always welcome. Have an awesome day!

Seriously nice textures there.

More updates! Here is the small mesa painted.
Here it is sealed:



Here's my palette:

My rule of thumb with any natural paint job is to start with the color that appears like it shouldn't even be there to begin with. In this case, that color was Prussian Blue. I applied it rough and intentionally incomplete.






Next up was whatever this brown color is:





There's also a very light application of this red, but it's difficult to see with the lighting:

I can't tell if these photos are in order or not, so here's just a big pile to show I did work. At some point, I also highlighted with the Linen color mixed with my red and then straight linen and then straight white.




























Then I put the vaguest of red washes on the top and around the base of the mesa. And then I put it down and decided to call it done, because otherwise I would keep painting it until a month had passed.




That's it for now. Thanks for looking; feedback always welcome. Have a great day!

Nice work. Looks the part.

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')