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Looks like someone is buiilding Meteora in 40K

http://www.europeword.com/images/greece/things_to_see_in_greece_meteora_monastery.jpg

Thanks for the feedback, inmygravenimage and meph! Yeah, I've done a huge amount of research (read: staring at thousands of pretty pictures) for my terrain builds. There's a plethora of hilltowns similar to the one linked throughout Italy. They're actually the base model for modern cities. It's really cool stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And because I am impatient, here is some WIP shots of yet another project that will involve modular sidewalks. This is the framework of one such detail piece. This is inspired by a section of sidewalk along 1st avenue in NYC near the UN building. Over this basic frame will go plastic and other materials to seal it so maybe, just maybe, I will be able to make multiple copies (my rubber won't cure in the presence of wood for some inexplicable reason...)





Size comparison and coverage photo:


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

Amazing stuff dude. The building is looking great the mountains are AWESOME, and now modular sidewalks?! Brilliant.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Amazing stuff dude. The building is looking great the mountains are AWESOME, and now modular sidewalks?! Brilliant.

Thanks very much, Cam! Here is more stuff! I bought some more cheap gourds and pumpkins and tried some new stuff with 'em. Cutting pumpkins in half:


Gluing them to bases:


And then chopping the "tails" off some gourds:


And figuring out what to do with the "tails" first:


Getting creative with the gourds and gluing some straws down in a hive-like mass:


There's plenty more to do. Always busy, always busy. Once again, thanks for looking, have an awesome day, and feedback always appreciated.

Those groceries are awesome, they make great pieces once "treated" W_W style.

And the massive rock spire will make a sight to behold when done.

 Littletower wrote:
Those groceries are awesome, they make great pieces once "treated" W_W style.

And the massive rock spire will make a sight to behold when done.

Thanks very much, Littletower. I'm going up again today to do more work. Hopefully that will mean sealing the rest of the ramp mesa, more work on the building, texturing the massive spire and starting 2 more buildings (1 for the spire with the wedge conveniently chopped out of it and possibly 1 stand alone). I was thinking of adding some trees to the big block spire's base. Like 3 or 4 just to fill out the base on the opposite end from the rock. Plus I've been working on other stuff at home. More pictures tonight or tomorrow, I promise!

That is some awesomely funky terrain! I may have to nick that idea for myself once I make some organic terrain.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
That is some awesomely funky terrain! I may have to nick that idea for myself once I make some organic terrain.

Thanks for the praise, shasolenzabi! Feel free.

I recently purchased some new texturing paste from a supplier that turned into a wholesaler. 40% off, woot!


And with my Garlic trees needing some love, I set to:


Also, I did a few other items as well...


Thanks for looking and have an awesome day! Feedback always welcome!

I can't wait to see your alien forest all finished and on table Waaazag.

 JoeRugby wrote:
I can't wait to see your alien forest all finished and on table Waaazag.

Thanks for the feedback, JoeRugby!

Switching gears a little, here is more work I did on that store commission. Let's start with the stairs WIP.
Measure once, cut twice:


Here, the enemy of straight lines and cutting, coffee:


Defying my enemy:


See how they stack!


Now for the actual stair bit:


And the top back fit perfectly:


The bottom back not so much. So I did some simple trimming:


And then made sure each section fit flush against the wall:


And finally glued the whole thing together and set it off to dry:


Next step will be to cover this thing in wood panelling. Next time!

Thanks for looking and have an awesome day!

Now a useful panel with a closet door would work some wonders for the stairs.

Normally I'd be all for adding minute details like that, shaso, but as these pieces are commissioned for a set rate, they don't rank lavish details that have no game-related purpose. I like where your thinking goes, though. Fine details is where it's at my friend.

By the time you line that up with wood panels that is going to look great.

 Camkierhi wrote:
By the time you line that up with wood panels that is going to look great.

Thanks, Cam! Another update with pictures of some other stuff in 24 hours. Stay tuned. In the meantime talk amongst yourselves. Lol

Have an awesome day!

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
Normally I'd be all for adding minute details like that, shaso, but as these pieces are commissioned for a set rate, they don't rank lavish details that have no game-related purpose. I like where your thinking goes, though. Fine details is where it's at my friend.

Ah, skipped the commission part, so if that was for your own terrain collection, then you might have that detail added, I get it.

The fine art of stair building. The piece is coming along nicely. I don't recall seeing what game this piece is commissioned for?

It's meant to work for fantasy, 40k, or malifaux.

Sorry for the lack of updates folks, I'm suffering through a hellish toothache. Updates will happen when the antibiotics kick in.

We may forgive you, depends how big and how delayed!



Get better soon bud.

Tootaches are never fun, ever. Get better.

Thanks guys. My antibiotics kicked in and the face pain stopped so the universe conspired to break the tip of my thumb. Huzzah.

Ah, universal terrain. Cool. I like the idea.

 Warboss_Waaazag wrote:
Thanks guys. My antibiotics kicked in and the face pain stopped so the universe conspired to break the tip of my thumb. Huzzah.

Dang! time to do some prayer work so the Universe gives you a good break, so much bad stuff back to back is never a good sign of things

Where to start, where to start. There was this more or less featureless rock spire in the back of the store where I am doing this commission. It had been cut out with a hotwire and glued to a base and in some places spackled a bit, but for the most part left incomplete for months. I was told that I could do anything with any of the half-finished terrain projects in the place - break them, rebuild them, use them. I decided this thing needed some love so I beat the hell out of it with a rock and then tore it apart with my (then working) thumb. Here are the results of that beating:


Then I applied some sand of various consistency and size to the base:


That's as far as I got with that piece that day, but I worked on a lot more. The building got more sand to show off the doorway:


(Also, here are some random stairs pictures I forgot to share for some reason:
)

This giant thing got some love:


Remember that as you build, there is really no such thing as trash. All those little scrap pieces have value for various other applications as wedges, or for building up ground around the bases of your larger pieces. Here are some examples of not trash:


Here I've selected some "not-trash" for use with the above giant spire:


After some carving down I ended up with three pieces that I began test fitting to see how I liked them:


With the application of glue their positioning changes slightly:


And then some smoothing is done with air-drying clay. The piece is beginning to take real shape:


Using the clay I built up some areas to give slight variation to the ground:


Then more of the foul-smelling glue goes down and I spread it with my finger so the rocks stick to my finger tip and the sand eventually sticks to the rocks in the ways I want it to.


And then the application of sand in its various forms. This is one of the things I'm really grateful to this store for having. There's 3 sizes of coarse gravel - Woodland Scenics Coarse Ballast, Talus, and Aquarium Gravel - plus really fine craft sand, and crushed walnut shell. It's all just excellent for comprehensive ground cover:


I didn't like the initial look of this section, so I cleared away some sand with my fingertip and reapplied:
A
B
C

That's it for today. Tune in next time for another update. Thanks for looking and have an awesome day!

Nice work on the rock structures. Nice to follow the process.

Hope the tooth and finger get better soon and are not joined by a third piece of bad luck. Maybe you should stub your toe on purpose just in case.

 Dr H wrote:
Nice work on the rock structures. Nice to follow the process.

Thanks, Dr H.

 Dr H wrote:
Hope the tooth and finger get better soon and are not joined by a third piece of bad luck. Maybe you should stub your toe on purpose just in case.

I don't know how sound this advice is. With my luck my foot will explode. I think I'm just going to get one of those full body clear plastic inflatable balls to wear wherever I go from now on. It may be difficult to maneuver in, but at least my core organs will be safe.

Sorry to hear about the run of bad luck dude.

How tall is that spire it looks massive.

 JoeRugby wrote:
Sorry to hear about the run of bad luck dude.

Thanks, I appreciate that, JoeRugby.

 JoeRugby wrote:
How tall is that spire it looks massive.

Both big spires in this most recent update are about 46cm tall. Give or take. (that's about 18" to all the Imperial users. I'm looking at YOU America).

So I did more texturing of the largest piece because I wasn't satisfied with the look of it. I also smoothed down the shelf and inner wall (because A building is going to go there eventually and I want it to fit as flush as possible):


I tested the flatness of the shelf with a random bit of foam core and a headless tau that was lying around. You can barely see around the back corner of this thing that there's some new, random chunks of insulation foam that I glued down to make the ground underneath where the staircase will eventually go a little bit more uneven:


Then I set about smoothing the irregular join of the block on the base with some air-dry clay. I notice that so long as I cover the clay with a layer of glue BEFORE it dries it stays in place. Otherwise it just crumbles away once it dries because there's nothing adhering it to the base. Clay is tricky. In its wet or damp state it sticks to everything, but once it dries all it wants to do is crumble into dust. One must really wrangle with the stuff.


Here you can see the flat smoothness of that one section of cliff face.


I noticed it, too, and boy did it bother the heck out of me:


Then I threw down some more glue and scattered some Talus around the rock spire and up on the edge of that cliff:


Followed by sand and more work on that flat inner edge. You might also notice that I used some coarse gravel here as well to supplement the talus. The Talus is the tan stones and the coarse gravel is the light grey stuff. I find it helpful to use differently colored texturing sands so at a glance I can see exactly what steps I've completed on a given project piece.


When it came to that cliff, it became an issue of just not knowing when to stop.

Then I stared at this thing. I knew I wanted to connect a building to it somehow and to incorporate that shelf. The original idea (just a nebulous thing in my head) was to put a tiny 2 storey building in that nook, but as I fiddled with the foamcore I started thinking how maybe I could make an open deck on that shelf or create a tower there with the middle floor just all open. The logistics of creating that, especially after seeing how long the building with the interior staircase was taking me, made me change my mind. Instead, I went with something entirely larger (because apparently that's how my brain works - "Hmmm, a tiny building open to the outside? That's too complicated! Let's instead build a complex, 4-storey factory. Yeah! Much simpler." - Stupid Brain). So I sketched out my idea quick on the first handy thing nearby - my coffee sleeve:


And because I happened to have a second coffee sleeve in my pocket - don't ask - I also sketched out, very roughly, the dimensions of each panel:


And then I started cutting the foamcore using my trusty T-square. It's always funny how my sketches are utility, but do not match the reality of size: Here is the actual piece for the sketch directly to the left of it:


Lol, whatever. Then I started making basic assumptions and decisions about where windows and doors would go. I also decided that this building would not have a detailed interior, but that I would build a texture on the exterior to signify where the doors and windows would go. Also, also, because there would be a staircase around back I decided this building would a 3rd floor entrance accessed by an as yet unmade walkway and would have a lot of exterior balconies. Because whats the point of having a massive building unless you can interact with it beyond it just being a giant LoS blocker?


This is an easy way to make sure your details line up around corners. Once you've made decisions about the where of your details for "wall 1", just use the T-square to extend those measurements across to the other walls. I use a miniature (unfortunately not shown because I did not take any pics of it) to determine the appropriate heights of windows. I want the bottom sill to be at about waist height for your typical infantry model and the top of the window to be about a 1/4" (6mm) from the top of that same model's head. Doors should be a little wider than infantry. My rule of thumb is 1" (2-3cm) wide and about 2.5" (6-7cm) tall. Each floor is then also a default 3" (~8cm) tall. Once all put together, open windows then provide adequate cover and become a realistic looking fire point as most 25-28mm models will line up perfectly.


Then I set about gluing the walls together:


And that's it for now. I'll have another update of some sort soon. Thanks for looking! C&C always welcome! Have a terrific day!

That's really cool to be able to see who whole processes behind doing scenery, I find I lack skills in that department so seeing a step by step really does help