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Great thread and I am very jealous of the paint job on your Eschers!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Great thread and I am very jealous of the paint job on your Eschers!

Thanks!
The Escher are pretty much my favorite miniatures. They might keep that position for a while too.

However, I'm about to send a batch of 7 Necromunda characters to be painted by a buddy of mine who is an equally good (very different style though) painter in exchange for the scatter terrain so we'll see what happens.

Found this Indiana Jones "Jungle Cutter" (missing a fair number of parts) at the resale shop.


Could be a cool crawler or Ork Tank or somesuch, but I'm going to convert it into an industrial processing/grinding center. Like a couple of my recent projects I'm going to try and use almost nothing except for this model itself in the conversion.

The first step was to remove the treads and the bottom/underside piece.


Then I unscrewed and removed every detail piece that I could.


Then I got out my trusty Dremel 543 bit and cut away the lower section of the front so it would sit flat on the ground. I also cut away a few tabs from inside the cockpit area.



I also took the opportunity to start chopping up the track sections, making sure to preserve some long sections of tread for future use. They're mostly one piece with tiny wheels on the bottom, but when cut apart carefully, there's all kinds of great detail you can save.

The piece on the far right is a section of the underside that I'll be using in the next step.
Lastly, I saved the shavings and chunks that were leftover.

I especially saved the tiny melted/grinded bits that the 543 bit leaves on the edges. You'll find out why I saved these in the next installment...

And now for the next installment of the Jungle cutter becoming Industrial Scenry!

First off, here's two shots showing the input and output ends of the conveyor belt. It's just two pieces of tread, glued together and then held in places with pieces of plastic that I cut from the bottom of the tank hull. Both ends extend just far enough into the structure to give the illusion of a full length conveyor belt and as you can see there's no need to be neat and tidy with the parts no one will see as long as it's nice and sturdy.



I wanted this shreder/gridner to be useful in both my urban industrial terrain and my dessert mining colony terrain. To that end I created two different sets of scrap that can be placed on or next to the the machinery. For the Industrial version, a pile of metal junk made mostly from offcuts from the tread sections and for the output a bunch of shredded "metal" bits made of those plastic shavings I mentioned saving earlier


and for the mining colony a small stack of concrete/mortar bits that have fallen off my house (It's 110 years old...) and some ground up rock made from gravel I sifted out of the concrete mix that I use for most ballast and soil.


The outputs are glued to pieces of Mc-donalds cup (a cheap source of flexible styrene sheet) and are stepped so they can lay in the end of the conveyor belt and appear to be spilling over.


This picture gives you some idea of how the stepeped outputs will look on the machinery. As seen in the picture, originally I tried to just glue them together (without the styrene cup base) on a piece of wax paper. That didn't work very well and it used a ton of glue which probably injured my brain, but at least you see how the stepped effect works.


Then I primed everythign with black spray paint. a few of the bits were vinyl and have gotten just a bit sticky but that will be taken care of with time and additional layers of paint. The main structure and the big vents were then sprayed from about 2 feet away with quick bursts from a can of "Rustoleum 2x Cinnamon Satin Spray". Spraying form a distance creates a nice mottled surface that is flatter than satin and looks nice and worn.


The input and output ends of the machinery which also give a bit better impression of the mottled paint effect.


So, this project is chugging right along. Last night I put all the paint on the rest of the parts and the various details and alot of flecks of metalic paint to suggest wear. I'll try and get some pics of that tomorrow. Tonight or tomorrow I should be able to apply the wash and then all that will be necessary is the tan drybrush.

All assembled and with colors brushed on where necessary and two quick and heavy washes. The wash mix is roughly half and half water and Pledge Future Floor Finish with brown paint added to taste.

The difference isn't as dramatic as it would be over brighter colors, but it definitely ups the level of grime and really makes the panels and recesses "pop".













The mounds of before and after junk got the same 2-wash treatment.


I'll try and apply the varnish and drybrush soon and should have the whole thing done and posted by this weekend.


A few notes on process and avoiding a common problem:
Future is cheap and dries very fast, which really speeds up the process of applying washes. I was able to do two heavy washes in one evening. Unfortunately it also dries with a slight sheen. A final coat of Matte varnish at the end of the project makes this go away, but unfortunately a light drybrush ( I usually finish with a light tan drybrush) applied over a hard finish like Future (which is basically liquid Polyurethane I think) sometimes disolves away a bit when you apply the brush-on matte varnish.

The solution therefore is to put on the matte varnish after the future finish (I'll do that next) and then put the drybrush on top of that. The drybrush will adhere well to the matte surface and I probably won't bother applying any sealer/varnish on top of the drybrush.

And the Industrial Grinder is finished!
2 quick layers of Varnish last night, followed by a tan drybrush this morning and here's what we've got:







Here's the two different sets of input and output. Scrap metal Becomes Metal Shavings and Rock becomes gravel.










It's great to find a toy as nice as this one where even the grating inside the exhausts is included!




So that's it for now. One neat thing about this model is that -except for the gravel, rocks and soda cup plastic- every bit of this model came from the original toy. As much as I love having a huge bits and scraps collection, a model like this is proof that as long as you have the tools for hacking something apart (again I recommend the Dremel 543 cutting/shaping wheel) and a bit of ingenuity, you can make great toybashed terrain without any bits box at all.

I probably won't have any terrain to show for a bit. I've got to assemble some marines for a buddy of mine and then I'll be off on vacation, but rest assured there are great things on the horizon for the month of August. It looks like I might finally be able to set aside the time to build my Sci-Fi Train!

That is a glorious piece and such a great reuse and reimagining from the original toy. My hat is off to you

 Ruglud wrote:
That is a glorious piece and such a great reuse and reimagining from the original toy. My hat is off to you

Thanks for the kind words!

That machine is super awesome!

That is fantastic.

Would adding a corpse to the input section be too grimdark?

Holy crap, I bought that exact toy like 6 years ago, for that exact purpose. Mine is still in a random box somewhere though.

Great work over all, really inspiring. I will be digging through here along with my bits boxes for some time to come.

That grinding machine looks freaking fantastic.

EDC

Sgt. Oddball wrote:That machine is super awesome!

evildrcheese wrote:That grinding machine looks freaking fantastic

Thanks so much! Very glad you folks liked it.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:That is fantastic. Would adding a corpse to the input section be too grimdark?

It wouldn't quite fit the vibe I'm going for, but I think perhaps to really 40k/chaos it up, another set of input/output with pile of corpses on one end and a bloody, chunky mass at the other end would be appropriate. Or maybe the output could be small cases of Soylent Green?

Wehrkind wrote:Holy crap, I bought that exact toy like 6 years ago, for that exact purpose. Mine is still in a random box somewhere though. Great work over all, really inspiring. I will be digging through here along with my bits boxes for some time to come.

Get to it! I'd love to see what you come up with. If you end up making it feel free to put a link to it here so we can see.

Will do! Although more terrain is down the queue past finishing up two armies, and I guess my job and dissertation and kids. I guess. It might be a bit

 Wehrkind wrote:
Will do! Although more terrain is down the queue past finishing up two armies, and I guess my job and dissertation and kids. I guess. It might be a bit

No worries we'll still be here when you get around to it.

However, it strikes me that perhaps you're giving a bit too much priority to your dissertation and children. Perhaps a revising of priorities is in order?

Last week I was in Portland visiting some friends. One of the guys I spent some time with had been one of the founding members of m local club Chicago Skirmish Wargames. We had a bit of a throwback game, playing "WarEngine" (one of the club's early favorites) on a variety of his urban terrain, much of which I had had built for him years ago. I'm going to take 2 posts to show some of my work from a few years back, most of which never got properly documented. Many of these are pieces that he started and didn't like which were then give to me for a complete transformation.

First off, here's a real wargaming classic, a piece of paper/card packaging transformed into a bunker. When I received it, there were a couple of bits glued to it and a doorway, but I added the rest and painted it. Not going to win any awards, but it's a nice old-school piece.



Though I've mostly moved away from making terrain from cardboard and foam packaging, it's still a great method for quickly making really affordable terrain.

Secondly, here's a whole batch of classic wargaming terrain tropes on one base. A piece of PVC pipe, some bottle caps, a piece of cardboard tube and a small plastic jar.
It's like a 1990's Terragenesis special!
Seriously though, PVC pipe -and some of the other elements shown here- can be a bit of a trap. They are cheap and easy, but really have to be greebled properly in order to keep them from looking like what they originally were. I think I added just enough detail work to achieved that with this piece. A sort of vent/outflow/access-point for an underground installation.

Unfortunately The pics don't do justice to the damp, rusty slime in the bottom of the pipe.


Lastly, here's a couple of additional pics of a piece that I have shown before. This started out as a couple of Halogen bulbs and the tall tank stuck on a desert base. I rebased it, added pipes, platoforms and the I-beam superstructure. This is one of my favorite pieces and one that I often consider building a version of for myself.


It was great to see this and the other pieces getting some use on the gaming table.

Coming next time, a really impressive piece using the now-rare Pegasus Hobbies "Power Plant" set and alot of other bits.

Is that a Girders & Panels set I see being used in there? I've wondered how well those would work for wargaming. Seems they work quite well.

Fantastic article, was a pleasure to read and the photos really helped too!

Love the sense of humour as well when you tried glue on wax paper

Barzam wrote:Is that a Girders & Panels set I see being used in there? I've wondered how well those would work for wargaming. Seems they work quite well.

It is indeed. For a while they were being included in the "Power City" line of toys and I bought a bunch when they were clearanced out. It's polypropylene so you've got to use superglue or epoxy and a plastic specific paint like Krylon "fusion" but the price was right and the results are pretty good. Here's my initial review of the product.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2014/08/terrain-triptych-part-2-power-station.html
Bridge Street toys still sell it as Girder and Panel as well.

Private Benjamin wrote:Fantastic article, was a pleasure to read and the photos really helped too!

Love the sense of humour as well when you tried glue on wax paper

Thank you so much. I'm really glad you enjoyed reading it!

Here's the other piece that I built a few years ago that I got to play with on vacation. It's mostly made of the Tehnolog/Pegasus "Power Plant" kit

When I got it , it was unpainted and mostly unglued, though most of the elements (tanks, LEGO pieces for pipes, structure etc) were there. I largely rebuilt/rearranged the structure and added a power block to the middle of the structure made from a McD's Transformers toy of some sort and alot of other bits. Also arranged a few sets of pipes on the ground to provide more cover, but it was a pretty easy build. The only design goals were to look cool and be able to accommodate squads (not just individual minis) of figures.
Here's the Power Block that ended up inside the structure.

The Transformers logo is still peeking out a bit...

Here's a pic of the structure assembled and painted, but nothing else has been added or painted.


Here's the final result. My only wish now is that I'd either glued down squares of card or drawn on lines to make the appearance of concrete segments on the ground. A small quibble though on what has turned out to be a very useful piece of terrain.




The top and bottom levels provide good cover and both are big enough to fit a whole 10-man squad and there's enough cover and space for a smaller squad on the side between the tanks and the structure and a few other areas of cover as well.

Wow, very nice and impressive!

Very cool.

For people looking it looks like the walls of the power plant are in available (if you don't mind ordering from Russia) but not the pipes.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/142089665962?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Very cool. Nice seeing your old pieces, still very cool.

EDC

Wehrkind wrote:Wow, very nice and impressive!

Thanks!

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Very cool.

For people looking it looks like the walls of the power plant are in available (if you don't mind ordering from Russia) but not the pipes.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/142089665962?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Good to know! It's a bit more expensive than I'd pay, but they do look cool and there's two nice doorway sections in there that didn't come with the original set.

evildrcheese wrote:Very cool. Nice seeing your old pieces, still very cool.

EDC

Thanks Doc,
Glad they still hold up!

Haven't put up anything on the minis front in a while and I forgot to post these when I got them back from my buddy a few weeks ago.



My buddy painted these up for me in exchange for me painting up a box full of Dungeon decor. This is the latest installment in my necromunda project where each of my gaming buddies paints a gang for me and I make some scenery for them. He has a style that uses alot of bright colors and he definitely brought that to these guys. Metallic yellows and blues abound and it's a really fun look. Let's take a closer look...

Leader (has bolter on back), shotgunners and a close combat ganger. Close combat gangers are hard to find in this range, so the figure on the right is a conversion.


Flamer (converted from autogun) and Sniper/Hunting rifle (converted from lasrifle)


3 Heavies. Stock except a new barrel on the middle figure. Allows it to be differentiated and used as an autoslugger. I might use the guy on the right as a leader.


Juves. Guy on right is converted with sword and a RT Ork bolter clip added to his pistol. Given the dearth of CC guys, he may serve as a ganger also.


Autogunners. All stock.


Lasgunners. Also stock.

How about a group shot?

And there you have it, one more gang for the collection! I like the look of these guys and once again the Champ Industries plastic bases prove their worth and value. I think these guys may also have use as cultists in games of "In The Emperor's Name".

As it happens my other buddy just gave me the Slick Delaque that he painted for me so I'll photograph them and have another gang to share shortly.

And the Train rolls on with another Necromunda gang.

As before these are my figs that I converted/rebased/etc and had painted by a buddy of mine in exchange for buildng some terrain, in this case the Fisher Price Parking Garage I showed a while back. The only request I made was for the dark red trenchcoats. It's hard to see, but he even painted tiny liver spots on some of their little bald heads!

This Delaque Gang is made from East Riding Minaitures "Slicks" line.
http://shop.eastridingminiatures.co.uk/corporate-wars-55-c.asp
These figs are pretty simply sculpted, but have a nice unified look and are REALLY cheap, coming in at less than $2 each! I bought two of the gang sets and one additional figure from their "Enforcers" line. I removed the very thick integral bases and in the process lost quite a few feet/legs which I replaced with parts of Heroclix figures. Almost all of these guys got new weapons and they were mounted on Plastic bases from the Sedition Wars boxed set. Over all, I was going for a bit of a cyberpunk vibe and I think it worked out quite well.

Here's the leaders. I'm really happy with the old metal Warzone Chainsword. It's nicely undersized compared to 40k versions. The old Ork Bolt pistol on the left is also a nice in-between size that could work for a bolter or bolt pistol. The guy in the middle with the shotgun is the "Enforcer", the only non-Slick figure,


The Heavies/specials. The Flamer and tanks is one piece and comes from a Reaper weapons sprue. The Grendade launcher (IG bit) and Heavy Bolter (Leftover from a Van Saar heavy Conversion) conversions were actually quite easy since I just bent the arms downward/outwoard pose so I wouldn't have to do any green-stuffing, though one or two hands snapped off in the process and I did use some superglue for gap-filling.



Lasguns and Autoguns. I acquired a few necromunda weapons sprues in a bag of random bits and I've put them to good use in this gang.


Stub gun and Autopistols. The gun on the right is stock and the left just got a new muzzle on his gun.

Two of the 7 poses are notably shorter than the rest, which makes me wonder if maybe the sculptor had Necromunda a bit in mind. Not so short that they would have to be juves, but it certainly makes the set an even more attractive option for the budget necromunda player. Of course, alternately you could also just chop the shins out of any of these trench-coated figures to make the more like Juve-size.

The rest.

Never ran a ganger with a hand flamer before.

One thing that I realize now is that I have a dearth of melee weapons on these figs. Though all gangers are considered to have a knife on them, I may at some point go back and add a few CC weapons. Perhaps a maul or a Scabbard or somesuch. That's probably a ways off though and for now I'm super pleased with the way these have come out.

I was holding off posting the finished products of my modular scatter terrain project because I ended up entering them in a competition at a different forum. The competition is now over (don't know if I won anything yet...) so I feel I can share them more generally. I'll do three posts. Cargo Terrain, Industrial Terrain and then some cool combainations.

First the Cargo Terrain:





I do wish I'd used a brighter color like blue or orange to distinguish the blocks that are under the gears from the base/flooring.



One think I didn't mention earlier is the neat detail (often with raised printing) that small electric motors usually have on the backside.

The individual blocks have a side with a round indention. That, along with using a different color paint lets you differentiate them enough to use the base 10 blocks for supports and chocks as well as the bases.


And here's the stacks of "Girder and Panel" I-beams that aren't technically part of the project, but are super useful as scatter terrain.

Cool, but simple terrain. I really like the machinery and I beams.

Cool scheme for the gangers, my SoB are painted in a yellow and blue scheme and always enjoy other minis rocking the combo.

EDC

 evildrcheese wrote:
Cool, but simple terrain. I really like the machinery and I beams.

Cool scheme for the gangers, my SoB are painted in a yellow and blue scheme and always enjoy other minis rocking the combo.

EDC

Thanks!
As much as I like chopping apart a toy into something really detailed and unique, there's something really satisfying about simple terrain that can be replicated by just about anybody.

I like the Cawdor colors also also though I can't take any credit. I only asked my buddy to give them a shared color scheme and he did the rest. One of my favorite things about this project - which has my buddies each painting a necromunda gang for me in exchange for me making terrain for them- is seeing each of their own unique styles reflected in the figs they paint.

Here's the second half of the finished scatter terrain.











Tomorrow we wrap it all up with some sweet combos!