Friday 3 October 2014

Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle board gets Red Planet Ferron Proxima

We have Red Planet! the Birth of Ferron Proxima! One and a bit cans of Red Oxide Primer gets me around 80% coverage so hopefully I'll have some left over in my new can that just arrived from eurocarparts [still the cheapest I can find for spray primers, and I got a litre of engine oil too ;) ]


As you can see the spray on stone texture paint is still evident. If you compare looking at the small picture with the zoomed version when you click on it you should be able to make out what is the texture that was molded into the board by GW and what is the finer texture I sprayed on. At this stage I'm glad I did it but we've still got to see how it reacts to the drybrushing.


The skull pits currently look OK. When I've finished all the painting I'll photoshop the three options I thought of for my pits. 
  1. Green - the new digestion pits I do
  2. Yellow - the old digestion pits
  3. Black - a lot of Ferron Proxima watercourses are contaminated by a black viscous sludge. St this point in time bio-analysis has found no reason for this contamination, no indication of what it is or if it has any lasting effect after consumption. The rivers/ponds are just thick and black...

Another close up of the texture.


Ditto.


Ditto again!



And the lighting changed but if I can capture some of this range of colours on the final board I'll be a happy man. You should also be able to make out areas around the skull pit where I was less generous with the texture spray which I think shows just how smooth the board can be. This will definitely add more grip to the table, without adding an abrasive material that will damage models, should they fall over.


Can't wait to get the next coat on and start the shade washes to pick out all this texture.


Then I get to do all the highlighting but will have to read up on it a bit because I know there's ways you can paint these that luuk unnatural, thanks to highlights accentuating the edges of the boards and not edges of the terrain features.


Gotta love how the lighting changed on this one, it's got the oranges and dark reds. Can't wait to see this completed.


Todd Sherman at sincain40k did this awesome orange/red planet board I love the colours he managed to get, a bit lighter than I'm after but fantastic. I'd originally intended to do the highlights on the cliff edges but seeing how Todd did darker edges as thrown me a little bit, we'll see how it goes.


17 comments:

  1. I want to make a board like this! but more green its for warhammer fantasy haha. Love this guide.

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    1. funnily enough the inspiration and reason I've always wanted a red gaming board was the Chaos Terrain of Skull Castle for Warhammer Fantasy from the 1991 Golden Demon awards. So you can still have a red board for fantasy. You can see it here: http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/golden-demon-awards-1991-and-origins-of.html

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  2. Progress looks good Dave. It's got to be a very difference experience to swap scales like that. Vastly different techniques.

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    1. Surprisingly it all scales up quite easily. I'm only using a 1.5" brush for the highlights so it's taking a bit of time but I think that means I'm not doing broad swathes which would be out of scale. The fact I've kept the brush large enough to cover some decent area but not too big I can't retain some detail that's appropriate for the scale is key.

      The only other thing to worry about was how the drybrushing worked. Holding the brush perpendicular to the board wasn't always the most effective technique. So I would have the brush just short of parallel to get the best effect and it allowed more control.

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  3. Awesome stuff Dave, looking forward to your final board colour and also what colours you chose for the skull pits.

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    1. Having progressed a bit further than this update and having done all the skulls bone white I may just stick with that. Introducing a large area of bold colour would I think distract from the rest of the board. Ultimately whatever I decide will happen after all the skulls re finished so I'm at least going in the right direction. I can add any further details at any stage so it's no rush.

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  4. Replies
    1. Thanks, and as I often say when I showcase WiPs, it's only going to get better.

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  5. Hi bud, yes I think your right Todd's board looks great and the darker cliff edges will look better at this scale :)

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    1. Ha, ha, too late I've gone with highlighted edges and darker inner - stick to what you know works for me. ;)

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  6. This is starting to look good. Once the highlighting and swampy bits are done it will look great

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    1. Cheers, it is coming along and even though it's a 'big' project for me there isn't a whole lot to it really. AND it's on my To Do List so I'm getting chuffed for a number of reason, not least I can now host my mates gaming instead of always going to them, although my last game ended at 1:10am so I can't imagine my better half letting anyone game at my house til the wee hours!

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  7. There's the red I was expecting 8) .. very cool. I'm looking forward to seeing it all finished up .. I did highlight the edges some I just went extra dark in the cracks to make it pop out a bit more .. I wanted it to contrast the yellow wasteland 8)

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    1. I absolutely love it, and particularly because it's the opposite to what i would do, but it works so well. Yours at least is seamless, in that each board blends naturally into the next. My drybrushing has become a little less effective than I'd hoped and so you cna see the tiles as individual pieces but other than that I'm really chuffed. I'm at least going to steal your flock idea and add some of my yellow Ferron Bindweed in some of the crack and crevices.

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    2. For the blending of the tiles I went old school .. I poured my paint onto a cardboard box and used a rag to swirl the paint onto the tiles. That was the first coat an blended it completely like that first. Then went back and used the airbrush to add in other details but made sure I had the tiles all lined up. The rubbing will give you a good solid even base coating and since the boards have some texture it will actually give you variation as well 8) .. It's coming along very nicely so far!! 8) .. It's always cool seeing how one person does it compared to another! ..

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  8. I take it that all the building work is finished Dave ? As you seem to be back getting plenty of hobby stuff done.

    The board is coming a long well mate & I'm sure it'll look fab when done.

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    1. I wish the building work was done. A number of tradespeople have begun to let us down or be booked solid. The plumber in particular has a list of disasters to the point we've refused to have him back and asked the builder to supply an alternative.

      As it stands we've got most of the construction work complete. We've a bathroom to finishing tiling and then decorating all the rooms, carpets and new furniture and we'll be there. The recent jobs though required me to take time off work to oversee what was going on and decorate, this gave me an hour here and there to do stuff out in the garden before getting down to the task at hand. It's only now that I'm starting to do bits in the evening and even them my hobby area is still a mess and I've flat-pack furniture everywhere waiting to be built.

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