Terrain is everything - 2nd man-made hill

Having said I can't recall if this was the Athena Plateau or the Mercury Plateau, There to accompany the Vulcan Plateau I think I resolved in my head that this is in fact the Mercury Plateau. It's a uniform square [not taking into account the staircase] which better reflected the planet Mercury, whereas the Athena Plateau is/will be a long thin hill better reflecting the bow Athena used in her hunting. Look, have you seen the misplaced symbolism in star constellations? These are as good a reasons as any! 

Anyway below is the black undercoated hill with the modular socket capped off with a door and the steps faced with another new buidling material

Cable ties! Sure they're 4.8mm which means they don't quite cover the 5mm foam card but the little step adds detail and 'more detail is more detail', not to mention the many little grooves from the tie grip. I'm sure there's plenty more ways they can be used, even en masse as a whole wall texture and as I got a bag of 50 for £1 they're cheap as chips.

Here's the newly undercoated Plasma generator in plugged into the socket. More on that soon.

 And a marine in place for scale.

Terrain is everything - Dawn of War Plasma Generator part 4.

I think things are going to get a little messy/confused over the next few posts, so please bare with me. With the Plasma Generator, modular plug and second man-made hill progressing there will be a bit of overlap, separation and repetition in the pics. It's all good though.

Below we've finally got a bit of undercoat on the Plasma Generator. I tried to keep it thinner than usual to see if the folder card texture would show through, we'll see in time when the first bit of real colour goes on.

As you can see the plasma tubes seem a little pale, this may be the array of new electricity sucking Halogen bulbs we have in the kitchen. Sure the pics are not as murky as on my phone but we seem to have lost the brightness of the real Ferron Proxima which I think explains the slightly insipid gel colour.

And here we have the generator mounted in the man-made hill modular socket. For those who plan to make this baby with LEDs this could be your solution. Plenty of room to hide gubbins in this little base.

Now I can't recall if this was the Athena Plateau or the Mercury Plateau, There was very specific fluff why I chose to name the two other man-made hills that will accompany the Vulcan Plateau this way. Typically I didn't write down the blog post explaining these reasons at the time and I've since forgot the reasoning but there'll be an update on the man-made hill soon.

Last up the two tier foamcard has been covered. The template will be vague here. As you can see the diagonal cuts for the upright pieces had to be widened at the ends to accommodate the reinforcement on the uprights. This was quite difficult to measure for the trapezium, and it turned out they were all different sizes. So I'll put in a max size trapezoid and you'll just have to trim it down. I'd also used the jewels from some small jewel brads in the corners, they were just too big though and I cut them off, with some PVA residue left in place but that could me some metal corrosion. I replaced them with smaller rivets from card 'chads' made with my late Grandfather's ancient hole punch, it's still so handy.

More filler, less killer in my next update me-thinks

Terrain is everything - Heads-up

The other day I brought the joys of a site called Artificial Owl to your collective consciousnesses and I hope you got some fantastic inspiration from those pictures. Maybe you also managed to guess one of my new projects, that 'To Do List' keeps getting bigger instead of smaller! I keep asking myself why I'm adding another piece of terrain to that list when I have plenty already and we're not even playing with it. Not to mention unfinished terrain quite a few people would like to see done, Cathedral Tower anyone? But I think I answered the big question in the last post:

"I could see something unique and inspired, a cool looking terrain piece, a viable gaming structure, a creative challenge and something that's core material would be relatively cheap"

and if you recall the thing I enjoy most about 'the hobby' is the terrain building so I guess it's moot point given the focus of my passion. Anyway, were my subtle clues to my project too subtle or where they hidden sneakily in plain sight?

I give you President Ferdinand Marcos:

Can you see why I got so excited? It's a ruined building, but not a building. Now, once you add in a polystyrene head [£6.98 including postage from ebay] you have the start of a really cool terrain piece. So, gues what my brother got me for Christmas [after I told him to].

Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't an easy task and there's no STC I can prepare for it [or can I?]. The head is solid Polystyrene so I'm unsure about how to go about carving it inside. I've thought about using it to attempt some paper-mache effect but then how do I take the 'cladding off' and fill in the internal structure? There's a lot to resolve but this baby is 14" tall and once embedded into a hillside will make a really cool piece of terrain with at least three storeys to it.The other big question is do I go Ferron Rockcrete [which I don't want to do], sandstone, so it looks cool jutting out of a Ferron hillside, or alternatively go Statue of Liberty on it and Copper plate the thing in wonderfully weathered panels, hmm...

Although you could always go the complete line of sight blocker and go all Prometheus on it? It seems big heads are 'on trend'.

It's another long-term project so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure I'll have a moment of intense activity only for it to cool off and be left half-finished. Meanhwhile, the wife has noticed I have more terrain than we can ever field, not that we've played a game in a good while and she's beginning to question why? She mentioned selling stuff, to which I pointed out the issues with that and my reluctance to part with anything I've actually 'created'

Terrain is everything - modular plug

Here's a quick update on something of nothing. Originally my modular plug and socket was developed for the Vent Tower, allowing me to swap the roof section for an extra storey with the roof slotting into another socket. The socket concept was further expanded in the man-made hill [or this one] and now with my my DoW Plasma Generator I'm looking to fill that socket so you can make modular terrain pieces that you can fit together to allow for a dynamic and versatile collection of terrain pieces.

However, you may be a budding terrain hobbyist who does not wish to create a man-made hill or a Vent Tower to take advantage of a modular socket so I put together a simple base. Of course you need not make the DoW Plasma Generator with a plug on the base but I think it's nice to have the options.

So I give you a standard CD, with a sheet of foam card cut to fit and bevelled at a 45° angle. A standard Imperial socket is 47mm square, which as we know is down to the fact the Emperor's favorite number was 47. This square is removed and sheets of mounting card are used to edge the hole. In this instance I have a camera shutter/stargate-esque hatchway to the bowels of Ferron Proxima but you could use the alternative zig-zag hatch on the man-made hill. You must ensure the card isn't too thick or the plug will not align perfectly and the Plasma Generator will stand proud of the socket. As you can see I made this mistake, just a bit on mine. Enjoy the sneak peak of the Plasma Generator in it's undercoat finery, more info to follow on it's progress.

Terrain is everything - Dawn of War Plasma Generator part 3.

Here's an update just to add the finishing touches to the generator vents. As you can see mounting card was also used on the lower parts, with the two holes punched in and on the bit with the vents on. It was this second bit that I think the use of mounting card was a bit much as visually it takes away the horizontal line of the edge of the generator and instead continues the slope, which isn't the correct profile, but never mind. Cereal box card may have been a better choice here...

OK, the big question is the vents themselves. Well, my wife does a bit of card making and she has a whole slew of 'jewel brads' as shown below:

A simple operation to remove the jewel and a snip of the long brad, which together with the two short clasps holding the jewel in place can be folded back to leave you with this:

Some aluminium car body repair mesh was snipped with nail clippers to the right size, a delicate job but worth it as granny grating would be too big a mesh. This was just PVA glued in place. Of course I cocked up and snipped the four corner pieces of three of my eight Vents, which you might just be able to make out below. It's an alternative 'clean' look if you wish but I think the PVA will hold the cornered pieces in place better and more detail is more detail, best not to remove it.

Next up some rivets, in the corners of the side trapeziums and a couple of Drop Ship Aquilas, if only I had four...

Terrain is everything - Dawn of War Plasma Generator part 2.

Thanks to MasterSlowPoke you all know my next terrain effort - the Dawn of War Plasma Generator. Of course this picture may elicit a call of "foul" - another one of those step-by-step guides that just goes from A - D, bypassing B and C but it's pretty straightforward, just fiddly in places. The white stuff is foamcard [obviously] and the black stuff is a laminate of three pieces of thin card.

The black is a textured folder card for use on report covers, I thought the texture might show up and be cool. There's a thin piece of grey cereal box type card sandwiched between the black, end result 1.5mm card. I was aiming for 1mm, if I'd have only used one piece of black that probably would have done it. Alternatively mounting card will do but I found this dead easy to cut, which was my concern over mounting card.

 

Masking tape was used to cap the foamcard in places, 8mm strips of my laminate in the reinforced areas. Mounting card was also used on the lower parts, with the two holes punched in. Later on I thought this a bit much as visually it takes away the horizontal line and instead continues the slope, which isn't the correct profile, but never mind.

As you can see I've used a CD base to create a standalone modular socket. This can can obviously be used on it's own or I can mount the Plasma Generator in any of the other modular sockets I've made so far, man-made hills for instance, though I doubt it'd work on top of the Vent Tower! Here's a marine so you can see the scale. I think it's actually taller than the DOW model but I think it benefits from the increase in scale.

Of course you are dieing to know about the plasma tubes... Simple, it's a Biro, chopped at the top, filled with any form of coloured gel*, handwash in this case and capped with hot melt glue. Now there is a knack to filling these, which I found out the hard way. I used a syringe to load them up but as soon as you start to fill them air gets trapped and the gel will come out backwards, not fill the tube, if you still have the coloured end cap at the bottom [which I did]. Now you can't really take the end cap out but if you put a tiny hole in it then as the gel fills it up the air can escape through the hole. If you use a needle file to puncture it from the inside it's relatively simple to press the plastic back in place until you can cover it with hot melt glue and seal it. Alternatively if you have the glue on hand you can seal it immediately.

As you can see bubble can be trapped in place but they do settle after a while. One note is that the colour is a lot paler than you will see in your gels normal container, this is obviously because you are looking through only a thin tube, not an inch or two of gel. I'm thinking bath bubble mixture may be slightly more vibrant in colour and definitely offer up more variety, reds and even pearlescent mixtures. I wanted the standard blue but I'd wanted to paint the structure Hawk Turquoise which I don't think will allow the plasma tubes to stand out so I've had to rethink that option.

  

I'm loathe to do another Ferron red structure, I wanted this to be metal so I'm thinking of doing the main structure yellow, and to weather it in as close an approximation of the rail crane at Appley Bridge Station. I'm not entirely convinced it'll work, as my efforts in yellow so far have been less than I'd hoped. Still, this could be my opportunity to get it right. The white bits will either be solid black or black/white chevrons. Overall though it's going to be a tough paintjob as I have to paint it unassembled as I don't want the plasma tubes to get spray or paint marks on them. Oh, the following shot should show up the folder card texture clearly.

So next to finish up is the venting on the sides, paint it with my usual black mixture and then Red Oxide primer as a base to put the Iyanden Dark Sun stippling on.

* I've just realised you don't have to use gel at all to colour the plasma tubes, you could use any coloured liquid or even paint. Water mixed with food colouring or even blackcurrant or orange juice depending on your desire. They'd probably be easier to fill as well, not needing the hole to allow air to escape.

Look Around You! - Artificial Owl

The other day I was on Terra Genesis and someone mentioned a site called Artificial Owl. Now if you are into abandoned and weathered buildings, interesting photographs and Google Maps [squeal] then this is very gratifying. It has loads of pics of abandoned  and derelict structures, vehicles, monuments with a little history behind them and then it links them to a Google Map [squeal]so you can see exactly where they are on Terra.

Now, I've put the link in above to the visual gallery and I was browsing the pics and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to guess [as there are so many cool choices] but one particular structure really grabbed my attention. I could see something unique and inspired, a cool looking terrain piece, a viable gaming structure, a creative challenge and something that's core material would be relatively cheap [once I checked on ebay and was pleasantly surprised].

Anyway I'll give you a head's up on what's going down soon. In the meantime have a browse, be inspired to build some bits and if you want to guess what challenge I'm going to face next then leave a comment.