Terrain Inspiration - Gas Works Park

I like to keep my eyes open for cool idea for creating terrain from.  Today I took my son to Gas Works Park today to look at boats (his favorite thing in the world), and took a couple pictures of the old refinery equipment still at the park.  The park was once a natural gas refinery in the early 1900's and has been converted to a park since it shut down.  A lot of inspiration here, with lots of platforms and pipes coming out. Looks pretty easy to build with pipe and other cheap materials.

Tau Battle Suits

Was out of town this weekend but was able to finish up two Crisis Suits I started a while ago. They were actually very simple to paint up and look pretty good. I also got a Pegasus Hobbies Technobridge and sprayed it last night. Not sure if I will do more to it, as it looks pretty good as is. Nice inexpensive piece of terrain which will work great for the large river running through the middle of my table.

Ice World Terrain - Hoth Inspired

A few updates. So I watched Return of the Jedi again to see what else I could steal for cool ice terrain and started on a few more pieces. Laid everything out to see how the terrain density would be. I have about 25% coverage including the pipelines which can't be removed (not counting the giant iced over river). I need one more solid piece of terrain to feel comfortable with the table, and will build a few beyond that for varieties sake. One thing I definitely will do, is make a larger island with a nice piece of LoS blocking terrain. I'm thinking a pumping station, to go in the middle of the board. Maybe a couple of small islands to go in the river to not always have the middle of the board open. Sorry about the image quality but this was just a test setup in the kitchen. Also these are all work in progress. Pretty much just primered and textured at this point.
 

Hidden Base Blast Doors

Defense Laser Tower

Shield Generator

Board Laid Out to check terrain Density

Terrain in one corner

Frozen River

Cracked Ice

Close up

Models on ice

I finally found an affordable solution for making the frozen river for my ice board.  Ceiling panels for florescent lights to simulate the ice. This is a translucent cracked ice type and runs about 10 bucks for a 2x4 foot section.  Two of them will be enough to do the large river on my table.  Certainly better than the estimated $100 bucks worth of resin I thought I was going to need.  I had thought about trying it, but saw it in action here and new it would be perfect.

The one problem I ran into is that the panels are actually 23.5 inches vs 47.5 inches.  So for one of the panels I needed to use multiple pieces.  Rather than have a straight seam, I cracked and broke it into pieces and then used Woodland Scenics Realistic Water to make it look like the water was flowing up through the crack.  The water seeped under the plastic to give a really nice looking effect.  I'm really happy, I just need to do some snow banks along the edges to cover up the rough cutting.

Ice Crystal Terrain

Farseer with Howling Banshees

Last year I attempted to do some ice-crystal terrain and failed miserably.  This year it worked out a lot better.  I also have an idea for doing the ice on the table I'm working on as well. Finished these miniatures up while visiting my parents last week.  I'm actually taking a little Eldar break and going to re-paint/finish my second Land Raider for the Lamenters.

Ice Table WIP #3

 

I managed to get all of the white portions painted yesterday and it is really coming together.  I will give the snow areas a coating of Future floor to give a nice glistening effect and then I just need to figure out how to do my ice.  I'm thinking clear resin with a little blue and a little white ink or paint mixed in.  I'll try to pick some up this evening for testing purposes over the weekend.

Terrain Failure - Ice Crystals

Cutting the ice pillars

Painting the ice pillars

Gloss varnishing the ice pillars fail!

Last night the wife and I had a crafting/Star Trek night.  While she worked on some crocheting I pulled a bunch of scrap foam from building the table to work on some ice crystals to use as terrain.  Managed to make a whole bunch of various sizes and was pretty pleased with the result.  I used some cheap acrylic craft paint (only slightly darker than the actual blue of the foam) and dry brushed the edges white.  This morning before work, I took them outside and gave them a spray of gloss varnish to give them a nice shinny look, but to my dismay they started dissolving away despite the paint!  Generally I use a thicker latex paint on foam which will protect it enough that spray paints and varnishes will work, but the acrylic paint is not thick/strong enough.  Probably half are ruined beyond repair, the other half should be alright, but I'll need to make more.  Next time I'm going to use Future Floor polish through the airbrush instead to avoid further failure.

Ice Table WIP #3

 

Did a little more work the last few days.  Put the third board section together (also have enough left over to do a fourth board later), and sanded the flat snowy portions of the board.  Next step will to do the white over-brushing to give a better snow effect.  I will probably end up gloss coating the board as well to have it look a little more snow-like.  I still need to figure out how to do the iced-over river.  Probably use resin with a little white and blue paint mixed in to cloud it up a little and give that a try.  Also time to start making plans for the various terrain bits that I will be doing.  Probably will start on the ice-crystal forests tonight and plan some pumping station style buildings.  Not sure what else I want to do.

I also found a similar board here that someone has built, and will be using some of his ideas, especially on the ice crystal forest.  Hopefully mine looks as good when it's finished.

Ice Table WIP #2

 

 

I managed to do more work on the ice table.  I attached the foam to the plywood and put a base coat of light blue paint on the whole thing.  Also picked up the rest of the materials for the third board section, as I didn't have enough of the 1.5" foam to do the board.  Also you can see the test fitting of some of the details that are going to be added.  For the third section I'm considering narrowing the river down and maybe building some sort of bridge over it.  Though I want to be able to stack these boards on each other, so most detail needs to be removable.  Also I need to figure out what to do for the pumping station in the middle of the river. 

Ice World Board for Mymeara Eldar WIP

I picked up the supplies tonight to start my new board.  I've been having an itch recently to build some terrain for a while now and decided to do something different and build an ice-world board.  It will go well with the Mymeara Eldar, but could be used for any army really.  The first picture shows my concept drawings.  The board will consist of 3 modular pieces (maybe expanded out with a fourth for variety later on) that can be put together in different ways.  The main feature is a large river that runs through the middle of the board that will be iced over.  I've marked where on the board the river banks need to line up so that they can be placed in any arrangement.  The other permanent feature will be some pipes that run out of the river from a pumping station.  The rest will be modular.  A few ideas that I would like to build: crystal forests, communications/sensor tower, islands for the river and outposts.  Also thinking a few Eldar specific bits like a webway portal.

After I finish cutting the foam up, I will paint with a light blue latex paint to seal the foam up, and then apply a fine sand to the foam portions to act as snow.  The real trick will be to do  the iced over river.  I figure I can paint it a dark blue and then use either a clear resin or water effects and than scratch the surface with sand paper to get an ice look, but I'm not sure yet.  Will have to experiment a little to figure something out.  If anyone knows a good tutorial on doing ice, especially in large scale post a comment.

Bastion WIP

For a change the last two evenings I've been building some terrain, specifically fortifications. Rather than spend the forty bucks for a Bastion I pulled out the foam board and went to town.  I also used some craft sticks to do some detailing, and some 'granny-grating' for doing some nice metal grating.  I will be putting firing points on the four empty walls and making a cool looking gun for the top.  When I paint it up the four arched panels will get some Lamenter's murals and iconography.

One thing I will do different for the next one would be the shape.  Octagons are a real pain and instead I will do a square with another offset square to give a nice shape to it with nice 90° angles.