Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Graveyard Scatter Hardly Any Progress

The title says it all really… hardly anything done, in part due to the fact that a PVA and paint mix takes a fair old while to dry.

I will choose some gravestones or something for them. Part of me thinks one of the carts should be put on one of them…probably the top one…

After some feedback I decided on one more piece, this time with an open grave.

The theory is I am going to use a printed coffin in the bottom or possibly an open coffin propped against one end.

Whilst mixing the PVA with the paint I came across this….

It was like a giant snot in the bottle, needless to say the bottle went into the bin. The snot would not go back into the bottle so much stickiness occurred!

My laptop is back home now and I have sorted out my gcodes for various things to print. Unfortunately the shed is too cold to print in…Bloody typical!

I am going to have to build some form of enclosure for it so that it stays snuggly warm 🙄. Technically I could move it into the house but I don’t have anywhere to put it. The shed is 2/3 the size of the house which is why it is out there. We call it the shed but it is the old cattle byre.

The temperature is dropping to silly levels again tonight, so probably no printing this evening. Which is really annoying as I have a backlog of stuff I want doing.

To be honest I am enjoying making terrain again, it is so much easier than painting miniatures. If you drop a clanger you can always shove a bush onto it 🤣.

On a whole different subject my Ebay purchase arrived yesterday…

I got twenty miniatures for £15. I haven’t checked to see whether they are painted in acrylic’s or not. If they are, I reckon I can tart them up a bit. If enamel then I am not sure. I reckon they won’t come off their bases which is a bit of a pain as most of my other Flintloque miniatures are on circular bases.

I will photograph them all tomorrow when I get them out of the mega protective wrapping.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Graveyard Scatter… Further Work

I got some filler onto the bases and smoothed down with a bit of water.

I am making, what is best described as, slow progress. There is still plenty left in the tube in case I need to do another layer in places.

The filler in this case is Tesco super cheap stuff £2 a tube..

This contains 330g. Plenty left for other projects. This is the cheapest I can find up here. I can probably get a better deal online, providing the postage is free.

I am toying with the idea of doing an open grave, as I still have another pile of squirty foam ready to go. One of these was going to be a grave, but some knacker glued it to the base before cutting out the shape of the hole.

Another project that could do with sorting out is the 6mm road wars terrain. Once these are done I might make a jump to do the 6mm stuff, not to mention a pile of MDF buildings in 15mm.

Some good news is… the laptop is fixed, however my good lady forgot to bring it home with her. Much to our dismay, we will give her one more day or it will be dry bread for tea 🤣🤣

The following mausoleum is one of the things I have purchased from Fat Dragon Games and was going to be part of my January terrain build challenge, I might still squeeze it in as I have 9 days left.

I am really looking forward to getting this printed.

Click on the link to see it Mausoleum. Not a bad model for £2.49 in the sale. Full price would have been just over £3.00 so I am not complaining in any way, shape or form.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

3D Printer Update

Well the laptop is fixed and we are waiting for it to come back from Unst, the most northerly of Shetland’s islands. The guy only comes down once in a while so it may be another week before we get it back.

As it stands the place I have it in is too cold to print. Even the printer was telling me.. We ran out of gas for the fire and due to a failure of one of the electric radiators in the house meant that we had to move the ambient temperature heater out of there. To be fair the temperature outside had dropped to -8 in the nights. The building is still a work in progress so there isn’t any insulation in the roof or the walls for that matter, but as they are a metre thick, insulation is a bit of a moot point.

As my printer was out of commission a work colleague very kindly printed me out a goblin on his Resin printer.

He is pretty awesome. I can’t wait to see what my one can do.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Graveyard Scatter… Making a Start

Well after a nice run up to Yell yesterday to be a quasi supply teacher again I decided to make a start on some scatter bits for the graveyard.

I used the offcuts from the large hill to make these ones. I kept them for this purpose.

These were made in exactly the same way as the big hill. Stuck down onto EPVC and then, in this case, held on with painters tape. Once the glue is dry I will get some filler on.

It was a nice run up to Yell yesterday…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

Forgotten Forces Friday

Well tonight the temperature is minus something silly again, it was -8 degrees this morning so instead of heading out to the shed in the snow I had a mooch about in the house.

Mammoths

These were painted about 3 years ago and were for my Mammoth hunting game I ran at one of our conventions.

I used Tusk as the basis for the game but added in a few home brew rules.

I went whole hog and bought a plethora of beasties to hunt and to be hunted by.

The following picture is a work in progress from back then

The whole lot is by Magister Millitum apart from the mammoths from Pendraken, with the calves being the original 6mm Mammoth from Irregular, not to forget the big chappy in the trees…

He is a 54mm scale gorilla from my ancient Britain’s zoo….

The Magister miniatures are lovely. I have both the cavemen (still not finished) and the Eskimo bows and spears.

A great little game, the kids and I will have to have another game this weekend.

The rearing Mammoth was converted from the standard on, he was based on the Mammoth from the film 40000 years BC or whatever it is called.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Graveyard…Just About Finished

I may decide to add some variation to the main grass, I will have to see.

But to be honest, I am happy that I have gone from this…

To this…

This build is a bit like the dark side of the moon in places, no-one has seen the other side, so here you go, the dark side of the hill…

To be frank, it isn’t that exciting… but it is a nicely defendable spot, unless the enemy can fly.

So what do I think about it? Well it is pretty much looking like I had pictured it in my head, except in my head the top was bigger with a few more graves on it. I had to compromise as I was tied by the EPVC for the base.

The rabbit hole and skull was a happy accident. There were a few large holes in the foam. Some of them I filled, but this I left because of it’s location. Rabbits are a bugger for digging up Archaeology so the idea was born. I painted the inside black and then threw some PVA down and covered it in basing grit. I fully intended to paint it, but once it was dry I found I liked the colour so left it as is.

So where next? 🤔

I reckon a bit of tidying up on some of the Earth colour wouldn’t go amiss and as said earlier a bit of contrast in the main areas of grass would break things up a bit too. I also need to get this sprayed with watered down PVA.

I feel the urge to do some more scatter pieces involving gravestones. As mentioned in an earlier post I intend to put them on irregular shaped bases as opposed to CD types. I would like to do some Yew trees as they are very graveyardy trees… probably not for the January challenge, but sometime in the future.

I ordered a mausoleum for the 3D printer but until I get the laptop fixed (it is off being sorted) I can’t convert it into the necessary gcode required. Hopefully it will get sorted ASAP as I want to play with my printer again 😞

I quite fancy painting up my 15mm Lizardmen I won at the HOTT competition. But terrain first methinks then onto painting minis next.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 1 Comment

Graveyard With Grass

Well I started on the grass tonight… I did have a bit of a panic as I was running out of my small indoor pot. Luckily I still had a fair bit out in the shed. Why the panic? This was the flock I made myself and I haven’t a clue what colour I used to get the green.

I am doing it in a few stages. The top first and then around the hill when the top dries. This green is a base level. There will be lots of textures and colours over the top of this.

I did totally balls up by covering over the spoil from the rabbit hole, but in hindsight, putting the spoil over the grass would be more realistic.

The damp bit has a lot of dark and bright green as well as some tussocks in there, not that you can really see in this photo. The bushes are not stuck down, I was trying to get an idea of what would look good. There is also a climbing plant in the damp alcove.

This is made from rubberised horse hair (or coir matting in this case) PVA was glued in random spots and then the thing was dipped in foam flock. This is very fragile at the moment and needs a dam good coating in watered down PVA to strengthen it up. It’s not a very big bush, as those are 2 mm squares. It is roughly 4cm by 2cm.

As a total aside, I caused a bit of consternation and hilarity at the yard after bringing the horse in. I informed a lady that I was having difficulties getting it up!

Luckily she realised I meant that I couldn’t get the wet horse rug over the top of the stall wall. Well if I find a packet of viagra in my tack box then I reckon she didn’t know what I was talking about.

Tomorrow I will finish of the grass layer on the base, then make a start on the next layers.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Graveyard… Looking a bit Better

I got a bit more done on the graveyard tonight…

It is starting to get there, I cleaned the brush off on the brown hence the weird grey pattern. The brown will be covered in flock so I am not too concerned about it. The deep recess in the front will be wet. The idea is to get reeds and tussocks in there.

The next problem is what colour flock to use, I will have to have a mooch about to see what I have in the shed. I will need some static grass tufts as my intention is that it will be overgrown and uncared for.

I think I still have plenty of stuff to make bushes and scrub.

There will also be other bits of graveyard to be used as scatter terrain. I think I will go for irregular shapes as opposed to old CD’s.

I will get the flock on tomorrow.

I forgot to mention the first of the Fire festivals took place on Friday. There are some very good drone and video footage, mine was time lapsed with the tablet.

We didn’t go down to watch the boat burn on the water, but this is a photo from a couple of years ago.

It’s not the biggest, but to be honest it is my favourite. It’s handy we can sit at my mates house and watch the procession go past.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Graveyard looking Naff

Well it is now at the yucky Naff stage, I had to it the brown base coat to help cover the white, I will lighten it up a bit but most of it will be covered with flock.

This layer has PVA added to help it bond with the bottom layer.

Hopefully some tidying up will help it look better. I will dry brush the fallen rocks and lower part of the cliff face when this lot has dried. When I paint it tomorrow I will not use the half inch brush I used today 😱