Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

Paint it Black

Sadly not a rather funky song by the Stones, more like me out in the wind and rain in the pony shed with a torch and a spray can of black paint.

But I did get them sprayed black. I will paint the trunks brown tomorrow evening and then get the things sprayed with glue and then flocked, depending on what I have got flock wise.

To be honest I am really enjoying making this thing, so much so that other things have been pushed to the back of the queue.

This is kind of a pity as I think it would look more balanced. If anyone could give me any invoice then I would Appreciate it. I did think about drilling through the base and pinning into the wooden dowel of the skewers and supergluing everything in situ.

I recon I can get the skewers into the top of the hill but the depth of base on the flat ground will not allow the placement I had in the test shot…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 8 Comments

Ohhhh Tannenbaum

Tonight was another one of tree building, I got a pile more circles made out of the matting…

I managed to get four more trees done with what I had. Now to be honest I only used a quarter of one of the mats so I can make a whole host more…

Four more basic trees

Now the next question is to undercoat them in what colour? I have black and green here, I can probably pick up some brown on Saturday. The other option I have considered was dipping them in some brown drawing ink.

I have spray glue and or heavy duty hairspray to put the flock down. Next problem is I need some flock to add to them, now I have sawdust stuff, but I think foam would look better. I have posted on Geek Gaming to ask what they would recommend.

I will carry on with the diorama tomorrow and will make a start on the animals.

A big shout out to everyone who has sent out positive vibes, useful comments and support for this project.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 14 Comments

I Cannot See the Wood for the Trees

I wanted to start off by saying thank you to everyone who offered support and useful advice on this diorama piece. I have taken on board what people have said and as such I have started to make my own pine trees (using stuff I bought about 5 years ago for that very thing).

So, as I said, I decided to make some pine trees, or at least start making some pine trees using some coconut matting planters that I bought for a quid each in Poundland. These vary n thickness and also in glueness some bits are like solid frisbees and other bits falling apart, but it is indeed true.. ‘You get what you pay for’.

So here we have three ‘trees’, it was definitely worth doing as it gave me a bit of a chance to be a bit artistic and also they will probably look better than the cake decorations. Now I do actually possess the Woodland Scenic conifer and deciduous tree armatures, but to be honest these were probably more fun to do…

The one on the right actually looks weird in this photo, it looks like the rest in real life.

Once the glue is dry then I will give the extraneous bits a trim and then hopefully get some paint onto them, followed by some form of flock.

I also managed to produce enough crappy bits to make some form of bushes, to me they look a bit like gorse or bramble, either way with some spray glue and a paint/flock combo then they will probably look ok.

I gave the terrain another blast of watered down PVA tonight to ensure everything is sealed. Tomorrow I make more trees…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 18 Comments

Further Work on the Vegetation

Tonight was another slow evening waiting for things to dry, I tried a bit of painting, but to be honest my mind and body weren’t up to it.

So anyway, I got as many static grass tufts out as I could find and shoved them randomly onto the board to try and make it look a bit more moorlandy, or should that be more moorlandesque?

As you can see the glue hasn’t dried yet, the other thing that is noticeable is that I have shoved some trees on. I got these years ago for about 10p each, I think i got fifteen for a quid something like that. Anyway these are cake decorating trees for the average Christmas cake, but as I found them when I was looking for tufts, I thought I would shove them on and to be honest I don’t think they look too bad.

I would appreciate some comments from others as they aren’t exactly the most accurate trees around (all the same size for a start). I do think that they give the board a bit more verticality, so therefore a bit more interest.

This is what it looked like before I shoved the tufts on….

I have soaked everything in diluted PVA to seal the bits down. Tomorrow I hope to get the mud areas painted and then hopefully get some animals done to actually go on the thing… perhaps I should have got them sprayed at the weekend when the weather was dry!

I might even go down the sand colour and dry brush route on them to save having to wait for the weekend.

One thing I must remember to do is get some pins into the rhino. I am not sure whether or not I will manage it with the wolves… wish me luck!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 9 Comments

Onto the Grasslands

Well, that was a bit of a worrying day regarding this thing. The stuff I covered the groundwork with yesterday was the fast acting basing glue and as such it didn’t dry. Thankfully flock was going over the top so it was saved. I added a lot more of the basin glue to make sure it was stuck down.

The dark bit in the foreground is where the rhino are going to be. I will paint this in to make it look more muddy as if they have been going at it for a while.

Initially I was going to have trees, but I kind of forgot, so this one will have bushes instead.

Hopefully I will get the animals sorted soon and start getting them added to the scene.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 9 Comments

Diorama Groundwork II

This evening I got some more rocks stuck on. I scored the baseboard and then used the hot glue gun to get some uneven surfaces to allow the basing stuff to hang onto. I got the Compound mixed up and splatted on. Once it was going off I tried smoothing it down with water. I met a bit of a problem in that as I have had it a good old while then the plaster went off a bit quicker than I expected. Anyway this is what it looks like after the messy bit…

The next problem I am expecting is warping of the MDF. I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Another conundrum I have come up with is how to cover the raw foam on the side and back. I may cover it in black card to begin with as it is easy to cut and will stick nicely with PVA. It won’t be very strong but this thing will spend its life living in a box so there won’t be much handling involved.

Talking of problems, I decided to scoff a couple of sweeties and shoved one onto my table while the other was in my gob. Bet you can’t guess what happened here with the plaster rock?

Tomorrow I hope to get some paint down onto the ground and then start work on the rocks… after that get some grass and things down… so here is a question for the diorama builders who have inspired me to have a go… do you put the miniatures on last or do you build them into the vegetation?

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

Deliberate Small Scale Agriculture

So after last night little foray into Greenstuff fields for the hex tiles I decided to have another go this evening but with an added farmhouse done in3D Builder. I messed it up a bit in that I didn’t push the whole thing down far enough so then there was an edge visible which looked a bit naff. So I covered it in Greenstuff fields and a dodgy hedge.

On the Bleurgh front, I think I will be back to work again tomorrow. Not exactly 100% but enough to get going again.

Hopefully I can get things painted again soon…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 9 Comments

Test Compound…

Yesterday I was messing around with 3D builder, building a wooden stockade to go with the 6mm Samurai (to be honest they will be useful for all of the armies).

The design using 3DAlienWorlds STL’s

This is the printed piece…

Now it isn’t perfect by any means and the top of gate posts failed both times, but I am really happy at how well the printer coped with it, as can be seen it will hold up to four of the printed buildings nicely. It could also make a useful compound for a shrine or small fortification.

While I was messing about putting the buildings on, I noticed my neglected 15mm Samurai on the shelf. I stuck a Couple of peasants and water buffalo in and voila a pen for 15mm farmers to keep their animals in. Yeah I know they wouldn’t be of that construction , but pretty multi purpose nonetheless.

The fences would be more like the ones in the foreground above…

A quick change of miniatures and voila… livestock pens….

What I am going to try now is use the STL’s to make connections so that there can be a T and a + to allow different configurations.

Off gaming tonight, the Starship Troopers game is on hold for a bit as my mate (who had the stroke) needs to have a steady run up to get it ready to go. So as I don’t have anything planned then we are going back to Middle Earth in a different way…

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Japanese Town

I got on with some more painting of the town tonight. Mainly adding the wood to the buildings and getting a wash on the tiled roof of the wall.

Some the woodwork could certainly do with a bit of a tidy up, but at least I cracked out the paintbrushes.

I have half a dozen houses still to do, but things are getting closer to finishing.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

Tonight I was a bit pooped so just sorted out my mountain hexes. By sorting out please read filling in all of the gaps. I kind of forgot that the temperature had fallen a fair bit so I think it caused some lines. I don’t think it was a blockage as the lines really only appeared in certain places.

I used the tried and tested superglue and bicarbonate to add a solid top layer. The one thing I noticed was that I was missing a mountain tile. This is being printed as I type this (along with the volcano). I have bumped the temperature up by 10 degrees to see if that will make any difference, if it doesn’t then I reckon I do have a blockage. Once these two are done then I reckon I have got one of each tile that I intend to use.

On the resin front, it is still sitting idle but I do have a pile of new miniatures from the new Patreon that I need to download and get going with. I thought I might as well wait until my wash and cure device arrived, that way It will be a heck of a lot easier to clean them up, not to mention cure.