Topic: Getting some fantasy terrain done at last....

[Zygmund]

Now that's an eye catcher! 

-Z

[The Black Knight]

Thanks again for the kind words gents! My gf has a large collection of bare metal LOTR minis. I am itching to start turning them into little dioramas like this one. I doubt we will ever get to play the game itself, but these would be very pretty sitting in a glass cabinet!

[Zak]

HOLY COW this is awesome work 

[KTG17]

I need to see all this on a gaming board!

Awesome work!

[The Black Knight]

Thanks! I’ll get to that once I have a snazzy looking gaming mat and some more terrain pieces done. Best I can do for now is this picture of the terrain setup for the final game of our campaign, my terrain is mixed among the other guys stuff.

[The Black Knight]

Aww geeez it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Sorry for the long hiatus guys, but between the goblins, campaigning and some pretty harsh real life stuff I haven’t been very much in “terrain building mode” in the last couple of months. So it goes with our hobby I guess, inspiration and free time are not a given.
But I had an off day for terrain making .., and I’m here to tell you about it.

So I couldn’t decide what to work on after my hiatus. I was itching to start something new and exciting, but in the end I went back to the tree-making. Let’s call it a memento for all the endangered world forests today.
With all the conifer trees done I had to tackle the deciduous ones at last. I must say that I ummed an ahhhed about it for a good while….then I remembered that I have a huge stash of desert roots hidden in my basement. I know that right now most of you are going “wtf dude” but it’s actually pretty simple. My father – an avid model maker himself -  regularly goes to the African coast of the Mediterranean because of work. He’s been collecting and bringing these roots over the span of at least a  decade, as they literally just look like little trees. Just look at them:



He always said they would make awesome trees, but I was just too lazy to do anything with them. I realize this is probably pretty unhelpful for anyone wishing to copy my work but hey ho. I know there are options to find stuff like this in gardening centres etc. You just have to be a bit lucky.
So anyways the plan was simple. Get the roots washed, dried and stuck onto mdf bases. Then add some roots made of DAS, and blend the trunks a bit. Some of my natural armatures got a bit broken in storage, but I’ve managed to fix some of them by pinning the twigs together. It sounds a bit crazy, but it’s the same process as with pinning miniature bits.  Here are the results of today’s session, the clay needs to harden (there's one model tree in there as well and one that will be left dead, without any leaves):





The twigs will be painted using various woodstains (as you can already see on some of the test pieces, that I’ve done). Then I will cover them in watered down PVA to make them a bit more robust, before moving onto the foliage.

Stay tuned! I know they don't look like much yet, but have faith 

[Naitsabes]

that looks like a great start to some leafy trees. seems to me they would snap like dry twigs (ha!) but, you must think they will hold up to the rigors of gaming. Maybe you are a very gentle gamer?

Looking forward to the foliage, that's the hard part as far as I can tell.

[GamesPoet]

I like the looks so far!

[The Black Knight]

Cheers GamesPoet!

@Naitsabes:

Naaah I knock my terrain around like it owes me money. Truth be told I am worried that the armatures may turn out too brittle. The "trunks' are super tough, I have trouble breaking them in half using clippers, but the branches are a different story.

I was thinking of dipping the entire thing in latex rubber, like this fellow suggests:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-ryYEMomK8

Unfortunately I can't source any cheap liquid rubber. It's like 15 quid per litre  here - at this rate I might as well buy ready trees, rather than fiddle around with sticks. I'm gona try 2 coats of watered down PVA, like I did with the little twig I put on the Gollum diorama. This SHOULD make it sturdy enough. Gluing the foliage down will secure it even further I hope, and then varnishing etc. I guess it's a risk I have to take!

Trees are painted already, working on the bases  tonight. Should have some new pics tomorrow I hope

[Artobans Ghost]

Quote BK: Naaah I knock my terrain around like it owes me money.

Now that made me laugh. I used to treat my mini’s that way at the gameshop. Always handfuls of casualties but had to bow down to peer pressure. They were horrified at the way I treated them so I tried to make them feel  better. 😸

[The Black Knight]

Hahah! Well...maybe I'm not THAT bad with it, just that the normal amount of wear and tear, knocking stuff off the table etc.

But..to be honest, in my early 20's I did use to carry my Norse blood bowl team casually thrown into a woolen pouch with a viking amulet on it. I don't know why, I guess was just beeing facetious with the "if the gods want it, they won't come apart" approach. And I yes I've also made my friends feel uncomofrtable, to the point where they demanded I get them a proper carrying box  .

[The Black Knight]

Update time.



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I’ve finished painting and basing the trees! The woodstains did their job better than paints would, by producing this slightly desaturated, patchy natural look. The only problem is that I had little control over what the final result but hey. At least I didn't have to fiddle around with the airbrush.

As for the bases it was pretty much my standard technique as described before. The vegetation was created by using dark flock for the moss, some grass tufts and then a few spots of coarser flock for the underbush.



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One new thing, that I wanted to try out, was making some more distinct-looking plants. Out comes the little plastic twig I picked up at the florist at some point.



I know that many people use aquarium plants and just stick them to their bases, this is made of similar, glossy, crappy plastic. After snipping away several bigger pieces, I was left pondering how to paint them. I know that people often bathe them in a degreaser and prime them or whatnont. I was feeling reckless, so I just busted out the gretching green, washed them with biel-tan and boom! Done. Sometimes it’s better to not overthink things I guess.



The only thing left was snipping of smaller pieces and supergluing them to the base. I think I’ve managed to create quite convincing little firs.



While I had my basing materials out, I revisited the objective markers I did before and added a bit of greenery.



Next step of the tree making process will be spraying diluted pva all over the trees and bases. I reeeeally hope I don’t ruin everything  !

[GamesPoet]

Excellent, looking great!  I love the one that looks like an older tree with some of its roots above the ground.

[Artobans Ghost]

This is fantastic

[Zygmund]

Beautiful trees!

-Z

[The Black Knight]

Thank you again guys!

@GamesPoet - that one is easily my favourie as well  .


So - back with another update.

The trees are almost finished! I was going to make a test one first, but got caught up in the flocking madness. This sometimes happens to me, when I’m really close to finishing a project. This weird frenzy descends upon me and I won’t leave until I either completely finish it or completely ruin it. I'd call it artistic fever but I'm just really freaking impatient sometimes.

It all started calmly enough though. First I decided that I need to build a branch structure for the leaves (flock) to sit on. This did not turn out to be really that necessary (more on that later).

I know that people use seafoam, which looks like real branches:



But it’s another of those weird natural modelling materials, which are incredibly hard to get, unless you are willing to shell out for a woodland scenics pack. I surely wasn’t.
Moss is another popular choice for canopy-building and since it only costs a trip to the forest I went with that. Anything to make me move my fat ass is a bonus too at this point.

So here are three moss types. The middle one was bought as christmas decrations, the one on the left is lichem and the lighter one on the right I collected and cleaned. I picked up some other ones too, but they did not turn out to be useful.


(excuse the poor cell phone pics)

I’ve decided to try all three and see which one works best. I applied the moss to the branches of my trees, first by using superglue (didn’t work) then with 2 part epoxy glue. The light moss was so wooly, that I just wrought it around the branches and didn’t bother with adhesives. The next step would secure it anyway. Here’s how they looked before being blasted with spray-glue. Note that I pulled out the moss from the shortest tree before spraying, as I didn’t like how it looked. Figured I will just try using clump foliage on bare branches and see if it can hold up without any other support (spoiler - it did).



After being sprayed with glue, I simply sprinkled flock or clump foliage onto them. Here's how they ended up:

The tree with dyed Christmas moss:


It’s a bit messy, with the moss sticking out in different directions. The colour of the moss blends with my flock well, but still showing through a bit. Need to pull out a few strands that stick out.

Tree with lichen:



This one I had to abort and start again. At first I was using some very fine light green turf, but it just did not look right, the shapes of the lichen clumps made it look super unnatural. I panicked, re-sprayed it and started covering it with light green clump foliage. The end result is thus a bit haphazard, with different tones of moss and foliage. Learning experience I guess!

Tree with moss I picked myself



I think this one turned out the best. I’ve used fine, yellow-green flock to match the moss and the end effect is pretty realistic. The only dowside is that's very fragile, but a few coats of sprayed-on scenic glue should make it robust enough.

Tree with clump foliage straight from the bag:



Nothing to say much other than it worked and was faster. Good to know it’s possible to produce foliage this way, even though it eats my supplies rather quickly.

Here’s a group photo of the trees:


And did I mention they are pretty true scale  :



I don’t mind them being big really. I will get myself some medium sized trees in the future too.

Overall rather pleased with how they turned out. I have 2-3 more trees planned, including a SUPER BIG tree, but mailny I will start working on the forest bases now. Stay tuned.

[GamesPoet]

Looks like all methods produced something of quality to me.  Well done!

[Zygmund]

Some real trees! The effort surely paid out. I also like them big, kinda not well-tended trees in a park or stunded hedge trees, but real forest trees. 

-Z

[The Black Knight]

Thank you both! I am learning as I go along, although I can't say any of this is very novel - there are so many good tutorials on the internet it would be  a shame not to use them .

I've been watching a lot of Luke Aps, Papercuts and Terrain Tutor vids, there's some great inspiration to be found.

[Naitsabes]

I am impressed. and I think it actually helped that you experimented a bit since it made the trees less uniform. Are they top heavy now with all that clump and glue added? And, what's spray-glue?

[The Black Knight]

Thanks a lot!

Yes, I think mixing the methods is a good way forward. Will be trying out some more ways of making trees in the future.

Spray-glue is just an adhesive in a rattle can. Round here it can be found in home depot stores or haberdasheries, as they can be used for textile work. There are different kinds around, the one I have is latex based I think. It's pretty strong, but it can leave a bit of a "spider web" effect on whatever it touches. Not the best, but I haven't had the chance to try other brands.

The trees are a bit top-heavy, bot not too much. The solid mdf bases and all the ballast that I've glued on help in that regard. But if I ever want bigger trees, I'd deffinietly need larger bases! Using thicker MDF should help too .

[The Black Knight]

I guess by this point you guys must be pretty tired of trees. So oooh boooy will you be excited to see my next update which is – you guessed it – EVEN MORE TREES.

This time the aformentioned smaller ones. No wips this time, but the armatures were made from aquarium plants stuck onto toothpicks. Quick and to the point!



I have also pushed on and completed two bases for my forests:



As you can see I did not cut out the holes for my tree bases. I've given it a lot of thought, but I decided against making such elaborate bases and here's why:
1) this would restrict the way I could arrange the trees on their forest base and I don't like that. I really like modularity and options.
2) the bases with the holes in them look really crap when you take out the trees to move your minis thorugh the forest. Not a popular opinion, but I really feel this just doesn't really look  good and requires a shit ton of work.
3) I just wanted to be done and move on! 

So the time finally came to put my forests together and see how they looked. Here's the final effect:





I've cut the bases in such a way, that they can be aligned together to create a mega-forest, should I ever need one.

That being said, they both are rather big, see a scale pick with a sneaky spider rider creeping through the underbush:




All for now! I am pretty pleased with how they've turned out and that I can finally cross out another point from my checklist. The bases are a bit barren, would really preffer some additional bushes and fallen tree trunks, but this will make putting on the trees very tricky. I might revisit them in the future after I play a bit, but for now they are done.

[GamesPoet]

Excellent.

[Zygmund]

Really nice woods!

-Z

[The Black Knight]

Thanks a bunch!

Here's where I'm at with my to-do list:

1) Touching up a couple of old pieces that are salvageable
2) Scatter terrain - bushes, rock piles, lone trees
3) Finishing up a merchant house started a looong time ago
4) Re-working a hirst-art house I got from a friend
5) Two forrests with separately based trees
6) A set of ruins from LOTR + some ruin scatter pieces
7) three rocky hills
8) A couple of additional fences/hedges

Slowly creeping forward....

Not sure what's next, but I'll probably try tackling the hills. Those imperial cannons/goblin bolt throwers need a parking space.