80. Step Into the Completed Light. Building a Gaming Board part 14.

First. 80 posts!

Second. Lamp Posts are done!

Third. New picture format!




It was just a case of highlighting the individual window panes with some white and giving the whole thing a light drybrush of Boltgun Metal.

YES! That would have been the game board complete, however, it took some hefty damage when we had some work done on the staircase, so it is need of repair and a little repaint ¬_¬

Ah well. MOAR of this project to come then!!

Also I shall be continuing other projects soon.

Don't call it a comeback! Or do! We'll see!

-DH-

79. Are We Actually Back? Building a Gaming Board part 13.

I know.

It has been a long time, but I feel the time is right for a hobby revival.

Maybe this has something to do with me paintitng Amiibo's over on The Science of Selling Yourself Short.
Maybe it has something to do with my foray back into blogging in general in same said place? Maybe, I just fancied it?

Either way, I've had the urge to hobby, and I'm not about to question why, but just take advantage of it for how ever long it sticks around.

So, here comes the update you've all been waiting for!


I clearly had an update in the pipeline from the last time I updated this thing....
So here is where I left off some 6 months ago.








And today, I dusted them off (so much dust =[ ), and finally gloss varnished them!



I know it isn't the biggest update ever, but I have been painting other things.
Which you can see over on my personal blog 'here'
I've also been busy with my boardgaming blog/e-zine which you can visit 'here.'


So. I plan to ease myself back into this.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy a trip down memory lane, and check out my other projects too.

It is good to be back.

-DH-




++ Also ++ A better image processing system will be in place for future posts. A Lesson I learned writing The Cardboard Cartographer, which you should totally check out!

52. Greys and Greens. 40K Urban Terrain - Crashed Landspeeder part 3.

Hi guys.
Real life stuff attended to, I am back!

I've got a handful of updates for you over the next few days, both here and on the Bolter&Chainsword.

Last time I posted the finished Land Speeder (pre-painting).

I decided on Salamanders.
Firstly, to get some practise in before I embark on my army,
and second, I thought the green would bland better with the vast amount of grey.
The alternative was doing it in Marines Malevolent colours.
I think the yellow would have jarred with the grey.

This kind of escalated quickly. I really enjoy painting green!






What do you guys think?
Do you reckon green was the right choice?
How do you think the piece is looking overall?
Either comment here, or on the Bolter&Chainsword.
Alternatively hit me up @DarkHaZZl3 on Twitter.

I've only finished the grey bit.
Everything else needs work

I could go into detail as to what needs doing where, but I'll let the next painting update explain that for me!

Until then (or rather, until my next post which will have nothing to do with this Land Speeder) Ciao!

-DH-

51. 40k Urban Terrain - Crashed Landspeer part 2.

Another day, another update!

Let's get straight to it shall we?

The idea behind the Landspeeder is that it was shot down.

I ripped open the back so it looks like the engine took a hit before it crashed.

The obvious issue here is that with a gaping hole in the back, all you can see is flat grey plastic.
So I had to build a engine/turbine.

My first concept was terrible;



But it gave me the inspiration to make the second;





The unit is made from a wooden cog (I bought a pack from ebay), some plasticard tubing and a... thing... from LEGO Bionical.

I appear to have not taken a picture of the second unit before basing.
So here is the first layer of basing (plus second engine) before undercoating and such;









And then, with the final layer of basing (Terrible picture);



The second engine block is made using the same materials as the first.
I added watch pieces (again, ebay) to make spike/rotating thing (I have no idea what it would be called...)

And there we have it.
Another day, another update!

Just a small one today.
I have been working on other projects... but I'm saving those for later posting material.

If you want a sneak peak head over to My armies of the Imperium WiP post on the B&C
( I know I usually do sneak peaks here first, but I'll be posting a complete version here in one post).

Any comments welcome; feedback, crtique, support or your own experiences making terrain!
You can post them here, in the comments,
On my WiP post on the B&C (linked above)
Or hit me up on Twitter; @DarkHaZZl3

As always thanks for reading!

-DH-

50. Streets Awash With... Wash... Building a Gaming Board part 12.

Half a Century? Big E! wept.
Also 14th post of the year so far!
Commitment and progress? I think so!

Considering it has been so long since this project got updated I'll point you to my previous posts to refresh your memory...

Back? Did you check?
No?

Well....

First off is my tests scheme for the paving slabs (The set on the right).

Pretty simple.

- Undercoat black (Chaos black/ Any acyrlic paint),

- Paint dark grey (Any will do. I used Black acrylic and white crylic. But the GW base dark grey would be fine),

- Paint light grey (may require 2 coats; My mix was somewhere between codex and fortress grey/ Mianly white with a hint of black = Pavement grey),

- Wash with watered down black, making sure it goes into the crevices. The while still wet use some tissue paper to 'dab' off most of the paint.
This will leave the paint in the crevices and give the slab a darker tone, with a dappled effect on it.

- Drybrsuh light grey (Might have to do it twice; pavement grey),

- Very light Drybrush light-er grey (pavement grey with more white).

Done!

Better?

Well I did Stage 1, 2 and 3.




So.

Step 4.
Apply black wash.



The black wash is just Chaos Black watered done a lot.
Yes you could use a wash alternative...

But this is cheaper.
Apply this liberally to the slabs



Do not let it dry, but use a bit of scrunched up kitchen towel to dab it off.




One side done to show the difference in shade.



Continue until all your pavements are done.

And that's all the update I have on that.

It is a bit laborious/back breaking.
I suggest doing it while sitting at something almost chest height.
It is that or suffer


That will do for today.
I have more to share, but I'll save it for tomorrow!

As always, thanks for reading.
All feedback welcome and such.

Over and out.

-DH-

47. Get Out, Get Out Now! 40k Urban Terrain - Crashed Land Speeder part 1.

Never have I seen such a wretched hive of scum and villainy...

Oh wait, it's the UnderHive. Of course I have!

Welcome back!
Guess what? I finally managed to get my phone working again.
You know what that means?! ACTUAL UPDATES!

Praise the Omnissiah I guess?

Speaking of Omnissiah...



Got my hands of this bad boy.
I've got to say, overall I'm impressed.
I'm not a fan of big models in games, but I love these guys.
They seem a bit under costed, but time will tell I guess.

My one gripe with the book is that it cost £25. The rules only take up 7 sides of A4 of the 60 something in the book.
Yes it is pretty. but it simply isn't worth the price tag. DO yourself a favour, and buy the eBook version. It is £5 cheaper.


Anyway, moving on.
I promised some actual models and such, so I shall deliver.

As I said before, I'm currently working on several projects (while I wait for my appetite for painting to return).
At the forefront of these are my terrain projects.
There is no point making a board if you have nothing to put on it right?

Considering I have a few projects, with pictures at several stages, I will be posting them individually, over the course of a few days.

So I present to you the (several) stages of one of my terrain wip's; The downed land speeder.
A few (well, more like eight I guess) months back I was given a fair amount of models by a friend whom no longer wished to play.
Some of this stuff was salvageable, although not a great deal; they were from a long time ago, a time when patience was the anti-christ.

One such object was a Land Speeder Typhoon.



So I took it apart. I put the missile bits to one side (Most of these were missing), and had at it!









The general idea is that the Marines took a major hit to one of the rear engines (I have yet to sort the engine block out), and were forced to disembark before crash landing. Will they have survived? Who knows?!





Positioning. Done.

I kind of wanted a little bit of a 'crashed and skidded along the floor' look about the piece.

So after some tearing chunks out and green stuffing I had this;





The main skid track belongs to the Land Speeder, the second its left wing.
They'll be suitably damaged accordingly. I need to get some gun parts from the depths of my Bitz box and/or ebay.

In the meantime (otherwise known as Today), I wanted to press on with what I could do; Adding debris.
While I liked the current pose, that green stuff mound just irked me.

So I soon saw to that!



The debris is made up of a mix of materials.
The White stuff on the floor is my old friend polyfiller. It gives a bit more variety to the ground and makes it less perfectly flat.
The big white chunks are a plaster cast of cities of death floor, tiles smashed up and placed around the crash site; I'll be posting more about plaster casting in another post... so stay tuned for that one.
The rock/stone/slate pieces are a mix of large gardening slate and the smaller slate bits from the GW urban basing kit.

There is plenty more left to be done;
More rocks, bitz, buildings and other generic debris,
I need to sculpt the seats back in,
I need to suitably damage the engine block and custom build the inside,
and once all that is done it needs to be based in line with my board.

So there you have it. A real update, and the first of many.
Hopefully I can finish 5 terrain pieces by this weekend (unpainted, obviously).


Any feedback welcome!
Also, suggestions on other urban terrain ideas.

Thanks for reading.

-DH-

39. Lights, Camera, Lamppost! Building a Gaming Board part 11.

Game Grumps sapped all my painting time last night.

  I mean, I did do 'some'

painting...
 So here it is;



Just the light done basically.

Recipe is fairly simple.
Paint the area you want to be light a light grey (I used Astronomican, because I'm still living in the past),
Next paint most of the section you just painted in a 1:1 mix of that Grey and White,
Then paint another smaller square inside that square of almost pure white (judge for yourself on this one).

After than apply a glaze of Vallejo transparent yellow (It is the same yellow I used on my Space Marine a while back),
Once this is dry add a wash of Sepia (I used Gryphone/ however the hell you spell it).




Once it dries you're done.

Since this picture I've blended the colours in together a bit more, gloss varnished it and added some 'glass' highlights.

The blended colours are made using Vomit brown and Golden Yellow (using Scorched Brown and White for darkening and lightening respectively).
Gloss varnish and add some 'reflection' type white highlights, and you're done.

You know what? Seeing as I'm feeling so goddamn generous, I'll take a quick picture
*Snap*



You can just make out the white lines... but the light kinda washes out the rust effect.
Either way, it looks good from a distance.

Just need to finish that cable and I'm done...
well, done with one of the 5 total.

Progress!

-DH-

38. Urban Rust. Building a Gaming Board part 10.

  Between Christmas, laziness and my phone herping and derping Updates have been sparse.

I finally managed to fix my phone today, so I can finally upload pictures again.

Less offensive introduction than usual? Must try harder...

So yes, updates.
Gaming board again.

I decided that I wanted a bit of ware and tear on my board.
This will mainly be on the paving slabs...but it will be done after I've painted them to their 'peak' condition.

So in the meantime I thought I'd start my lampposts.

How does one wear and tear a lamppost?
Aside from physical damage (light not working, smahsed glass, missing panels...) from what I've seen lmapposts tend to be painted.
So the obvious basic damage is worn and chipped paint... which leads to rust



I tried to emulate this for my own (albeit a bit more severe/ different colours)





They've all been rusted up, but this one is my test subject for futher detailing.
Right now it just needs the light/ glass section finishing off, and a bit more brown/ rust stains.

Any opinions on rust welcome, weather they are about mine here, or about painting weathering in general.
Personally I'm not fond of it in most cases.
Done right/ thematically and it can add great character to a project.
Done wrong and it just makes something look way too busy.

Anyways,
PEACE

-DH-

36. Follow the Grey Slab Road. Building a Gaming Board part 9.

So... much....grey...

Dies.Yup, I've been painting my board some.
It doesn't really look like I've done much (When in reality I've spent about 5-8 hours on it... I've lost count. I hate life).

So I thought Id share some bits and bobs with you.

First off is my tests cheme for the paveing slabs (The set on the right).



Pretty simple.

- Undercoat black (Chaos black/ Any acyrlic paint),

- Paint dark grey (Any will do. I used Black acrylic and white crylic. But the GW base dark grey would be fine),

- Paint light grey (may require 2 coats; My mix was somewhere between codex and fortress grey/ Mianly white with a hint of black = Pavement grey),

- Wash with watered down black, making sure it goes into the crevices. The while still wet use some tissue paper to 'dab' off most of the paint.
This will leave the paint in the crevices and give the slab a darker tone, with a dappled effect on it.

- Drybrsuh light grey (Might have to do it twice; pavement grey),

- Very light Drybrush light-er grey (pavement grey with more white).

Done!

  Yeah, it is not a masterpeice of paintwork, but I think it looks a'ight. Especially when they'll be a shed load of them.
Adds a bit of texture prior to any detailing that might get done.

I've already done the base grey on all the pavements;



Looks a bit shitty at the moment. But it does end up like the first picture, so I'm okay with it.
Glad they're out of the way.

Things left to do;
- Finish slabs (Wash black, Dab, Drybrush x 3),
- Finish road (Very light blue-grey drybrush),
- Paint details (Drains, man-holes),
- Paint lampposts,
- Clean up edges (Black boarder).

And that should do it.

SO GODDAMN CLOSE!!
-DH-

34. I Could Have Used a 50 Shades of Grey Pun, but I Didn't Want to. Building a Gaming Board part 8.

Waheeeyyy. I'm back

    I had some minor problem with my internet.
That is what happens when you let a hive ganger set it up for you.

Or in this case, Virgin. My modem died in short.
Got a new 'hub.'

So on with the show!

Here is the whole board, under coated.



And here it is after 2 coats of grey



A bit patchy, but subsequent layers and potentially washes should sort it out.
Nothing else to say...

BUT SOON!

-DH-

32. A Sticky White Mess. Building a Gaming Board part 7.

HUR HUR.

Excuse the terrible joke. Filler does make quite the mess mind you.

So, as promised, updates on the board.





As you can see they are pretty much done.
As with my other board tiles I'll probably add another layer of sand on top of the filler+sand combination just for good measure.
Then it is just a matter of neatening up some bits here and there and boom!

...to painting...
(The running joke of my hobby life).

-DH-

31. A Strong Learning Curve. Building a Gaming Board part 6.

Following in my rich vein of form (and terrible puns)...

This update is about the board.
So. If you want to follow along;

You will need:

• PO210 00/H0 Self Adhesive Paving - found here: http://www.metcalfem...adhesive-paving
• PVA glue - While the tiles are self adhesive, the adhesive quality is poor. Glue them down.
• Tea Stirrers (See previous post about making the curb)
• Curved curb pieces (See previous post about curved curb pieces; I made a press mould of mine)
• A LOT OF TIME!

Lets do this!

So the first thing I wanted to do was figure out how exactly to build the bit where the two straight pavements meet.

This involved a lot of terrible prototypes, this was the best (before the one I was eventually to use).



The main problem here is that the pavement slabs don't match the same pattern as the pavement pattern I have previously used.
So I came up with a better idea;



These are the two slab patterns used to make my pavement. I've glued them to a piece of paper, and cut them out.
this way I can check the width of my pavement at any time.

Using this, I came up with this, which incidentally is...

Step 1;



Attach the above to the board. DO NOT GLUE ANYTHING DOWN (This is just in case you find something doesn't fit/ does fit better when you personally attempt this).

That weird curved bit? That is the 'frame' the tiles come with. The width is the same as a narrow slab.
This makes your template/boundary for the curved part of the pavement.

Step 2;

Using these boundaries, build the pavement as normal until you reach the apex of the corner.



Step 3;

This is where it starts to get complicated. You can no longer lay down equal length of tile.
Jostling the slabs until they fit can be quit tricky, and they will never fit exactly right, so you kinda just have to man up and deal with it not being perfect (this made me a very sad panda).

If you follow my pictures bellow you should be reasonably okay.



Step 4;



Step 5;



Step 6;

Glue it all down, except for the 'weird curved bit.'

As previously stated, when I did this I found some tiles didn't fit exactly right, and I managed to tweak my original design a little to make it fit better.
You should be able to replace the 'weird curved bit' with the relevant slabs, as per the slab pattern that has been used throughout.
The only exception to this is the apex of the curve.

This should be made from the apex of the 'weird curved bit.' It may have to cut into a tile a little to fit snugly.

See bellow.




Step 7;

Glue inside curb down and carry on with pavement.





Inisde curve done!

The outside curve should be roughly the same.

However, if the above seemed way too fiddly for your liking, I prepared a different way of doing it (which, due to my outside curve being slightly larger than my inside curve, I had to use).

So...
Step 8;

Prepare outside curve.
To do this I super glued the pieces down on to a piece of paper first, and then just cut it out.



Step 9;

Glue this curved piece down.

You need to match the right angle corner with where the two curbs meet on the inside.
When you do this there will be a large amount of space between the piece you've just glued down, and the curved curb. Don't worry about it.
We fix that in...

Step 10;

Remember that 'weird curved bit? It kinda makes a comeback.



(Apologies for the upside down picture).
Basically take that corner and cut it to size.

I know it doesn't fit in with the rest of the pavement, but it you replaced it with slabs you would break the slab pattern anyway, so it is kind of a no win situation anyway.

I think I plan on putting something here. Suggestions as to what are welcome. So far all I can think of is a crash barrier.
Anyway, moving on to....

Step 11;

Carry on with the pavement as per usual, adding the outside curb.



And there you have it!
Curved pavement complete.

Next step is sand (which there wont be a step by step for because I have already covered it in a previous post), and then it is onto painting (and maybe some more detailing).


That is all for one day haha :P.

C&C welcome!

-DH-