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| Description |
Ebob shares with us how he put his amazing Amon Hen landscape together. |
| Author |
eBob |
Date
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Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:19 pm
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| Category |
Constructions |
| Type |
Project |
Complexity
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Advanced
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| Amon Hen |
| Ebob shares with us how he put his amazing Amon Hen landscape together. |
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Note: It is important to read this entire article before building this project, especially the piece on texturing.
Having purchased the box set ‘Ambush at Amon-Hen’ which contains figures of Merry and Pippin being carried away by two Uruk-Hai, I set about designing a scenario for this encounter on my 3ftx3ft table. Watching the movie over and over to get the facts right for the scenario, I soon decided that I needed a model of the stone ruins at the beginning of the fight sequence where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas take on dozens of Uruk-Hai.
This is a key part of the scenario as the Uruk-Hai player must delay the three heroes as long as possible while a scouting party rushes on down the hill to intercept Boromir and the hobbits.
…and so the seed of yet another project was born.
The 1st stage of any project must be research. Watch the movie, hit pause, make notes and sketches. I also used the playstation game to walk around the ruins – go up the stairs, look at the statues close up.
From these preliminary sketches, I make sure I know in my mind how the construction will look from every angle and I consider my options for materials.
Next I made accurate line drawings of each piece, platform and wall. I do this on the computer using CorelDraw – here I confess that I have the unfair advantage of being a graphic designer and so this comes easy to me – but a ruler and pencil would do just as well.
Initially, I was convinced that I would use MDF as my main building material – I like to use MDF because it’s strong, durable and has a nice weight – my Balin’s Tomb was constructed entirely from MDF and it weighs a tonne – but I love that heaviness.
However, This was a smaller and more fiddly job – so I elected to use 5mm Foam Board. This can be purchased from any good art supply or picture framing shop. They can sell you either 5mm thickness or 3mm. It’s super cheap, a huge A0 size piece for about a fiver.
Foam board is easy to cut with a sharp blade and easily glued with PVA.
The plans are tacked onto the foam board with a little spray mount – or you could a dab of PVA. The pieces are rapidly cut out using a Stanley Knife fitted with a new blade (important to use a sharp new blade or the foam board will tear rather than cut).
The roof is assembled first. Three pieces are used to form the platform on the top – glue these together with a slap of PVA (PVA can be purchased in large tins from B&Q).
Next, cut out the hole for the stairs. It’s a little tricky cutting through 3 pieces of foam board at once, but I want the holes to line up – you could cut the holes in each piece before you glue together – whichever works for you.
Cut out a strip of foam board 4cm wide and 30cm long. Cut this into steps each about 2cm deep – so each step is 2cm x 4cm.
Assemble the steps with PVA and glue on the sides thus. Two steps are added to the top with are narrower ( 3cm wide) these will fit up through the hole in the upper platform.
Glue the stairs to the upper platform.
| Construct The Rear Chamber |
Cut out the 5 sections of wall as per the plans – (the plans are available as a printable pdf file for download at the end of this article) – assemble as shown, it should be starting to take shape now.
The pillars were about a £1 each (UK). Failing this you’ll have to improvise – possibly heavy wooden dowel or some kind of plastic tubing – go to B&Q and keep your eyes open.
The plastic Doric pillars are great though because they have nice detail top and bottom.
They will need to be cut down – remove the centre and glue the ends back together, you can see from the photos that I chopped my pillars into several pieces with a modelling hand-saw and distressed the ends by carving at them with a knife before reassembling – they need to look really battered and bruised – just chop at them from all angles with a craft knife nicking little chunks out. Getting the pillars all the same height (and the right height) is a black art – have fun – keep a ruler handy.
Glue the pillars in place as shown and pop the two base sections on the bottom of the pillars.
You should be getting really excited by now – but hold your water – the best is yet to come.s that I have used came from a wedding cake shop. You should be able to find similar in a shop
The griffins. First cut out a square and glue on the top of the platform. Then cut the two octagons from the plans and glue on top of the other – stick this on top. Now – the hard part, using the griffin templates supplied in the plans – cut out the two shapes from foam board – you may need a sharp pointed craft knife for this and another new blade is essential. The two pieces will slot together. Once textured, this will be good enough, our model is intended for use in game play – we’re not going to enter it in any competitions for sculpting.
| Texturing, stepping back a few moments… |
Now – anyone that has embarked on building this project without reading this article to end before commencing is going to kill me at this point – because in order to give our finished model the desired ancient stone finish we need cover the entire thing in P38 car filler – this should be done before the final assembly of all pieces – so at various stages during the build process, for instance once you’ve glued the stairs together – you should spread the P38 on the surfaces before final assembly.
P38 is not expensive but it is sticky, messy, difficult to get off your hands and is very, very smelly. So why do I advise it’s use? Because it dries fast if you put sufficient hardener in the mix, and it gives a wonderful rough stone texture that even feels like stone.
Spread on the surfaces quickly (it starts to go off quite rapidly) using the tool provided in the pack and spread as smoothly as you can while it’s wet – remembering the edges of the foam board too. Leave to dry for an hour or two – you will get large blobs - it will look a complete disaster – but don’t worry. Some rough sand paper will fix it. You can use a craft knife to chip away at the steps and the edges of the platform to give a cracked and battered finish. When applying P38 to the topmost surface you can use the edge of the spreading tool (or the edge of bit of cardboard) just to press in some lines to represent the joins in the stone slabs. Slapping the P38 on the griffins is the messiest business of all – might best done in two stages so you avoid getting in too much of a state – but again you will make a dreadful mess – but once dry, a knife and some sand paper and it should look nice and stony and ancient. You should practice spreading P38 onto a spare bit of Foam board before attacking your model with it – and do it outside or your house with stink of glue for a week!
For speed I use large cans of car spray from Halfords. First spray the whole thing with Matt Black primer. Then dust over with grey primer and finally a light dust with white primer.
Final detail is done with usual dry brushing techniques that we are all familiar with.
Finally, I add just few outcrops of long grass and moss to finish. A trip to your local model railway shop should furnish you with all you need. I find that model railway shops are cheaper than Gamesworkshop for items such as grass matting, flock and the like – don’t forget model railway enthusiasts are the very best at making scenery – so browse the web for such sites if you want real tips on making good scenery.
| To Download The Plans For This Project |
Click the link below to download the plans in Acrobat PDF format.
If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, it can be downloaded for free from here:
Project Plans PDF Document
Here are some good links to take your breath away…
http://www.woodlandscenics.com/
Forget it’s model railways… just enjoy the stunning scenery on this site.
http://www.countrysidemodels.co.uk/ |
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