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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:31 pm 
Elven Elder
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Some wonderful work Celevue, truly inspiring. I would like to ask what you have used for all the grass and low vegetation effects on the Moria West Gate board please.
I struggled with my first attempt and grass and want to learn how to do the job better.

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 2:14 am 
Kinsman
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Celevue, you are really a master of realistic terrain making! This thread is an absolute pleasure to view.

The WIPs you post here are fantastic, but I would also love to see step-by-step PDF tutorials (or video tutorials...) showing us single aspects of what you do: how you paint stone, how you flock the ground to make it so lifelike, how you carve foam, etc. I know you're busy, but that would be super awesome.
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:50 am 
Craftsman
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Absolutely beautiful terrain! Fantastic work, it's so realistic!

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:40 am 
Loremaster
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If you need anyone to do a 'professional' playtest on any of those boards I'd be more than glad to help...
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:51 pm 
Craftsman
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Thanks for the kind words again! @Gandlaf, I hate to sound like a paid endorser of Woodland Scenics (which I am not :) ), but I use almost exclusively their scatter material, as you can see (and this is just the fine turf - there are more shakers for coarser stuff):

Image

Here's how I did the Moria board grass & low vegetation:
1) since the rocks are quite barren, I started by shaking earth blend fine turf on the rocks, using dry, soft brush to remove turf where it wasn't wanted. I also shaked some earth blend turf on the Wall of Moria, and it remained on the larger ledges and in some cracks in a quite natural-looking way.
2) I added some burnt grass colored fine turf where I thought some greenish grass might grow.
3) I misted the areas with turf with "wet water" (a sprayer full of water with a couple of drops of dish washer to break the surface tension).
4) I used eyedropper and soaked the already wet turf with Woodland Scenics scenic cement (very diluted white glue)
5) after the fine turf layer was dry, I threw pinches of dead grass colored coarse turf for the higher vegetation. This I soaked with scenic cement without bothering to mist it with wet water first.
6) the moss near the creek is actually not Woodland Scenic - I bought some additional shades of turf, including that nice moss green, from Scenic Express. I mixed the moss green turf with scenic cement to make "moss paste", which I scooped with palette knife to the areas near the creek.

And that's really all there is to it. I heartily recommend Woodland Scenics' Scenery Manual book; I've consulted that on numerous occasions. Although the instructions are directed more to model railroaders, the methods (and materials) are equally applicable to gaming terrains.

@tomogui, I'll see what I can do about video tutorials - those might be fun. But until I get a camera rolling, do visit Woodland Scenics' web site - they have excellent tutorial videos, too.
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (25/2 various
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:02 pm 
Craftsman
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A quick update on the Moria board. Here's a shot of the Wall of Moria - I've now glued the doors of Durin in place, and have finished the holly tree trunks. The process was as follows:
1) take one Woodland Scenics tree armature, add more branches with twisted copper wire. Wrap with masking tape.
2) use twisted wire to form roots, glue into tree armature base.
3) coat liberally with flexi-bark
4) the tree trunks were painted with Tamiya IJN grey green spray can, followed by a wash with Agrax Earthshade, an a drybrush with longbeard grey.

Image

I also poured the first layer of water to the creek, tinted with a tiny bit of Castellan green. The water looks very milky white now, with a pale green tint - I'm hoping it cures to a deeper green, more transparent creek by tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:26 pm 
Elven Elder
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Celevue - thanks for your invaluable advice. I will certainly look to put this into practice and try to get a copy of the woodland scenics book. I only wish I knew some of these things before my Mumak diorama, but hey, it's a learning curve I am very happy to go through.
Moria is looking stunning, I can't add any more than that.

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 9:34 am 
Loremaster
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Looking excellent so far :yay: :yay: :yay:
How did you make the rock formations look so rock like?

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 10:09 am 
Craftsman
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My free sculpting forms a minuscule fraction of the rock formations on the board, so the credit for the right shapes goes to Woodland Scenics (again) as well as Noch (the foam rocks in the Wall of Moria, and in the northeastern corner of the board). I have a latex paint which is approximately the same colour as Codex grey, which I used throughout to paint the rocks. This was followed by raw umber and black pigment washes from Woodland Scenics - good for the large cracks, but the pigments did not stay in smaller nooks. I applied Games Workshop black wash to these. When the wash was dry, I mixed a latex paint not much different from GW Fortress grey, and used a large drybrush to go through all the rocks. It's basically as simple as that, almost straight from the GW hobby manual...

It is possible to color the cast hydrocal rocks with WS pigments, and the results are quite realistic. However, this would not have worked with foam rocks, and I needed a consistent look across the entire board and the Wall - hence the latex paint. I've used the pigment coloring with the outcrops and cliffs on my green game board, featured in the first three scenarios over on the campaign thread.
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 1:57 pm 
Elven Warrior
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This is stunning work. I really run out of big words to use! Please keep sharing your WIP (and finished) photos!

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:10 pm 
Craftsman
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The model show is just two days away, so the board had better be nearing completion... and it is, I guess - all hinges on the Realistic water curing enough by Saturday morning to allow the attaching of the waterfalls (and of course, the transporting of the board).

Here's the board with holly tree roots and loose rocks attached:

Image

...and here's the same scene with the added earth blend and burnt grass turf:

Image

The area is then misted lightly with "wet water", followed by eyedropping of scenic glue:

Image

I added some dead grass colored coarse turf as low vegetation here and there at the same time, as well as some "moss paste" (moss turf mixed with glue and applied with a palette knife). Now the entire shoreline looks like a milk tsunami has hit it..

Image

The holly tree trunks received fine branches - I used tacky glue to attach bits of seafoam or supertree, and secured them in place with superglue (how appropriate!). Note the three small tree bits in the first image - these will be the dead bits of tree poking through the surface of the Watcher's pool. I will glue them to the pool area once they are finished.

Image

Image

After the glue was cured, I applied a bit more flexi-bark to blend the supertree bits in. When this had hardened, I painted the fixed areas with Tamiya sky, followed by Agrax earthshade wash and light grey drybrush.

Holly branches are dark brownish grey (or greyish brown), so I airbrushed the supertree branches with Vallejo burnt umber / German grey / black mix.

Image

Using liberal amounts of hairspray, I attached dark green coarse turf as foliage on the supertree bits:

Image

Over on the board side, I proceeded with pouring of Realistic water on the pool area, and a second layer on the creek. I wasn't fully happy with the milkish green color of the creek yesterday morning, and since the resin had not hardened yet, mixed some dark angels green into the first layer. This cured by today, so hopefully, when the second, non-tinted layer cures, the creek will look suitably deep with slimy, dark green rocks in the bottom.

Image

There is again a rather deep layer of Realistic water in the creek, and this looks opaque at the moment. I can only hope that this area will cure by Saturday morning... I'm pretty sure that the pool area will be fine, as there is a relatively shallow layer there. However, something caused a reaction near two of the sunken, dead trees - perhaps the superglue wasn't fully set? Anyway, there are small bubbles forming around these two - the third one is fine and does not show a similar effect:

Image

This is how the board looks now:

Image

I'll keep monitoring the water as the evening progresses, checking for leaks (so far none) and fishing away the froth around the sunken trees...
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (26/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:13 pm 
Craftsman
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...and now for something completely different (but related) - here's a shot of the Watcher out of the water, getting its share of Realistic Water on the base.

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:28 pm 
Elven Elder
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Pekke - outstanding. The view across the water to the door could be from the film.
I also want to thank you for the way you are updating, it's almost a mini tutorial the way you are showing the stages of development

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:36 pm 
Loremaster
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Woah! you are one busy guy!

Your Moria is nothing short of spectacular!
Gandlaf the Grey wrote:
I also want to thank you for the way you are updating, it's almost a mini tutorial the way you are showing the stages of development

Very much agreed!
I'm sure this thread will be helpful and inspiring to many many people (myself for one).
:yay: :yay:

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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:45 pm 
Loremaster
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Indeed, that last picture is stunning! Amazing work, keep it up. :yay:
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:47 pm 
Hi,

really cool stuff! The vegetation applied is very relaistic. I agree with "Gandalf the Grey" on the last picture...the mirrored image of that door looks so fantastic...like the real thing!

One question: how fragile are these "supertree" things? They look very thin and fligrane-do they break easily?
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 3:58 pm 
Craftsman
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Glad you like the board, and thanks for the quick responses - you really are following this thread closely!
@Gunslinger, the supertrees are surprisingly resilient - they even come literally stuffed into a box. Ok, some really fine bits tended to break at joints, but we are really talking about less than 0.5mm wide parts or so. Anything bigger, and it survived me dropping them to the floor, fumbling to pick them up from a dark carpet, and crunching them with my tacky-glue covered fingers and tweezers.

The weakest point was definitely the glue joint - I tried to use white glue first, but it did not hold the bits in place while the glue set. Tacky glue did, but not very securely, so I used also superglue. I would expect some parts to break off during storage / transporting / gaming, but am not overtly worried. I'll be sure to examine this issue in the future, for example at the time of the relevant scenario in our campaign.
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 4:00 pm 
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What?! That last image of the board looks like a screenshot from the film. Almost beyond belief, outstanding work! :) 8)
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 5:49 pm 
Craftsman
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More updates - decided to do the waterfalls tonight, too, to give them enough time to cure. In an earlier update, I made some waterfalls with the water effects spread on a non-stick surface. These can now be peeled away and trimmed to size. The upper waterfall actually trickles through some rocks, so I decided to use water effects in situ to create a suitable, complex flow of water (the stuff is quite thick, like mayonese, so it is easy to spread). For the lower fall, one of the ready-made bits was trimmed to size and glued in place with more water effects. It looks a bit awkward now - but water effects will become transparent by tomorrow. I will add some white drybrush to finish the fast-flowing water.

Image

Image

Here's an overall pic of the board. The water in the pool looks bluish, but should become transparent with black bottom showing through once the resin hardens. Hopefully by Saturday morning!

Image

Now, on to paint a handful of dwarves to oppose the Watcher...
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 Post subject: Re: Celevue's LotR campaign -behind the scenes (28/2 Moria g
PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:41 pm 
Loremaster
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Wow.
Possibly the best board I've ever seen!
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