Projects

Monday, May 23, 2016

Place Keeper Post

Things have been busy with being out of town last weekend and heading out to vacation in Colorado this week ( actually due to the magic of automation I should be in the mountains as this goes up.) So I haven't managed to finish any projects yet but I added some pictures below of in progress work.

Two more Big Stone Heads under construction and a few roughed out flagstones for a road.

Little plastic gemstones direct from the factory in China. I'm hoping these are going to be a major component of stage two of my terrain building. 
In other news I'm really excited about the new GW Warhammer Quest game coming out. It has evil birdmen in it! Along with a ton of nice looking sculpts. I'll be picking it up after vacation to try to play with the wife.

Unlike a lot of people I really wasn't bothered by the switch to Age of Sigmar but at the same time it didn't provoke much interest either. I think the Old World setting really made much more sense as a role-playing setting then for a mass battle one. So Silver Tower will be my first real look at it. I know many people can't get behind the stylistic change to the figures but I like the new look to the Orcs  ( or Orukks or whatever they renamed them)  As far as I can tell they seem to be pushing a kinda modern video game aesthetic to the models which actually comes across pretty well. League of Legends on the tabletop. Grognard grumbling aside it has a very striking visual appeal. I'm less into the Sigmarites but I think that has to do with the gold paint scheme something I want to avoid. Not sure I'll go all the way into AoS but it at least has my attention now.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Big Giant Stone Head


With a new set of terrain I'm once again indulging one of my pet fascinations. I got a chance to make some gabions which I had been trying to do for years and now the Big Giant Stone Head.

Why massive stone heads? Not sure. Partially I've always liked the mysterious look of the statues at Angkor Wat and other Khmer sites. Or it could a weird hold over from the resin stone heads that were put out by Dreampod 9 for Heavy Gear. (which of course indulged my other long time fascination of giant robots.) I've made some previous attempts at making stone heads before but they never really came out right.  I was never satisfied with the faces that I was able to make for them.


This time I decided to draw on my recent experience with polymer clay and sculpt the face from scratch. I wrapped a chunk of foam with aluminum foil so that I could separate the face, bake it, and then glue it back on.

At this point I'm sure the question arises "Why a screaming face with pointy teeth?" Well I like my terrain to tell a story. It might be subtle and probably a lot of people wouldn't see it if you don't point it out but it's usually in there. In this case I wanted to create some history for the planet we would be fighting over. In the distant past it was once colonized by humans on the edge of Imperial space. At some point the civilization was taken over by a powerful religious movement causing a regression in technology and the eventual fall of the planet. The statues were erected to honor the new "demigods" that now controlled the planet. In reality this new religion was controlled by a Genestealer Cult and in this case the stone head is of a 1st or 2nd generation hybrid who I would imagine would of been seen as a semi divine warleader or protector. That's also why this head is built into a defensive wall. Maybe a bit much back story for a piece of terrain but when you are spending a couple of hours making a giant stone head you have time to think of these things.


Back to the actual construction, after sculpting the face I carved blocks into the foam and added two pieces to make the remnants of the wall. After gluing the face on I blended it together using some DAS air drying clay.

Next it got a coating of wood putty mixed with gesso to hide all of the different materials. It them got a flexible caulking base which is gonna be a standard for all of this terrain.



The base was painted the same as the mat. For the head I went with a simple grey. Although I stippled it on mixed with browns, greens, and purples. I might try a more brown coloration in the future but I wanted something that would contrast with the red colored earth. I also got in some yellow turf that I mixed in with my previous turf and added to the head to finish it off.

Finally a couple more shots of my Tau hanging out with the Big Giant Stone Head.





Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Field Fortications


In between working on 40k related projects I've finished up two more sections of gabions. I had done all of the construction for each of these previously and just needed to base and paint them.

I packed the sand mix from the inside this time which was much easier. 

I put a shorter gabion on the end of each one. This way I can put them together a couple of different configurations with either firing positions for shot or as a larger position for a regimental gun.  I'll need a few more to make any real trench line but this group will do for a small revetment.




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