#terrain tutorial

[the-crimson-king]

Hello! Here is a tutorial I’ve been working on recently, hope that it all makes sense to y’all.

So I wanted to make a set of harbour walls for my game boards. Originally I planned for the harbour to be set up along one board edge as in the first picture. (obviously the green squares are the boards, the grey bits are the harbour walls and the blue’s the water.)

I decided that it was easier to do each harbour piece maximum 12″ long as that’d make them easier to store. So for the first set up I’d need four 12″ sections. 

I would have preferred to use 40mm thick Styrofoam but here in the UK it seems horribly difficult to get hold of Styrofoam, so I defaulted to my standard of using foam board. In picture 2 I’ve just detailed the tools etc I use when making terrain - sharp hobby knife, cutting board, PVA glue, nice steel rulers, and also pins.

Anyways, I decided that each harbour piece should be 12″ long, 40mm tall and 2″ wide. To start with I cut out eight 12″ x 2″ pieces of foamboard for the top and bottom of each harbour piece. Then I cut out eight pieces of 12″ x 30mm for the front and back. (with the added thickness of the top and bottom that’ll add up to 40mm tall). Finally I needed eight end pieces that are 30mm x 40mm. In picture 3 you can see the three different sizes of board I cut.

Because I want the harbour walls to have a stone effect, I took four of the 12″ x 2″ pieces (the tops) and four of the 12″ x 30mm pieces (the fronts) and peeled the paper off one side. This exposes the foam as you can sort of see in picture 4.

Finally in picture 5 I scored some stones into the exposed foam using a craft knife. When the walls are stuck together I’ll deepen the scores using a pencil, but for now I find it’s better to leave them like this.

In my next post I’ll show you what I did next! Hope you find this useful! :D

[the-crimson-king]

So part two of the harbour tutorial!

First (picture 1) I take the bottom piece and stick some pins in a little way. Then (picture 2) put PVA on the back and sides, and add the board for those pieces, using the pins to hold the pieces together while the glue’s still wet.

Picture 3 has the front piece added too. Because there’s no paper on the one side, you have to be careful when pushing the pins through so they don’t come right through the foam.

Finally add the top piece and pin it all in. When the glue dries the pins should pull back out easily enough. 

Soon, I will make the third part of this tutorial! Hope you like it!

[acanthi]

Tutorial for making terrain, in this case, "moving" water. 1) Start with constructing a simple frame to pour the water into. It doesn't have to be water-proof, but imagine something as thick as honey shouldn't go through any cracks.

2) Add contraptions from where the water flow would exit.

3) Pour some EZ-water onto a bent surface, like a bottle, and then snap it of and cut it into a size wanted. Else, you can pour it over a straight surface and bend it by hand a little, while still warm.

4) Glue the water in place. You can use water-effects, if you fear the glue will show through. Although, it probably wont. My didn't. 5) Add details, like corpses and rats and what not, and paint it all.

6) Pour heated EZ-water into the fram. Make sure not to spill on anything that it could stick to, and don't get your fingers burnt, this shit is hot! As it's starting to dry, use a stick to make splashing effects where the water hits the surface of the non-moving water, and also where the water ejects from the pipes.

7) Mix water effects and white paint and paint places where it would be natural for foam to end up, like around stuff sticking out of the water, where flow hits the surface and stuff like that. And voila! You're done. This took me about 2 hours to complete from scratch.

Hope you liked!

Products used: Water effects, EZ-water, glue, and stuff like that.