Also, no set, nor ring lights, mics, or a script. So I won’t be knocking on Hollywood’s door any time soon with my own miniature terrain building show. Though the YouTube market place is flooded with them already. Great ones, good ones, and everything else in between. Epic builds, dioramas, water effects, painting gurus, everything under the sun oh my! Rock moulds, static grass applicators, tufts, and pre-made flowers, rocks, sand, screed and multi coloured grouts. So many options for paints, and finishing styles. You can go ultra realistic, campy, grim-dark. Washes, glazes, over sprays and dry brushing. So much content on all of it. I like watching people make 4 x 8ft boards that have various zones of scenery types. Mountain range, valley, river bed, open water, temple ruins, an open field, stands of trees, bridges… the list can be endless. I’d make it all, if I could. I build mine on 2 x 2ft plywood squares. It was meant to help me store them, but I keep them all together in the basement. I have plans for four more boards to complete my designs. But where can I possible put eight feet of terrain in my house? I can’t do it. Going to have to wait until the kids get older and we sell off, donate a whole whack of childrens gear. Clothes, toys, change tables, tool benches, and tote boxes worth of accessories. Going to be a while. Also, I want to build my own over sized gaming table for the basement, so having that would help out too. I’ll make mine with a deep inset pocket so that I can put toppers on to cover our games/puzzles that are on the go. Very much Wyrmwood inspired that way. Stay classy San Diego.
Category: Terrain building
What to build next…
I know I have a model kit on my work bench at the moment but I’m starting to think about building a small self contained terrain piece. Like a specific set of ruins for a church or temple. I have a couple of good chunks of foam board left, and a whole bunch of air dry clay that I recently recieved. I guess if I can find a brick pattern stamp I could do the flooring aswell inside the terrain piece. Then using industrial adhesive, super glue, and a hot glue gun, I could put it all together pretty quickly. Give me the chance to try properly ruined architecture.
I don’t have any more trees on hand, but I do have grasses, scrub brush, and a few shrubs and flowers. So it’s not like it’ll end up barren looking. I have sand, stone and grout too. I could do something from a desert climate. This is when I wish I had a closet full of rock moulds, plaster, trees, and static grasses & an applicator. Damn!
I don’t have a whole lot of room left to store stuff, so it’ll need to be shoe box size or smaller. My shelves aren’t that tall, so I can’t make the whole temple or church ruin. I guess it would be more of a diorama piece. Damn. Now I’m excited about it. It’s going to stay on my mind for ages now. But I already bought a new paint series of eight colours for my VF-1 Valkyrie model. I should really complete that first. I should… but.
The other day I had an idea for a new sculpted bust too. So I’m going to need to make a bunch of new bases on the lathe. That takes a day or two as I have to glue up a bunch of Walnut pieces, or find a suitable maple log portion to be turned into fancy rounds. That’s a good way to get my wood working fix in without having to touch a hundred icy cold hand tools. If I use a long enough chunk of wood I can get at least four or five bases out of it. Plus sanding and slicing it up, more sanding and finish. That will satiate a bunch of create pangs I’ve been having.
I think I am slightly more interested in painting my model kit, than the initial (and very important) build up. I need to be more slow and methodical, so that it looks better generally than the last one I constructed a few years ago, and only recently painted. I can see several rough spot where I didn’t cut all of the tabs away. And my build was sloppy. Forgotten pieces, and glued on elements that shifted or fell over entirely. My decal application left much to be desired as well. Yikes.
Plus a new larger paid project came in so I can’t jump on any of this stuff right away until the majority of my day job projects are well under way. Glad for the work though. So now I just have more time to day dream about my hobbies before I actually start any side projects. Not to worry. Once I’m in a comfortable spot with my open design jobs, I can pick up a brush, nippers, or a file and chip away at all of this stuff. Plus somewhere in the middle I will find the time to play guitar/bass and the keyboard songs I know. Sometimes I think I have too many hobbies, but they really do add a dash of something extra to my daily life. So not all bad then eh? Right.
Building war gaming terrain.
If I had the money and ample storage space I would spend so much time building war gaming terrain, that it isn’t funny. There is just something about it that is very therapeutic, and satisfying. Turning blocks of foam, paper and paint into a vivid playable landscape is really a tonne of fun. I’d make waterfalls, river beds, canyons, open plains, castles and mountains, as well as dungeons. Hand built houses, and guard shacks, sheds and windmills, the types and styles of out building to create is nearly infinite. Oh the possibilities are endless. Alas, the flocking, static grass, miniature trees and supplies are neither free to a good home nor cheap. Those awesome tufts, and miniature flowers all come from Europe with a hearty shipping cost per item. A static grass applicator or any provenance will set you back nearly $200 bones after shipping and import fees. Plaster of paris, rock moulds, sculpt a mould, paper mache, glue, it all costs money to keep, and space to store it all. I do love it though. And therein lies the rub. I do love to build things, of all sorts, but our house is small, so where on earth do you keep it all? Plus all of the additional tools of the trade for scratch builds, and modifications to store bought materials. Paints enough to fill racks, boxes of moulds, and cartons of flocking. No wonder the Youtubers work out of warehouse spaces. Not to mention the fumes from cutting styrofoam with a hot knife. Phew! Stinky. Not good for you either. But still, isn’t building terrain awesome!
Keep in mind that I am no expert, I turn to Youtubers like Geek Gaming Scenics and Real Terrain Hobbies, or Squidmar Miniatures for all sorts of helpful insights. Those folks all get paid to build amazing terrain, dioramas and such. I have to imagine, that just like any hobby, once you start to get paid for it and have client demands it loses some luster and gains added layers of stress. Things I don’t want. I just want to build it. Loud music, imagination, and testing the boundaries of what I am capable of bringing to life. I hope my kids need to build dioramas for school someday, so that we can kick ass and go for broke!
I haven’t made anything new, terrain wise in more than a year, perhaps more. I moved into furniture to satisfy that bug. But here’s a gallery of some miniatures, pre built purchased sets that I painted, and my hand crafted terrain tiles, that are a uniform 2ft by 2ft square.
Now I do apologize if the following video I took makes anyone **motion sick. You’ve been warned.
As always thanks for looking. Ciao Bella!
The kids finally found the D&D terrain board…
And they are tromping around the boards using their collection of LOL Dolls. I’m not sure it’ll withstand the level of punishment that they dole out. But what a good excuse to build new ones if the bash and beat my current one beyond repair. Not that I want to see four hundred dollars worth of static grasses, tufts, trees and miniature flowers, rocks, stones, tree barks and sculpt a mould, and paper mache, and three types of foam not to mention the two to three months I spent, painting, modeling and building it all. I made a small dock and a water/beach area, open plains, mountains and a grid plateau where I have ancient ruins of a temple. There is an underground cave network, and a road, road signs, ladders and a marsh too. I hope it survives, as we haven’t gotten around to playing any D&D games with it yet. I usually have it left as a diorama of a battle/fight.
I keep meaning to reread my books and create a campaign that my young kids can enjoy, but I have been distracted by home DIY projects, sculpting, guitar, model building and making furniture as of late. Plus throw in paid day job and parental commitments and my D&D dreams of family conquests of far away lands has laid dormant for quite some time. Could be worse.
We are back to Monday, and a good amount of rain has fallen since late last night. I do hope, nay – pray that all this rain finds it’s way to the farm. They had a full inch of rain last week, but more during the month of July is always welcome. A steady drizzle over days that soaks into the ground rather than a massive singular downpour that runs off into the creek/river is preferable. But at this point, rain is rain. France is bacon. As it were.
Not a whole lot of domestic duties will be accomplished on this Monday, nor any Monday in the next seven weeks. I need an empty house in order to get a worthwhile cleaning session in. Not to say we aren’t cleaning up after ourselves. But a touch of a lackadaisical approach to the floors has entered the chat, if you know what I mean. Laundry, dishes, food prep surfaces are unaffected by the kids 24/7 presence. But the floors? Hoo boy, not their proudest moment. Cabinets ate looking shabby from a plethora of grubby hands touching them constantly. Blood and food has found it’s way back onto the hallway walls – again. This is why the first week of school is spent decluttering and cleaning the house from top to bottom. My kids spent nine weeks getting grime over every surface imaginable. Chocolate milk spatter on the ceiling? Check. Blood streak on the hallway base board? Check. Face imprints of both sides of every glass door or window? Check. Takes several hard working days to get rid of it all once I have them both back in school come September.
I am trying very, very hard to not get mad or have an outburst regarding the current state of our home. But it’s always there, just under the surface. Itching to throw away any and or all items left on the floor after weeks of requests to tidy up after themselves. I did build a series of large toy boxes for this exact reason. So I wouldn’t step on anything sharp every single god damn day. But growth, exploration and experimentation are key building blocks for well rounded youth. Just wish a healthy dose of tidying the fuck up, was as important to them, as making a huge fuctangular mess of my living room floor. But I digress.
This weekend we visited the Mediterranean festival in town and enjoyed some funnel cake and ice cream. Not going go lie, had hoped to find that Fish Taco food truck that swings by once in a while that makes fantastic – well, Fish Tacos. Squeeze of lemon juice on top, fresh from the batter and fryer. So good. Was sad to not see it. The whole thing was a Fusion event, with lots of Greek cultural stuff to explore. Smelled so good down at Memorial Park on Saturday.
Something unexpected that I was proud of in 2021.
Earlier this year I built a series of four terrain panels, each measuring two feet by two feet, and almost ten inches tall on the highest elevation. I was originally going to build just one, but I had such a good time making the first that I decided to go ahead and all three more to it to make a larger gaming table for D&D or war gaming. It’s not something I have done before, but it sure was a lot of fun. I can see why people get addicted to terrain building and 3d printing and such. It was a wonderful creative outlet, and I wish I had the room to use and store an eight foot gaming table with modular mix and match panels. I would love to build a proper wharf, a seaside fishing town, a mountain pass, ancient ruins, a meandering river bed, a proper cliff face and waterfall, try water effects, real rock moulds with plaster of paris etc… a hot wire cutter, a grass applicator and those uber swanky high class model train trees too. There are just so many things you could do with the time and resources to tackle them. My only hope is to help my kids build dioramas for elementary school projects! Or try to build a bunch of much smaller and more compact elements, like castle walls, or ruins or individual hovels & town houses. I’d love to see any of your work if you have images handy!.
It was a great run.
A bitter sweet moment has arrived now that I have completed the entirety of my four terrain boards to build one large interconnected 4ft by 4ft gaming table. Just in time too, as I came perilously close to finishing off my modpodge, ground cover, spring & summer grass flocking, foam stock and various colours of paint. Not to mention the store bought pepples and decorative sand. Phew – it was a nail biter. All of my best trees were used and the last few are so tiny I’m not sure how or what I’d ever use them on. Without further ado, I present my newest war gaming terrain build, and the final grouping.
I am happy with how they turned out. I might have miscalculated the foam alignments, but as I built them all separately I am not surprised by this at all. I look forward to many hours of story telling, make believe and quality time with my girls playing war games and D&D on these things. I’m in the process of building us each our own dice trays and at least one dice tower. In a few years I’d actually love to build a proper table (a nice one with hand cut joinery) for games that can be left set up. Now I need to finish reading my manuals and handbooks, nerf some stories or do up some homebrew adventures.
I followed all the same steps from boards 1 through 3. Although we chose the coldest day in March to try to cut foam outdoors to avoid the smell and fumes ( which worked for our health, but left us with numb fingers, and a perpetually cold hot knife). Memories – that’s how we make’em.
Well, I’ve gone and done it again. Terrain build #3.
I’ve always wanted to have an interconnected series of gaming terain boards and now I’m on a mission to complete all four 2ft by 2ft boards.
The third installment sees us come up against some steep shoreline, more water, cliffs, and a ruined temple upon a plateau with trees growing out of its discarded rubble. I also tried something new with this build in terms of materials: namely tile grout that hardens to stone with the liberal application of just plain water. Choosing the right colour was/is an ongoing challenge unless you can store multiple sacks and/or boxes of the stuff.
Here are the build images in progression.
If you looked this far, and read that, thanks for following along. One more build to go and then I’ll have to move on to my woodshop projects. Almost finished the Harry Potter trunk I’m building for my daughters book collection, wand, robes, tie, glasses and D&D dice. All I need to finish it is the burgundy felt I ordered to line the inside in Gryffindor colours. Catch you around.
A bit of media for the terrain build.
I’m not a vlogger or youtuber so my video snippets are few and far between. But here’s a short flyby of my two completed terrain boards with a few minis in tableau on one half. I’ll be back to writing my short story series about The Chronicles of Kelvin soon enough. So fear not, I’m not transitioning to only war gaming, or recipes or short blurbs about nothing much at all. Take care out there folks. And with no further ado, my terrain build in video format.
And because I’m proud of much of it, my book case full of bust sculpts from my home office.
War gaming board build number two.
So the crafting terrain building bug has hit. And it hits hard. Like a sledgehammer to the skull, when things go right anyway. Shortly after completing the first board with a mountain and some water and hills, I found a second 2ft by 2ft board and started another portion. They go together to make one longer playable table or can be used separately. I ordered some new parts for it, but I had enough to finish it with what I had laying around. Could put some extra bits on later, but I don’t have to.
Same process as before. Glue on foam to the board. Cut thicknesses to make obstacles and elevations and landmarks. Glue on thick bark chunks to make rock walls (this part was new, last time I just used paper mache and a tin foil mould). Bark was simple and cheap. Found lots in the yard. Washed and dried it, then glued them on. Add pebbles, rocks and sand. Added paper mache in a thin layer to cover the foam and block in the bark to make the transitions seamless. Let dry in front of a fan over night. Spray paint with black primer. Let that dry over night. Dry brush my grey/beige/white layers on the rocks. Add watered down brown to my ground portions of the terrain. Flock and decorate. Done like dinner.
Let me just sneak this in here, I also wrote a whole slew of short stories, some take place in space. Check them out. An interconnected series of short stories set in space. Cheers! -M
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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