Building Tips

You Need A Kiln

You want to have a kiln expressly for Fimo and Sculpey.  The best thing for it is an old toaster oven.  I got ours on a "free stuff" list serve run by our community.  Note: if you use the kiln outside, where there's plenty of ventilation, you can do some crazy stuff with it.  Styrofoam will become put off toxic fumes if you put it in the oven for too long, but it can withstand 270 for the time it takes to dry the Fimo without melting too much, allowing you to make styrofoam skeletons for your scenery and then texturing with Fimo.  Be Warned:  This tip will create toxic fumes.  Serious health problems will result if you breath in the fumes let off of melting styrafoam.

Painting like a poor man with no time #1

You never want to paint scenery when it's put together.  It takes far less time to paint things and then put them into the scene.

Painting like a poor man with no time #2

 can't stress this enough.  Painting scenery is not the same as painting miniatures.  Miniature painters have to get midnight blue to off white in the space of a milimeter.  Fine.  But painting scenery is done with gigantic brushes that come six to a pack for a dollar and rather than using Citadel, we use Tempera (with the added benefit that the smell will take you back immediately to memories of kindergarten).  Painters must master painting the symbol of chaos onto a shoulder pad.  Me, I use decals.  Except decals suck so sometimes, I use pens.  Sharpies.  They're great.

Let's be realistic here.  There's the White Dwarf/Golden Demon hoitie toitie way of making your miniature wargames look great, and then there's the model railroad/military vignette, greasy, realistic way.  The latter looks better and is easier.  Miniatures have to look good, scenery just has to make the miniatures look good.

Melting styrofoam like a big boy

Everyone knows that spray paint melts styrofoam (as does polyester resin, polyeurethane, and just about any other chemical you wouldn't want to inhale), but most people see this as a reason to avoid spray painting styrofoam always.  It isn't.  If you coat the styrofoam with a texture like plaster of paris, only the places that you've left uncovered will melt.  This allows you to make organic looking sink holes, crevices, pock marks, etc. in the stryofoam.  If stretch thin wires over the such blank patches and then spray, it will look like roots stretching over those holes, or the equivalent if you're working on something a little less conventional.

Scenery guy, magician, and ice maker

I always liken scenery makers to magicians because we so rarely give away our secrets.  I do not make hills for my gaming group because I hadn't been able to figure out how to make the hills look like the ones made by our group's previous scenery guy.  When I asked him how he did it, he answered, "with a knife."  Yeah, right.  Absolute bullshit.  That's like asking the guy who built the Eifel tower how he built it, and having him answer, "with a screwdriver."  Now, this guy (the hillmaker, not the guy at the Eifel tower) are both scenery people, wouldn't you think we'd share our secrets?  Well, no.  Not only that, but the answer, "with a knife" only leads me down the wrong path, both in technical ability (the effect cannot be reproduced "with a knife" without an amazing level of skill that would put your work in a museum) and also in personal confidance (I feel like I don't know what I'm doing  because I can't figure out how to make hills like that "with a knife).  The latter is the point behind every White Dwarf article on making scenery, and the effect is always the same. 

First off you figure out what the hell they mean by hard card, or whatever, and then you're all set to make that gothic cathedral they're making and, boom, you can't do it.  So, you give up.  What you don't know is that they have hundreds of dollars worth of precision saws, sanders, routers, and lathes, not to mention a frickin' laser, high temperature molds, and oh yeah...a budget.  I've seen things built by the guys at GW where they say, "we got this part from a toaster," and I recognize the part as something you find at the plumbing aisle at Home Depot.  Just like magicians:  misdirection is the key.

So, I've figured out how to make the hills, but I'm not telling you.  My baby needs to eat.  I can only say that it's not done with a knife...or is it.

The reason that we don't say how to do things is because it destroys the illusion that what we're doing is impressive.  It's a peak behind the curtain, and you figure out that the hive world is really just an upside down milk carton, some bendy straws, and a toy from a Happy Meal.  Seriously.

For instance, ice.  People look at my ice worlds and they comment as to the degree to which they are impressed.  Yeah.  Here's how to make ice:  First off, there are multiple kinds of glue sticks, they are not all the same.  Whatever method used to make glue sticks creates, I imagine, a cheap way and a more refined, slightly more expensive way.  You will notice that a staple of the dollar store are bags of glue sticks.  Meanwhile, you can also get a bag at Michael's (for instance) for $2 or $1.50 or whatever.  You want the cheap ones.  The expensive ones are more clear than the cheap ones.  You can kind of see through the expensive ones, and the cheap ones look like thinned out white wax.  Guess what they look like when they're really thin, say when a line of glue is put down the side of a hill facing.   That's right ice!  Simple drags snakes of the stuff about every inch or so straight down the slope of the hill.  Any where the slope is at forty five degrees or less, sort of ice on the slope to represent sheets of the frozen stuff.  The whole process will take you a total of ten minutes for a big hill...tops.

Don't say I never told you nothing.  Now, a few warnings.  First off, glue guns get frickin' hot.  Even as I write this, there's a second degree burn on my left hand just below the nail on my pointer finger.  Nasty.  And be prepared.  When you get hot burning glue on you, the stuff is still glue, it sticks while it burns...like napalm really.  Which means you're also going to burn the fingers that you use to pry the stuff off with.  The simple rule is this, the glue gone is a tool and the minute you don't fear injury from your tools is the point in time when the tool gets you.

Buying paint/painting ground

I was discussing a miniature with this guy I know.  He had just painted a mighty Sarlock, or whatever it is that the kroot ride into battle, and he was telling me that he didn't have much choice as to what color to paint the beast because all of his paints had dried up.  I told him that he could pick up more paint for $.99 a bottle, Delta Creamcoats, or Americana, or all of those kinds of paints.  He assured me he only used Citadel paints.

The masochist.

Look, Citadel paints really suck.  Maybe you've become skilled with inks, I never have, but they must represent the only Citadel paint you should buy.  Delta Creamcoat gives you twice as much paint for a third of the price.  Too thick?  Add water. Water's free.  Don't be a tool.  Don't buy Citadel.

As for painting scenery, you can't even afford to use Delata Cream coat.  You need Tempera.  It costs $1.99 for 16 fl. oz. of the stuff.  You will need black, white, two shades of grey (made by mixing black and white 2/3 to 1/3 and then the other way around, brown (and lot's of it) and green.

Oh yeah, and mix the paint in with the water when you're making the plaster of paris or hydrocal for the scenery's ground.  That way you never have to paint the scenery's ground.

Making water out of resin

            As I mentioned elsewhere, you cannot pour resin onto Styrofoam: it will eat it.  Unfortunately, the prime material that you use as a scenery designer is Styrofoam and there really isn’t much you can do to get around that.  Also, I really haven’t found very good things with which to make water apart from resin.  Polyeurithane has a weird color, gloss varnish won’t give the impression of death, and Woodland Scenics realistic water just plain doesn’t work.  So, now what.

            Okay, first of all, you want to cover the bank area with as much plaster as possible when you’re putting in the ground. This means that only the bed of the river is going to be a problem.  Okay, now depending on how you make the bed, it will be more or less of a problem.  If you make the bed out of foam core, you could catch a break, then again, the resin could wet through the paper and eat the foam, or it could dry and bend the foam.  Foam core is always iffy.

            If you texture the bed with a hot knife, the stryofoam generally melts into hardened strips, which is great, but the parts that aren’t hardened are now thinner and if they melt they’re more likely to let the resin seep out, which is worse.  Painting the bed is helpful in covering the vulnerable Styrofoam, but it isn’t enough.

            However, I would not, as others have said, claim that using polyester resin on Styrofoam is an impossibility.  I got it to work through a combination of paint and aerosol sealant.  You can find sealant in most hobby stores with the spray paint.  I don’t know what it does, technically, but man does this stuff work.  I suggest you also use it on anything you are attempting to make a mold out of, as porous material tend to grip RTV rubber.  But I digress.

            After painting and sealing my river bed, the resin didn’t eat through (generally).  There were a few hairs of pink Styrofoam poking through but not enough to be mentioned.  However, note, you are not out of the danger zone just yet.

            If the resin makes it through the “dam” you’ve set up at the head or foot of the stream then it is likely to make it under the plate and eat the base out from underneath.  It is imperative then that you make sure you pour the resin on a level surface, that you dam up the stream as best as possible (I suggest about a half inch of hot glue), and that you seclude the plates from each other.  That way if one plate bursts, it won’t cause damage to the others.  In some cases, also, the damage will be minimal:  the resin eats through the Styrofoam, but not all the way through.  When pouring resin, I suggest using a plastic drop cloth.  It will eat through paper and resin it to the floor making it nigh impossible to get up again.  With plastic, you can bunch up the sheets around the plates, thus isolating the problem. 

            Now, resin.  First of all, Resin is toxic, both to the touch and through inhalation.  Fiberglass resin even more so, but I don’t play with that stuff much.  Also, aerosol sealant and polyeurithane are things you want to stay the hell away from while they are drying. They stink, and of course, the fumes are toxic.  Just be careful.  Work outside if at all possible, and if not possible, open a lot of windows and put a fan blowing the gas out. 

            Now then, while the resin is drying you have some  options, that I want to suggest.  In order to accentuate the depth of the resin, I suggest taking blue paint and one of those cheap cheap brushes I keep advising that you have around and drag the blue paint (really watered down) just under the surface.  It will give the impression of underwater currents.  Depending on how dirty you want the water, you can submerge things in it that might be floating downstream.  Unless you’re careful, some of the bank foliage will probably fall in also.  Finally, when the resin is nearly dry, you can take segments of clear fishing line and imbed them in the surface of the stream to create the effect of ripples.  This effect can also be achieved by streaking clear hot glue down the plate before the resin is poured.

            That’s about it.  Happy river making!

Applying Static Grass

The ancient art of applying static grass has been kept secret through misinformation for centuries.  The ancient Chinese during the Xeng Yang dynasty first determined that bits of ionized felt could be attached to the bases of their space marines to give the effect referred to in their ancient poetry as "the little grass" but the secret was passed word of mouth from teacher to teacher under the understanding that the written directions, 'just put it on the base and walk away; the longer you are away, the better it will look,' was a facade to keep pretenders and charlatans from ever stumbling upon the true method.

Recently, a much more insidious red herring has been produced by the hobby industry.  The narrative is that static grass is to be pinched on to little glops of glue and then blown on (gently, oh so gently) so that it will stand up.  But one must wait for the glue to be just right before this blowing can occur.  This technique blows.

Another technique suggested is that the area, wet with glue, be dunked directly in a bucket of pre-shaken static grass and then hoisted out.  Some techniques combine the "blow" and "hoist" techniques claiming that once the static grass is hoisted, it should be blown on.  Blowing is the secret to get the static grass to stand up like its preparing for a GW showcase window.

Neither of these techniques really work very well.  Here's why.  Both rely on a state when the glue is still adhesive enough to stick, but solid enough to keep something's shape.  For white glue, this equinox of characteristics probably happens half way into its drying cycle.  Is that an hour, two hours.  Who know?  I've never had this stuff work.

Here's what I do: take hot glue.  Hot glue is very very sticky, but it is only sticky for maybe a minute.  If you use hot glue either of the above techniques will work perfectly.  You're welcome.

Moulds, Plain and Found

I believe in moulds.  I believe in buying them.  I believe in making them.  There's a point in time where you leave behind one kind of scenery and face off against another.  My career has been an oscillation between these two poles:  scenery made from bits and pieces of stuff and scenery that is cast in a mould.  Often, one leads to the other.  You make a prototype which you make a mould of, or sometimes you simply take bits that you've cast and place them in your scenery (this is an especially good trick for bad casts and rubble piles.

In any case, you may not have a clue where to get moulds and so, I thought I'd suggest some unconventional sources.  The conventional source, by the way, is Hirst Arts.

Two unconventional moulds.  The first is moulds for cakes.  These can be found in most kitchenware stores in a wide variety of shapes.  Quite a few of them look positively medieval.  You can find these moulds in silicon rubber (great stuff!) or in metal.  The metals not bad, but do realize that you're going to need to hammer the back side of the mould to get it to release.  Wee fun.

The other kind of unconventional mould is not really a mould at all, but since I have a two year old son, I have found these items to be fairly useful.  I'm speaking of the plastic display shell that protects toys from little fingers while the toy hangs on a peg in a store.  You wouldn't believe how wonderfully shaped these items are.  They're perfect, with a bit of modification for large scale super sci-fi scenery.  Outfitted with a few bits, they look like something right out of Star Wars.  The shells themselves aren't really all that sturdy though.  So, what I suggest is that you take the shells and use them like moulds.  The shape you press out will be a bit heavier, but it will be as sturdy as whatever material you make it out of.  I myself use the shell for an 8 pack of AA batteries as a base for all number of imperial stratagems.