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Foreboding my previous lifestyle in favor of painting for hire was the best decission in my entire life. Not only that I have a lot of fun in my ‘job’ but also plenty of time for my own projects. For those who knew me before scarhandpainting.com the number of Special Projects appearing lately might be quite a surprise. I myself am taken aback by the sheer numbers of personal projects I can work on. Below is a visual step-by-step of just such a project.
A big Infinity Event is closing in. ‘Polish Championships’ will take place tomorrow and I’ve trained my Corregiror army and dice rolling hard in preparation. Along with the usual mano-a-mano combat, a Painting Contest will also take place at the event. Each player is eligible to select one of his army rosters and present the miniatures for everyone to see and vote. I thought long and hard to think of anything that could deliver my miniatures to the podium. I know very well that there’s plenty of awesome painters among the Infinity community in Poland and that competition will be very strong. My miniatures look nice but not awesome enought to compete with paint jobs that literally blow my mind. I’ve figured something special – a Nomad-like trick to fight for the attention of voters. A special display diorama to compliment my army’s visuals as a nice background, built and painted in the same theme as the bases of my Corregidor army.
For this purpose I found a suitable wooden crate to be used as the base for entire diorama. I’ve also set up a makeshift display of miniatures to see if the base is large enought to accomodate them.
The wooden crate passed this test so I’ve gathered 3mm PCV and some HDF leftovers. The entire layout of the diorama was taking life in my mind’s eye as I started to work on it. I’ve used the wooden crate as a template to cut a floor and a wall for the diorama. After that an idea to build a small balcony with stairs and a sniper point came to my mind. I quickly dig through any materials and pieces that might be used for that and found my good old Micro Art Studio’s walkways set. The set had some sweet looking pieces that I implemented into this project.
Using a ruler and a pen I drawn some makeshift panels and bolt holes on the ‘wall’ and prepared space for MDF pieces to be put into. I also shortened the MAS’s stairs and added elements of my own to make them look more industrial. Floor followed in a quick succession with the center being switched for a big MAS’s MDF panel. I also moundet the ‘wall’ using three screws. Initially I wanted to use magnets to keep the thing removable, but in the end I wanted for my miniatures to be safe. After that I’ve mounted three wall panels to be used as a base for glow globes. I also made some dents, marks and holes in the concrete panels of both wall and floor. Once I was done I’ve made a last check of display. Just before undercoating I had an idea to add some pipes and a vent along the walls to build even more industrial theme of the diorama. I used lollipop sticks and some leftovers to do that and proceeded to the undercoat.
Once it was dry I have covered the entire thing in two strong layers of Eshin Gray, then painted up all metal elements with a Tin Bitz, Boltgun Metal, Mithrill Silver layers and then washed entire thing with Devlan Mud two times. I slowly applied layer after layer starting with Scorched Brown, then following with Calthan Brown, Ryza Rust, Lugganath Orange and lastly Flayed One Flesh. This is the same colour scheme as the one used for my Concrete Bases. Actually both metal and concrete were painted the same way as in these tutorials:
TUTORIAL: CONCRETE BASES part 2: Painting
TUTORIAL: PAINTING ‘FIVE LAYERS’ METAL
Starting with Calthan Ryza Rust I’ve covered metal elements along with concrete panels, but before that I’ve made a short pause to airbrushed white-creeme lines and a Nomad graffitti. Ryza Rust, Lugganath Orange and Flayed One Flesh went over the lines to create an impression of them being damaged and eroded along with the concrete panels. Once Flayed One Flesh layer was done I lined/edged all the angles using the exact same piant. I also added grease/Rust streaks and oil stains here and there to bring the diorama closer to a life scene.
In the end I had to add a name, so I used a template created for me by Reycast Miniatures and airbrushed another graffitti onto the now black edges. Simple OSL was airbrushed and I mounted glow globes in the center points of each light. I also added three purple barrels to compensate glow globe’s green in preparation for red miniatures.
The final piece exceeded my expectations. Even my Girlfriend said it looks cool – and that’s rare! Damn – I count on this one to help me climb the ladder in the contest. If not – well, at least I have a fine piece to set up behind glass along with some less used Nomad Miniatures XD
27.6.2016: I actually won the painting contest XD Ultra happy about the fact! Here’s the entry:
Half a year of waiting, two months of working and four days of painting have finally seen “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT finished. Last week, after adding some final detail which you can check out in “The Colony” Special Project part FOUR and FIVE, I was engaged with painting all the terrain. It was a hell of a hard work, as the enormity of surface being painted overwhelmed me to a point where I slept around three to four hours each day, woke up to paint, made a break, then got back to painting etc. Still, my work has paid off – as right now my gaming table for Infinity is complete!
Or so I have thought till the moment of taking first pictures came by. Not only the ‘GO GO NOMADS!’ night club looked like if painted by a three-years old, (Which my beloved GF announced just as soon as she layed eyes on my masterpiece…) but also some key colour wheel synergies were missing. Here and there I overkilled colours or just made plain mistakes. Couple of improovements had to be done ASAP, as otherwise I’ve risked my mind being overheated with self-directed anger. So I’ve started working on things that triggered my self-loathing, eliminating them one at a time.
‘GO GO NOMADS! Night Club’ was the first one to undergo a small redesign. I’ve dimmed the pink, and ‘browns’, adding much more white to consolidate colour scheme and black to set a strong, but natural contrast. This change did the trick of dimming the effect of “child’s dream”… It’s still ugly as fuck, but my concious is clear – it was planned from the beginning to make this one into a nice easter egg.
Next thing to add was “detail” as my buildings clearly lacked it. The simplest way to do it was to use some already existing, tiny wall features, paint them using a variety of colour and also add more plexi-glass holos.
In the end I also harmonized the main colour scheme by adding much more green. I used aquarium plants and some MDF leftovers for this. Green plants broke the flat colour scheme of the walls, and complemented the overall colour scheme – now all the Holos were once again moved to the visual background.
Inbetween all these changes and upgrades, I was able to made a short photo session. You can view the entire GALLERY HERE, while below is a small sample:
Also as a bonus – I’ve already played one battle on the table – taking some in-game pictures and preparing a short video about how terrain was set up for it.
Is this the end of The Colony? Judging by how necessity is the mother of invention I think that we will see some more of The Colony in the future. Especially with such kind of things around… just be sure to visit this site from time to time 😉
The story of “The Colony” Special Project is closing to an end. In FOUR’th part of this article I’ve started to add detail to all my buildings. The quantity of vents and additional stuff was so enormous, that I had to support with a help of a friend, to prepare all of them – still it took more than a week to complete. Once vents were in place I started to paint all the buildings, which was a challenge in it’s own way. I never imagined that painting buildings can be so exhausting and so many mistakes can be made during such a (should be) easy and relaxating task. Still – I was confronted with the ‘unexpected’ and had to improvise more than couple of times…
Before we proceed to actual ‘painting stuff’ it is vital for me to continue where I’ve finished “The Colony” Special Project part FOUR. I’ve introduced you to ‘Astro-Gastro Center’, which was one of my table’s centerpieces. A single picture is not enough to show the number of detailed food boths added all around the building…
The idea was born out of necessity. After deciding to differentiate both of the ‘big’ buildings – I had to find a nice theme for this one. I had a lot of trash and leftovers from purchased terrain sets. I was also supported with couple rare pieces (like Zen Terrain’s food both signboards) provided by a friend. I’ve picked the best pieces and decided to build the theme around them, for this building to be at least as special as the ‘GO GO NOMADS’ night club.
It started with some small adjustements to the building’s walls. Once I had the boths made and in place – I started to add some small elements to try to give each both a special theme.
One day’s work resulted in Astro-Gastro Center being born out of scratch.
I’ve been already head to toe in building stuff, so I decided not to stop at decorating the buildings, but also work at adding some high placed spots, for snipers, forward obserwers and linked ‘shooty’ troops. Not too much – just enought to raise the area of play – one level up. I used what was left of my MDF pieces, added some Plasticard and prepared these, fully detachable advertisement banners. As a filler I used the only thing that I had around – the Scar_hand Painting bussiness cards 🙂
[I have already played on these – they have a nice impact on gaming style, along with just being useful).
Now I can focus on the actual painting, which started just as it always does – with a proper undercoat. For my colour scheme I require three strong layers of undercoat. It starts with grey, proceeds through either creeme/bone or soft grey and finally get’s whitened with Games Workshop’s Skull White spray. Skull white is vital to the overall looks of this Colour Scheme, as it’s really white and matt. It goes well with MDF terrain, covering all with a nice, strong layer. Whole process of undercoating ate an entire day – with me sitting on a balcony, spraying each individual terrain piece – one after another. Three rounds of undercoating, with my nosdrills clogged, eyes irritated and head on a verge of exploding. At least my neighbors did not protest about the smell…
One day later the regular ‘painting’ started. It took three days of labour with a lot of painting and not much sleep. I used an Airbrush, while a regular brush applying some Fire Hot Orange to keep up with my table’s main theme (Orange + White/Creeme + Greenery). I used a masking tape for this – providing some curious, industrial shapes on the roofs and walls of all buildings. I also used a colour wheel to check out which colour will go well along with orange/green in a tri-colour scheme. The wheel told me that purple-pink should do, so I decided to try it out on ‘GO GO NOMADS!” night club. (which I actually regret by now as while ‘solo’ the building looks just ugly as fuck :P).
Another ‘layer’ was composed of sandy yellow and soft brown. I applied them both in certain hexes along the roofs and in much smaller quantity over the walls.
Finally added some blood splatters and grease, which sounds pretty easy if not taking their enormous quantity and dimensions of the buildings I had to work with.
I also added some soft points od dust and dirt along with smudges here and there. Then decided to fill all vents with dark brown/rust Vallejo effect and add more smudges – comming out of them.
My work is finally done and I have mixed feelings about the end result. While the entirety of “The Colony” presents itself great – particular buldings require some additional work. Especially the infamous “GO GO NOMADS!” night club is one to build up my concerns – will surely make some corrects and keep working on it in the days to come. A proper gallery is under construction but now I can provide you with this small sample of how “The Colony” looks like.
See you in “The Colony” Special Project part SIX next week 😉
The long awaited moment is finally here – I acquired all the materials necessary to proceed with “The Colony Special Project”! Somewhere along this month I have received packages filled with stuff from Titan Forge, Reycast and Micro Art Studio. Each time I got one, I almost jumped out of my pants with excitement, but kept my precious ‘bitz’ for later, when all the components be here. 26th of April the last delivery arrived and not being able to wait any moment longer, I jumped straight to this project! By the way – if you need to catch up to this project – visit “The Colony” Special Project part ONE, TWO or THREE. If you are like ‘Show me more of this stuff, now!’ then proceed below…
The longer I waited for the missing parts, the more ideas came to my mind. More designs were added to the toll and I kept ordering stuff from Micro Art Studio and Reycast. In my mind’s eye “The Colony” gaming table was expanding with each new addition. Having some of the parts at my immediate disposal, inspired me to improve some early solutions, along with creating new ones…
This one came to me just like that – one day I was totally happy with the way my cap-made barrels worked, next I was disgusted by how limited the idea was. My barrels were firm structures, with uncomfortable bases, difficult to shape them into a bigger mass. The solution was obvious – I had to get rid of the bases somehow. Still a base was the only thing that kept the barrels together and I really didn’t wanted to keep each barrel separate. (Which would be totally unplayable, with all the barrels moving around etc.) So I decided to improve, rather than remove the bases – a quick drawing and Micro Art Studio was working with my new design.
Using these re-designed bases let me combo my barrels in many new ways, while maintaning their firm and durable form.
Somewhere between second and third part of this article I felt like something is amiss. Some vital part of gaming tables designed for Infinity that I hadn’t thought about. The ‘Objective Room’ – that was it! So important, yet I totally forgot about it when preparing my initial designs. I started thinking about choosing an Objective Room from among all the cool looking terrain provided by many different companies. In the end I couldn’t find any that would fit into “The Colony”. I wanted to implement something that would compliment all the sparkling holo-ads used to fill this gaming table at some point. In addition to that, I’m not a fan of roofed Objective Rooms. These should be of infinite height and I really wanted to design an objective room that could be considered to fill the role, not being a scyscraper at the same time. I’ve figured out to use a force field theme! It was perfect in it’s simplicity and would go well with holo-ads. In order to keep the cubic force field in the theme of “The Colony” I’ve designed a base that would be used to contain it. Just imagine a futuristic city space, where a permanent force fields are set up in the key locations, like around the antennas, some military consoles etc. VIP’s have access to these, while regular citizens are denied entry. So that’s the bassic idea of my Objective Room. It was made into reality by the courtesy of Micro Art Studio, which used my initial scetch to provide me with the final product. Just take a look at it…
The idea on the paper:
Pieces have arrived:
The base for the force field: Built using a method of errors and corrects, using one MDF piece as a universal ruler and the idea as an actual instruction…
Objective room – closed doors (access denied):
Objective Room – open doors (access granted):
Ingame pictures:
I really do like the end result, and cannot wait to paint this stuff. If anyone is interrested in purchasing one – please contact Micro Art Studio. It is somehow exclusive with a price set to around 50€ and that’s because of the production costs. Still I’d love to see my own design on some random battle report pictures around the internet. I hope that some of you will find the price sufficient and purchase one of these.
Up from the start the idea was to decorate my buildings, at some point, with use of cool looking stuff like vents, doors etc. My buildings are tall and without some detail – could look really intimidating and cold. In order to breathe life into my gaming table I had to forfeit a small percentage of my terrain’s playability tho. This decision was not an easy one, but in the end – once I started to decorate with common stuff – I just couldn’t force myself to stop and started adding some sweet looking details like food booths and Robo-Prostitues enclosed in special display casings. I also decided to distinct both big buildings by giving them a theme. One became a “GO GO NOMADS!” night club, while the other became a small restaurant center.
Doors:
Robo-Prostitutes displays: The idea goes like this: I liked Karakuri miniatures, ordered them to use them at some point, still didn’t had any idea how. Once they came, I figured to display them around the strip club. I made some simple math, asked Reycast to cut some pieces for me and once they came in, used some trash to complete my designs. In meantime I already painted Karakuris, leaving their weapons in place (Cause this is a Nomad club, and Nomads do love guns just as much as the robo-chicks!)
“GO GO NOMADS!” strip club: Is still being decorated, but I can show you how it looks by now. Will have to prepare some of the bitz to finish decorating tho – and I also ordered two larger Holo-Ads with club’s name – Will have to wait for these…
“Astro-Gastro Center”: The whole idea was about a big building with couple of food booths in it’s bowls. I had some leftovers from Zen Terrain’s food booth, along with some trash I used to create my won mini-bars. Some of them simple, while others with their personal theme and all. And here’s where I would like to stop this part of “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT article. I will leave you with shis little teaser. (Hope you don’t mind.)
I do hope to see you soon in the next part of “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT article. Keep your fingers crossed for me, as there’s a lot of work awaiting my attention. In meantime, feel free to ask any questions about this project – here, or at my Facebook.
Ever been in a situation when you really wanted to work on a certain project but couldn’t? I just found myself in such. I’m almost ready to paint my gaming table, with almost all of the pieces already assembled. I even purchased a big stock of sprays and paints required to complete “The Colony” in one go. (Yup – at this point I already picked a perfect Colour Scheme for “The Colony”, being White-Creeme with addition of Grey and Orange elements.) If you read “The Colony” Special Project part two – then you know that once I’m into something – I usually do it at once, regardless of weariness and time required to do it. This time I feel like a trapped animal. The erge to continue my project is killing me, but I cannot proceed without vital pieces that are still to arrive. That’s why I decided to deceive the system.
Being unable to proceed with “The Colony” buildings I focused on add-ons instead. I had some cool ideas for new ‘filler’ type terrain pieces, along with some old ones that needed refitting. If you have a gaming table than you know that buildings provide a variety of different levels and shooting corridors, but it is the fillers that build up the table’s theme and atmosphere. Just take a look at this picture:
Looks kinda empty doesn’t it? Well that’s because it is completely devoid of climate. Just like my old ‘White Boxes’ were. Ok – it is still very playable, with all the additional features, but for a gaming table to have a soul – there must be a plenty of small, sweet looking fillers to attrack the sight. As I am very impressed with Zen Terrain’s design, I decided to incorporate some of their style and colour scheme around my rather industrialised, cumbersome buildings.
Not much to say about these, except for a fact that they are just awesome – It’s love from the first sight 🙂
Micro Art Studio’s Kickstarter campaign just finished and I’m sure to purchase some of their new fillers. What I like the most are standing tripple-holo-ads and benches, but since these are not available for purchase right now – I concentrated on repainting a set of best in the market MAS Holo-Ads. One cannot complete an Infinity Gaming Table if one does not possess these!
I already had a lot of fillers made for my previous gaming table. You can see them all in Tutorial: ‘Do it Yourself’ Gaming Terrain article. All of them could use some additional paint job, or rebasing to better suit the new theme, but the ones that needed it the most were: medium sized walls and (my favorite) futuristic sculptures. I really wanted to provide them with some extra love, cause they looked like this:
I invested some time to redevelop these pieces, adding cool looking plants and a new-themed paint job. I also used a Zen-based pieces to solidify the theme. The end result is exactly as it should – futuristic & juicy.
Inspiration strikes like a lightning and I’m pumped with urge of creation. New ideas come and go – some of them just too good to be skipped. One of such ideas came to me more than a year ago, when I saw a pile of leaflets. These were so ‘Infinity’ styled, that I took couple to use them at some point. As it happened – now, with a new project on the run – these funny, 3d hologram leaflets were perfect to base a terrain piece on. Just some PCV, MDF pieces and twenty minutes provided me with two of these:
Another idea came to me last week, during shower. It sounds stupid, but once you see the end result, you won’t be laughting 🙂 This was certainly the best idea of 2016, yet to be beaten. Infinity 3d Consoles instead of usual tokens, born out of thin air in a matter of two days.
You can read some more about how these were made in Tutorial: Infinity DIY Console. If you like them – be sure to spread the word, so that more people will see them 🙂
Having so much terrain pieces left me with a dilemma of what to do with some of them. Gaming on “White Boxes” required a lot of playable fillers to expand table’s properties. Now, with brand new design some pieces are too big, or too many to be used. Still don’t know if I should try to sell these, strip bare and re-use the parts or redesign against reason…
Now you have seen all the fillers I currently worked on. Why are they so important? Well… do you still remember that poor looking terrain at the top of this article? Take a look at this and tremble with ecstatic shiver!
There were supposed to be at least three parts of this article. With outdoor Objective Room in development, buildings awaiting some substantial parts, new table’s playability being regularly tested, Now I’m pretty sure that two to three more are yet to come. Who knows – If I have to wait more for a delivery of resin pieces – I might loose some of my sanity but also come up with some more ideas! Stay tuned for “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT part four!
Welcome to Modelling Infinity Console tutorial, a short Step-by-step trip through a process of creating Consoles perfect for objective markers in Infinity the Game and other Sci-fi wargames.
You may consider this article to be an extension of “Tutorial: Infinity ‘Do It Yourself’ Gaming Terrain”, in which I tried to inspire you to hunt for some awesome everyday items. Pieces of what might be considered garbage, and yet an awesome source of unlimited potential, when it comes to scenery making.
Before we start, some notes:
The story behind the idea is rather trivial. Years back I was taking a shower, saw my wife’s shower gel bottle and was instantly struck by a surge of inspiration. Colored, clear top element was just too cool to pass by. Transformation from a shower gel plug to a tiny console came natural. Just see for yourself.
I used:
Step one: Main Body
I started by cutting off the plug and pulling out the acrylic part. I then used a hobby knife to thin down the bottom of the acrylic part so that it went in and out smoothly.
Step two: Support
Back in the days I cut 3mm thick PCV and created four legs for the console. On the next attempt, being more experienced, I used an old Spray nozzle. Since then I tested a lot of random stuff, but given a choice I prefer the nozzle above anything else. One man’s trash is another man’s awesome Console support!
Step three: Detail
Thin pieces of PCV, lollipop sticks, Airsoft Gun ceramic balls, plastic miniatures bitz – anything will do for an awesome filler. The idea behind the console is a 3d hologram of a city space, or and enhanced molecule view. Whatever is put inside and sprayed white will look great. I leave this to your imagination.
Step four: Paint job
I painted entire console white to fit my own gaming board. Looking back I strongly recommend painting the inside white to take advantage of the vibrant color mounted on top. Other than that anything will do.
Final result:
Since 2016 I made few dozen consoles. These, being the first set, will always have a special place in my heart.
Bonus Pic: (different scenery piece)
I hope you like the article. If it ever inspires you to make your own Fa Shower Gel consoles, be sure to tag me at Facebook @scarhandpainting or Instagram _scarhandpainting so I can enjoy your work. Cheers!
Last time I wrote about how “The Colony” Special Project came to life. A road from a tiny speck of an idea to a fully developed gaming table is a long one and I just begun my travel. I have gathered almost all of the items required to build my terrain set. I have revised my ideas and made peace with some circumstantial decisions. I was ready to start the construction process!
It all happened so quickly. One day I was engaged in my usual activities, painting miniatures, checking out facebook, writing articles… The other I got up to find myself knee deep in bitz, terrain elements, empty glue bottles and with my hands thickened with too much of dried out glue. It was as much glorious as scary. I couldn’t stop. Half kneeling on the ground, due to my workdesk being currently occupied with THIS – I felt like a child playing LEGO. Well – when inspiration comes a man is gotta do what a man is gotta do – I let myself be swallowed by passion and worked till all the buildings were ready to enter next stage.
So – this is what I had to work with. My ‘white boxes’ in all their glory. So many different sizes, that excluding six thin ones, no two are alike! I really love these boxes. Thanks to them I was able to play a lot of Infinity games and they received a really good feedback from my oponents. Of course I adorned them with different smaller terrain pieces for the purpose of quality gaming. Still these are my favorites and I can’t imagine gaming at my place with a different buildings set. That was the main reason why I choose to expand their properties instead of exchanging the whole set…
Fortunatelly for me both ReyCast and Micro Art Studio delivered a variety of cool pieces required to evolve my ‘to be’ buildings. It wasn’t easy and took over twelve hours to achieve, but I prevailed – I sorted all the pieces, counted them, divided them into groups (a separate group for each building type), marked my ‘white boxes’ for their corresponding rooftops and started putting walls together. A single test building at first, then whole set. I knelt on the ground, surrounded by a gaming table comming to life all around me…
Test building,
Mass production,
Somewhere about twelve hours, five Army Painter’s Super Glues spilled on my hands, their fumes stuck firm in my nosdrils, thousands of MDF pieces put together, dozen back hurts, hunders sporradic insane scientist’s laughters and one sympathetic look on my wife’s face, later – I was finally done! Done both literally and methaphisically, as my evil slavemaster – the muse – pushed me into yet another task. Battered, with my hands dirty and glued, with my head being dizzy – I started to write the first part of this article. I wasn’t even sure if it will be interresting to other hobbyists – just needed to write it. Couldn’t stop. Some of you know this feel for sure. But I’m starting to miss the topic – My gaming table was finally taken one step further on a road to it’s ultimate form.
Base layering stage is now complete. The buildings are ready to enter next stage, which is external layering along with addition of some cool looking details. Unfortunatelly I can’t proceed before receiving my order from the Titan-Forge. I don’t mind it, as except for the muse nagging me to work on this project, there’s no reason to rush things. At least I’m able to game on my good ol’ gaming table, taking advantage of all these cool new features. I just can’t wait to test these buildings next week. I’m sure they will not dissapoint me! If I’m lucky – delivery will come right after next game and I’ll be able to proceed to “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT part three. Keep your fingers crossed for me 😉
First of all I would like to announce that this project is huge. It is wast on a scale not seen here at Scarhandpainting.com ever before. The genesis of this project reaches January 2015, yet back then, I didn’t knew how things will go for this particular concept. To think that it started with a bunch of hardboard boxes being sprayed white makes me wanna laught. Right now some of you may recall ‘white boxes’ from my Tutorial: ‘Do it yourself’ Gaming Terrain. That is the right course of thinking as that gaming terrain and this Special Project have a particular thing in common – “Infinity the Game”. The hero of this article is none other than INFINITY GAMING TABLE: “THE COLONY”.
At first it was supposed to be, a cheap and easy to make, gaming terrain set. Me and my friends were hyped for Infinity and needed a proper table with a variety of terrain pieces. I am a man of action so in few days I had my first Infinity Gaming Table fully thinked through and half way done. The terrain set expanded steadily throughout the year to finally crystallize into a fully developed and densely packed gaming table. That was the end of stage one and a beggining of an entirely new concept. In the late 2015 I was pretty much sure that my gaming table is very playable. I got a lot of feedback from more experienced gamers and got to know Infinity as much as to make a final decision – I decided to use both my financial and material resources to transform my gaming table into a new and extraoridinary form. Once again I was overwhelmed by the need of creation and started to work…
The easiest and most effective way to improove my existing terrain was to prepare a template for basic pieces and then use them to decorate my ‘white boxes’. The ideas came to me one by one and it took less than two hours to cut a sample for each type of piece needed. As they say – “One’s man trash is another’s man treasure” and that is more than true as I supported myself with some trash left out of Micro Art Studio’s bridge set. All the basic pieces you now see, were made using just a couple of HMD leftovers and a hobby knife. This way I prepared two major templates:
Walls: Designed as 7/11cm pieces to let me decorate each and every ‘white box’ from all sides. Some additional fillers were also designed, to fill the space, if a box happens to be too long for a certain number af wall pieces. I hoped to keep wall pieces separate to let players position their miniatures in selective cover, move with causions movement etc. Once these were done I used some Warhammer 40,000 bitz to see how the overall will look before painting. It passed the test.
Bridges: It seemed that all the bridges in the market lacked something. In my opinion they were either cool looking and not very playable or playable but ugly. Left with no other choice I designed my own bridge to fit into my new gaming table theme and provide a good cover.
Now the only matter to attend was to copy these templates a dozen times and more. At that moment I knew that to achieve my goal I will need some help…
1 REYCAST
I went forth and back through Facebook in search of possible allies. An obvious choice appeared in form of ReyCast.pl who evidently had hype for Infinity terrain and seemed to be an honest guy. Not only he prooved to be just that but also joined me in my quest for glory. Once I provided him with my prototype he took the burden of drawing and then producing a Bridge. He also designed roofs that would later be used for my ‘white boxes’ and all for a really fair price.
My initial drawing and prototype:
Final product:
ReyCast did a magnificent work for me and I was very satisfied with the results. The one thing he couldn’t provide was quantity. I required only couple of bridges and roofs but the walls – pieces varried in quantity from thirty up to four hundred with a total of over one and a half thousand pieces! We both decided that it would be better if I try and find another provider for these.
2 MICRO ART STUDIO
Thus I went straight to my good old friends from Micro Art Studio. We have a history me and MAS – For long time we gamed Warhammer 40,000 together at many tournaments. At some point I used to order a lot of different things from them including gaming tokens, bases and designs ‘for demand’. The final product they provided was always of the best quality and good price. Now I wonder why didn’t I go to them in the first place – but, spur of a moment – ReyCast was there, he was eager to cooperate and I was in the middle of my creation battle rage. I do not regret it as ReyCast did a hell of a good job for me and hopefully not for the last time. So I sent my project to Micro Art Studio and well… must say that they delivered in a crazy, fckn’ awesome way!
My initial drawings and prototype:
Final product:
And the package… I felt like if I had my tenth birthday. Let’s say that the guys from MAS bought my eternal loyalty and gratitude.
3 TITAN FORGE
For the final set of pieces – an enormous quantity of ventilators, electric boxes and other stuff used to decorate, I went to my friends fom Titan Forge. They possess both the technology and expertise needed to provide me with such quantity. Unfortunatelly I’m still waiting for this gargantuan order to be fulfilled – but hopefully I won’t be waiting long.
In modelling you never know what you will need unless you stumble upon it by accident. For me it happened during a local Infinity Tournament where I stumbled upon a gaming table designed by Zen Terrain. Soon after that, I purchased a set of sweet looking Neon City Signs and Planters. Surely I could have made my own but Zen Terrain has a unique desing that I just fell in love with.
I also ordered a set of plants to use in the end step of decorating my gaming table. As it happened the courier delivered these in less than two hours after MAS’s package came in. I was just finnishing a test building which can be seen in the picture below 🙂
After two months of waiting I was finally able to lay my hands on most of the items needed to continue my project. I managed to wall-up all the ‘white boxes’ which from now on are no more boxes, but buildings. All bridges are also done. I’m eager to share some pictures, but it is really late and I’m weary after over twelve hours of terrain making. “This projecs it huge” and it deserves at least three entries as much as I deserve some sleep. Let this building be a glorious end of the first part of this article. See you soon in “THE COLONY” SPECIAL PROJECT part two 😉
In this tutorial I will show you a shortcut to some awesome Terrain Making. Together we will plunge head on into the distant future of ‘Infinity the Game’. We end up knee deep in terrain pieces, surrounded by half cheved bitz of plasticard, with our fingertips bleeding, clothes devastated by super glue and wallets full of unspent cash! A truly manly adventure awaits us and that’s why I’ve prepared some Terrain Making theory to prepare you for what is to come and remodel the way you think about it.
Terrain Making is a topic to write a book about. There is just so many different aproaches a modeller can take on a road to create some awesome gaming terrain. I would be lying if I told you that I am able to cover all of that here, in this tutorial. Instead I will concentrate on some key points of Terrain Making that I keep in mind whenever I happen to make some scenery.
The first thing to do is planning. I’m not a big fan of this part and usually skip it, still some key points of planning take place almost unconsciously. Just sort the ideas, prepare funds for eventual purchases, set a theme and go for it!
– Price of beauty. Long years of gaming and terrain making showed me that a nice looking table may look even better if pumped with some pre-made stuff. Just throw some money into this project and see how much it changed when it comes to how it looks. Think of a sum that you would like to invest in your gaming table – have in mind that except for some necessary stuff like paints, glue, spray, your gaming table can still be built with 0 cash involved.
– Avoid Expensive stuff. I just told you to spend some cash but be thoughtful with that. Try to pinpoint the most expensive elements of your future gaming table and substitute them with some cheap alternatives. This way you not only save some cash but also will not brind huge visual diversity to your terrain set. [A good example of an expensive terrain piece that could be easily replaced.]
– Be a pragmatist. Keep it fast and simple to build. I too had a boner when seeing this gaming table but hey – it’s like a billion € and countless hours spent on putting these things together. Remember that cash equals time and vice versa. If earning cash to purchase a terrain piece and putting that piece together will take you less time than making one yourself – just go for it. Otherwise it’s worth to keep it at speed. A nice looking gaming table can be built and painted in less than 16 hours!
– Select a theme. A ravaged battlefield, futuristic city, space hulk hallways, huge magazines, train station, rich district – what you will choose will affect the materials you will need and a level of complexity ergo ‘time’ you will need to build your gaming table. A good theme is an average between price, time of build and LOOKS. Low on cash and time? Try out Magazine space full of barrels and containers. Plenty of cash and time? Go for a pristine Rich Quarters with fountains, streets, bridges and detailed buildings.
In order to create a gaming table you will need a lot of different materials. Plasticard, cardboard, thin wood are considered to be ‘common’ while bitz and parts of particular shapes are more difficult to obtain.
– Have an open mind. There’s plenty awesome items surrounding you all of the time. Most of them end up as trash while they might be used as modelling material of exceptional value. Just go to the kitchen and look around. Plastic bottle caps of different shapes and sizes, coffee jar lids – these are the tip of an iceberg!
– Ride the outside world. Home ‘trash’ is your brick and mortar when it comes to Terrain Making but true pearls belong to the world outside. Just outside your doors you can find some nice looking stones and sticks but further you venture the better your loot will get. Go ahead and visit a supermarket. Toys, hair utensils, cheap (crappy) plastic jewelry, tools section, decorations – these places are marked with ‘X’ for ‘treasure’!
– Be like modern China, steal blueprints. Many different companies created a variety of splendid gaming terrain. Once you type “Infinity Gaming Terrain” in google you will find a lot of great inspiration to draw your ideas from. You can even purchase some and use leftovers to pimp the visual effect of your home made terrains or go even further and rearrange purchased terrain to have some additional spare bitz left!
Finally a part of raw hard work! If you picked a theme that goes along with your funds and time that you are willing to invest – this part will be a lot of fun for you.
– Durability. Gaming terrain should be tough as otherwise you risk games ended up being forced to do some repairs. Try to create terrain that is well ballanced and easy to game with. I recommend that you base all of the smaller terrain pieces as this will improve their balance along with visuals. Just remember to never use cardboard for basing as it usually bends over time. The recommended materials are: plasticard, plywood (both can be seen in the picture above).
– Utility. Gaming terrain is supposed to be gamed upon. I know – some small, sweet looking, extremely detailed pieces makes me wanna cry with joy, but are they as playable as simple, angular blocks of terrain? The answer is NO and have that in mind. Additionally it is worth to measure some heights to better fit the miniatures. For example: A barrel of the same height as a miniature will usually force you to wonder if a miniature standing behind it has LOF to other miniatures? Well usually it does due to use of silhouettes so it’s better to build barrels that are half the miniature’s height. Etc.
[Once again a good example of an expensive and not very playable terrain piece.]This building is looking great but it is expensive, the cover it provides on the ground level is limited, it is too high for some miniatures to go to the roof in a single action forcing you to remember where the miniature is left hanging.
– Clusters. When it comes to small terrain pieces it is the best to keep them clustered on a single base. They will stay in place and provide a wide cover instead of falling apart and moving around the table each time someone ccidentally pushes it.
– Clones. I’m an enemy of a ruler. I just hate to spend lots of time measuring plasticard/cardboard pieces of same dimensions. I preffer to measure up one piece, then cut the rest using the ‘primary’ piece as a template. Even if some pieces get a bit different from one another this will only add some extra touch to the overall looks of my gaming terrain. [Use this technique at your own discretion.]
– Production line. Plan your work accordingly. Start by preparing all the necessary pieces, put them together and base all the terrain pieces. Do not start to paint before all the terrain is ready for it. This way your work will be a bit less rewarding but you will save a lot of time. Same goes for painting: Do not paint a single terrain piece but paint them in droves instead. Just as you end up applying a layer to the last piece, the first one will get dry and ready for the next layer.
So here’s a shortcut recipee for you:
– Prepare funds then cut the expensives off,
– Plan what to buy/build and how long it’ll take, (be a pragmatist),
– Choose a theme according to your capabilities,
– Pillage your house for free trash material,
– Pillage nearby supermarket for some key material pieces, [keep it cheap.]
– Use some purchased terrain and leftovers to create your own variations,
– Make your terrains durable, balanced and playable,
– Keep small terrain pieces based together,
– Save time while preparing particular bitz by using one as a template to cut the rest out,
– End one stage before moving to the next one,
I feel your pain. That wall of text above is probably as hard to read for you as it was for me and I read it more than thrice. Let’s go to the Practical part of this Tutorial with some examples and more pictures. I will use my own gaming table prepared last year as an example of how to do it in accordance to above tips.
Back then I was short of time and wanted to create a gaming table designed for Infinity ASAP. I love Micro Art Studio’s terrain and wanted to purchase a whole set of it along with some Spartan Scenics. Cash was not an issue but once a test purchase was delivered I almost dropped the project due to time consuming process of putting these terrains together. It was a hell of a boredome so I decided to go ahead and prepare my own gaming table. I choose something between Mass Effect ‘Citadel’ and Death Star outer surface style Theme and already owning a Micro Art Studio’s catwalk set I decided tu cut off the most expensive thing: Buildings. Small part of the surplus cash was to be used on static grass and a Battle Mat that would eventually pump the visual effect of the gaming table.
Being a pragmatist I decided to use a hard cardboard boxes as the main bodies on the gaming board. Easy to obtain in friendly local hobby store, easy to prepare, light (transportaion), stable, very playable – the cardboard boxes prove to be an extrmely good pick. Some spare parts from catwalk set let me upgrade my ‘buildings’ with a nice set of futuristic ladders. The plan was to improve the visual effect by adding some facture with paintjob.
Once I was done with the buildings I moved to all the other stuff. Less futuristic but very playable and bringing some colour to my gaming table came Barrels, Trash Containers, Holograms, inner walls and some key terrain pieces. Here’s an example:
Barrels: Plastic bottle caps of coca cola, milk and water. I find the ones with less facture being the best as the paint looks much better on irregular flat areas. I drink a lot of Coca Cola Zero in addition to milk and water so I used most of the caps being kept in home 🙂
Trash Containers: Tic-tac pack upper parts. Some were additionally converted but looking past I think that I should leave them be as they have a perfect shape on their own.
Holograms: Old Warhammer 40,000 tokens, easy to obtain at second hand market and as these are rarely used – they come in cheap. I had some left from my own Warhammer 40,000 collection and purchased another set from a friend.
Inner Walls: Rectangle Chessex Dice packs being emptied and thrown away by a local hobby store. Some walls were also made of wooden blocks. Some have been updated with facture made of wooden spare parts left from Micro Art’s catwalk set.
All the leftovers were used to build this Relay Beacon, leaving not a single bitz unused.
This particular gaming board was made with rush thus I had to update it from time to time adding extra touch with new sets of scenery. Just recently I wandered into the Supermarket in search of some final pieces to strengthen the theme of Sci-fi quarters. I found these cool items:
Plastic hair holder / 1,5€is a masterpiese of both architecture and art. A fine centerpiece for my gaming table. I bought two of these and made them into this:
Decorative beads / 2€ will one day be used to make a set of awesome light globes all around my flat white buildings. For now they served as additional facture for new set of Trash Containers.
So here we are. My gaming table took less than 24hrs in total to complete and that if all the add-ons are being counted. The overall cost of this project is Micro Art catwalk set, Micro Art hologram banner set, Micro Art gaming mat, warhammer 40,000 tokens, two hair holders, a pack of decorative beads, a can of white spray, some paints, glue, brushes. It’s around 150€ + 24hrs worth of my work (which could be much less if I only made all these stuff in one go). All the other items I’ve managed to get for free. Now I have a very playable and rather nice looking gaming table, designed for Infinity and fully packable into a single box XD
! If i haven't purchased Micro Art Studio's awesome stuff the overall cost of this gaming table would be close to 50€
I hope that you will find this tutorial both helpful and inspiring. In case of any questions just leave me a comment in the comment section below.
PS: The pictures below were made couple of days ago in a local mall, which was modernized recently. Now it looks just as my vision of what this gaming table is supposed to represent 🙂 Welcome to the future – few years from now and we will see some Heavy Infantry in live action 🙂
Recently I’ve decided to take my previous Hacking Device Holoprojector concept to a higher level. The key point was to use the same base material: a Coca Cola bottle plastic, but instead of painting simbols and lines on it – make it look more like a complex holo projection with many ‘windows’ opened at once. A devious plan formed in my mind and here I am sharing it with all who are eager to read it!
* Scissors,
* Twizzers,
* Super Glue,
* Coca Cola bottle XD
* Piece of plastic/brass mesh,
1 Using Scissors cut a small piece of Brass Mesh and a small piece of Coca Cola bottle.
2 Still using Scissors cut a piece of Plastic into small rectangles.
3 Use some oval shaped tool to softly bend both the Brass Mesh piece and Plastic rectangles.
4 Using Super Glue, attach the Brass Mesh piece to a miniature.
! I recommend to paint the miniature along with Brass Mesh piece at this point.
5 Using Tweezers and Super Glue attach Plastic rectangles to a painted Brass Mesh.
6 It is done, but you can apply some Skull White onto the edges of Plastic rectangles to make them look more 3D.
And that’s it 🙂 Whole process takes up to 10 minutes so I decided to remove old Holoprojectors from my Nomadic Hackers and install brand new ‘software’. Hope you give it a try 😉
