lusciousmccabe

Bit of preliminary painting. Really not happy with how those stalactites turned out. Think I'll just scupt some from milliput next time and pin then in. Probably wouldn't take that much longer.

^^Huzzah for ghost poopy! Love how the glow from inside it is spreading out to infect the surrounding area. Also model looks grand. 😜

Well, this hasn't been updated in quite some time! Unfortunately that doesn't mean I have an awful lot of progress to show. 🙄 I added a jetty to the canal and filled in the water effect. It's about 10 layers of mod podge with goods varnish over top of it. Gives a nice ripply effect but is very hard to photograph.

@Purple Mist The terrain looks great but I find the colour on the brickwork a bit off. I think it's too red/crimson as bricks tend to be more orange/terracotta coloured. Then again it's fantastical Malifaux brickwork, so who's to say that colour isn't entirely appropriate!

The first major element of my imaginary cave board is some stepped hills/ rock formations. I made them out of some expanding foam I had left over from a disastrous DIY project, although I must admit I did buy the foam with terrain in mind after seeing this video. Making formations with this stuff is really easy. Just squirt a bunch of irregular blobs of it on some baking paper and flatten out the bottom of it. I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of the raw foam, but here are how some of the pieces looked after I started cutting them up to make them more playable. I then coated them with a mixture of wall filler, paint and sand to give a better texture and stop the foam reacting with spraypaint later down the line. I'm making taller impassable pieces which are meant to connect with the roof of the cave as well and you can see a few of them in this picture. And I added a texture to the top of the flattened areas to match my gobbo bases. It's made with a mixture of marla and milliput and a "cobblestone" roller from greenstuff world. I don't think the surface looks anything like cobblestones, but in my mind the goblins fill the cave with filth to grow mushrooms in, so I'll be painting it as stone showing through dirt. The final touches are going to be pools of water and stalagmites/stalactites. Having stalactites in workable terrain is tricky, so I though a good way to include them was by cutting this to have an overhang. It'll be filled with some sort of water effect later, probably with some nuisance as I needed to fix the base on to connect some of the columns. I was using paper and toothpicks for the stalactites following some DnD related videos on youtube, mostly this one. That was actually kind of annoying and I decided to just cover them over in before they set, which may not have been such a good idea. Probably could have just used filler from the get go, but I think the paper maché idea does have some merit, if you have the patience to wait for it to dry.

So, I'm actually making this terrain for my Warhammer Night Goblins (which I'll likely never play with) but I figured I'd post them here as they could easily be used for Malifaux either. Unlike my city board (which I'll get around to finishing at some stage, I swear) no forward planning or measuring went into these terrain pieces. I'm basically just messing around with the materials I have and some techniques I've seen from videos to see what I can make. It's a pretty refreshing experience, but pretty easy to get bogged down in at the same time. Hopefully this thread will help me keep track of things and give people some ideas for their own terrain.

The contrast being so high makes his muscles look like their polished metal. Kind of reminds me of some of Ron Spencer's paintings, very 80s. 😀

@Caedrus Witchling Handler is the bomb. Metallics are spot on and the freehand is nice and understated. @Nikodemus - I think the lanterns actually look really good, just not like they're any sort of lanterns. When I first saw them I thought they were some sort of bashed up gourds or pumpkin type things and thought it was a really cool approach to the model. Getting something to look glowey on a model is more to do with lighting the surrounding areas, as the light source itself is usually fairly monotone. Those kinds of lanterns are a bit of a nightmare though as they're really big and not really that interesting looking in real life. Most of the better looking examples of those I've seen on Ten Thunders models are painted more fantastically, or as if it's daytime/they're not lit. But I like your pumpkins.

There's the egg hauler one dressed up as a rabbit.

Greenstuff world have a bunch of real clock pieces of various sizes that work well for that. Think you can get something similar cheaper (but less reliably) on wish.

Like on a scale to be worn by a model, or part of terrain?

I hope you paint it to be ethereal. 😀

^^ Love it. Starting the month very strong. My pledge is going to be rather unambitiously the two arcanist shapeshifters to failed to paint in April. Not even considering other targets as overreaching was my downfall last month.

I had thought the terrain scoring was 5 SS per piece and the minimum size was 50mm, but it does looks like it is based on area equivalent. Seems a bit off given a whole table is only 100 SS when its area is like 430 bases. Still, terrain is too variable to really give it a general value, so I'd say go with whatever makes you most productive!

@Caedrus I'm going to have to mulligan! Thought I'd finally made my peace with The Beast Within and then discovered the ridiculous pointless detail on the soles of his feet stops him sitting properly on his base I'll have to redo that before I finish painting him. 😠 On the other hand I didn't paint Ferdinand Vogel or that building I pledged, so really can't blame this all on the models. 😀

Moon's done. Working on the second one. This month's going to be down to the wire if I get in at all.

If you leave them on a wet palette with the lid on overnight they tend to take on a consistency more like normal paint, i.e. you can no longer sculpt with them Otherwise they are annoying to work with, but you can kind of get them to work as a highlight/glaze by basically splodging them on the area you want and scraping off the excess a couple of times. Just make sure you're putting them over white, or something close to it.

@nicodemus - I think he looks great. The colours are eye-catching, work well together and are well applied. I actually really like the dark hat with the gold centre giving you a source of contrast but also tying in to other elements. The bird is a bit sticky-outy, but not that much at first glance as it's balanced by the cherry blossoms. I'd say you could have gotten away with the fluo pink if you'd used on like half the bird and had creams and browns to balance it. On the other hand it's a magical effect, so whether it should get perfectly or not is debatable. Speaking of magic effects, I think that inside-outside colouring on the bird is a good way to represent it. Gives that powered from within look without messing about with OSL and whatnot.

Hey, it might have been easier to draw on hundreds of tiny thin lines, but a hell of a lot more boring. 😀 I do hope to be done by the end of the month but I'm cutting it pretty fine as I was away for a week. If I can get the coat done shortly that's like 70% of the model and I can be a bit lazier with other details as people will be distracted by the big fricking moon on his back. You seem to have timed your work better. Looking forward to seeing the hand man completed. 😉

Texturing the beast's coat wasn't working so I'm covering it in freehand instead. Going to do a crescent moon on Vogel's coat instead for the werewolf theme and to explain the magical embiggening. .

I have gotten stuck into some terrain building and haven't touched my Malifaux at all (unless you count slowly adding water effect to a 2 year old board)! Should reach a pause point in the next week and have time left to finish Hank McCoy, I mean Jekyll and Hyde, I mean, that werewolf fella who isn't a mimic in third Ed. 😀 Because terrain is never really finished and it's best to work at it when the motivation strikes!

Like the cream and brown scheme. Very interesting take on the models. Also, tiny plastic cactii ftw.

^^ Love it. His face reminds me if the skeleton off Megadeth album covers.

Looks good so far. I'm in a similar boat. Trying to save time using a big massive drybrush and glazing over top. Think it will end up taking about just as long in the end. 🙄

Looks fabulous. Love the contrast between the muted and saturated colours and the symmetry in the orange hair, mane and wing-tips. Your friend must be very happy with it.