Creepy tree terrain help.

[AmishLuvah]

I'm wondering if some of you terrain making folks out there have a decent method for making "creepy trees" for a terrain board. I haven't really found a way to make them both attractive and durable and no cemetery is complete without them. Any ideas?

[Mananarepublic]

With some Green stuff work the citadel forest plastic scenery can be made pretty creepy - just leave the leafs of and paint them using a cold brown and light gray.

/M

[Malebolgia]

Yes, the Citadel trees are fantastic. Not too expensive and the trees look really dark and brooding. You can creepify them with dungeon creepers from Antenociti's Workshop (link:

http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/scratch%20builders%20paradise/leaves,%20feuilles,%20blatter,%20fogli.html ) and with the following stuff:

*Mix Cotton Wool (the stuff ladies use for removing makeup from their pretty faces) with PVA glue, water and some flock. This becomes a mucky paste. Drape this over the branches and it will dry rockhard. Then paint it dark green with some grey in it and you're done

[Raf]

Yes, I do agree , I will be releasing a graveyard board soon and the Citadel Chaos wood (without the leaves) are really the way to go.

[DeafNala]

Trees are pretty easy to make out of wrapped & unwrapped floral wire:

If I can make one, ANYONE can. :fing02:

[TheLemondropDan]

I do the same sort of thing, DeafNala. It's easy and fun!

[AmishLuvah]

Say, those are pretty nice. Really gnarled and craggy looking. Is there an article about how to do that DeafNala?

[TheBugKing]

I have a rather extensive write up here on tree construction. The trunks are quite durable and still flexible.

A word of warning though. The wire armature will not support a tree that is about 2 1/2' high. The tree will break at the joints. (Learned this the hard way. The Gencon Demo Table tree kept on breaking. I'm going to replace it with a different construction that is slightly smaller)

[AmishLuvah]

Heh, I was just about to look at your terrainthralls site again. I'm already using the swamp terrain write up on there.

[AmishLuvah]

I have a question for you TheBugKing. Where do you get your stiff wire at? I can't even begin to imagine where I would find something like that to use as an armature.

[goblyn13]

I don't know what TBK uses, but I find the Floral section of Michael's to be quite the place to find all kinds of wires. (floral wire can be quite thick or REALLY thin)

[TheBugKing]

If you have access to Home Depot, Lowes or Ace (Or other hardware store) get some bailing wire.

I also use floral wire as Boblyn suggested. The latest innovation is to solder the armatures together. It makes for a much easier construction process as the armature will not fight you any where near as much.

[AmishLuvah]

Ooooh, that's a good idea. Time to warm up the soldering iron.

[TheBugKing]

Ooooh, that's a good idea. Time to warm up the soldering iron.

Do yourself a favor and get a butane torch that is used for plumbing. A soldering iron heats too slowly so the heat spreads and will defeat earlier joins. A torch will spot heat an area really quickly. You will also spend about 1/50th of the time soldering this way.

It does present a considerable increase in risk however so if you are uncomfortable please just use the iron.

[AmishLuvah]

Nah, I'm ok with it. I sometimes have to use a blowtorch at the restaurant I work at. Creme Brulee requires it.

[TheBugKing]

Ahh cool cool!

A good trick, if you have to solder a join right next to another solder join is to keep a damp paper towel handy. Just when you get the solder to flow take the paper towel and quench the already completed solder join. It will keep things from falling apart. And allow you to get some really tight joins done without building a jig to hold everything.

[AmishLuvah]

I'll see your wet paper towel and I'll raise you a damp sponge. Honestly though, I never would have thought of that. If I get that Malifaux e-zine off the ground I'll have to tap you and some others for terrain articles.

[Evil Homer]

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page109.html

for a variant you can do using pipecleaners and step by step for the twisting.

I imagine you could us paper-mache technique for the bark rather than than baking clay.

Or I was thinking about some kind of plaster/gauze bandage technique where you use some watered down plaster, soak the gauze in it, and wrap/apply the gauze around the tree.

Messy but you might get some interesting results.

EH

[jmp_mydog]

I use floral wire and celluclay (instant paper mache). Basically you build your fram out of the thicker floral wire and use the thinner to make the individual branches. Once you have the frame built mix use the celluclay and cover the entire thing let it dry for 24 hours or so and let it dry. Apoxysculpt is great it you want to add faces or whatnot, but the texture of the paper mache looks like believable bark. Paint it and then use scenic cement to attach this stuff that looks like those spider webs you get at halloween. Liberally spray that with scenic cement and sprinkle coarse turf to make the leaves.

Here's a link to the display bases I did for my Circle armies http://www.twilightemporium.net/gallery/warmachinehordes/

[AmishLuvah]

Oooh, I like that last technique. It's very similar to the one using Sculpy and I have a lot of Celluclay right now. The Sculpy would make for a tree with more weight and substance but the celluclay would be springier and already have a believeable bark texture. I'll probably try both.