Final structure with broken walls

FINALLY!!! Now that we have a finalized idea for our Flagstone, we can start building buildings and other terrain features to fill the blocks for the table.

So far the first building has turned out well, although I built it completely backwards. For starters I glued the entire house together before cutting out the windows, or “breaking” the walls, which just made it more time consuming then if I had cut them out when the walls were still flat.

Currently the house is very clean looking and still missing many details, I plan to add more trimwork around the walls, and I have already started making the the floor look like wood planks, as well as trimming the corner pieces slightly so they dont look so perfect (which will be seen in the next post).

The Bottom Floor of the building

Floor for the second level

Floor installed into slit of second floor

Full second floor

Both floors resting on cobblestone

Setting up the second floor

Both floors (unassembled)

Basic house stucture w/ windows

Side view of house w/ windows

In the following picture you can see where the door will be eventually, I havnt removed it yet to keep the walls sturdy while I worked on the rest of it.

Final structure with broken walls

Close up of broken floor and model for scale

So here is our first 2 story house on one of our 6×6 blocks. I will take more pictures of the progress and post them up soon!

Spackled

I have been able to do a little bit of work on the foamcore building recently. I am in the process of testing out various methods for the walls right now. I picked up some lightweight Spackle for texturing and so far it seems to be great. The textured look is great, and it seems pretty tough. It’s also really easy to carve out of if necessary.

In addition to the Spackle I also tested out a method for doing a chipped away look with the underlying framework showing. This consisted of cutting away the top layer of paper on the foamcore, then drawing in a brick pattern on the foam with a pen. When combined with the Spackle it really gives the look of a broken wall with the brick framework showing. You can also see on the left side of the window where I added in a small crack in the wall. This is pretty easy to do with the Spackle and a sharp knife.

Previous Foamcore Building Posts:
First Foamcore Building – Work in Progress

Building Laid Flat

Close up side shot

Spackled

Another with good lighting

I doubt this piece will actually get used for anything, as I realized that I messed up the dimensions when measuring. I didn’t account for the thickness of the foam so it’s longer than expected. It will make a good test piece for painting the walls and framework though.

Related Posts

• First Foamcore Building - Work In Progress

Testing block

Over the last week I’ve been working to try and get our cobblestone (well, technically I think it’s flagstone) method just right. I’ve tested out a ton of different methods, so I thought I’d post up everything I’ve done up to this point so you can see all the iterations. I’ve tried drybrushing, washing, tracing with markers, priming/not priming, adding texture, and more. I think I finally got something pretty close to what we want, though there are still a few things to try out. I was quite surprised at how well something as simple as a gray marker has worked. I’ve been using it to add depth not only through coloring the grout, but to force a deeper imprint and fix up some areas that didn’t stamp so well.

The first thing I tested was using spray primer on the foam. I knew that this would eat away at it, but I was hoping that a light spray would eat away just enough to add some nice texture to the stones. I primed first and then used the stamp to imprint the cobblestone. As you can see, I sprayed too heavily on the sides here and it ate into the foam way too much. The middle section was “usable” but the texture from the spray was too porous and didn’t look very good. I also tested out tracing grout with some paint markers here.

On the other side of that block I tried out several different methods. For the top left section I stamped it, outlined the grout with a marker, attempted drybrushing and dabbing with a sponge, and then outlined the grout again with a grey marker. The top right section I painted black and then washed with a gray. For the bottom right section I traced the grout lines with a paint marker, painted over it with gray, then tried various drybrushing/washing techniques. I painted the middle right black, drybrushed with 2 shades of gray, and then outlined the grout with a gray marker. Finally, the bottom right section I pressed a stone into for texture, then painted it black, drybrushed gray, and outlined some grout with a gray marker.

Priming didn't go so well...

Testing block

The next several photos show a few stages of my next attempt. I traced the grout lines with a gray marker first. This helped me clearly define where the stones actually were. Also, for sections that didn’t make a deep enough imprint or where large/odd shaped stones showed up I simply hand drew a pattern in making sure to push hard enough to imprint the pattern. After that I just painted over it with black as a base.

Based

After that I drybrushed on two shades of gray. I didn’t drybrush enough or use light enough colors, because it still looks black.

Drybrushed with gray

And finally, I traced the grout on the right half here with the gray marker again. You can see the difference it made. The grout lines stand out more.

Tracing the grout

I based another corner of that block black (after tracing all the grout lines). I decided to try my hand at some washing. Here are several different washes with various consistencies and colors across the two blocks.

Lots of washing!

The last three photos are a series of photos showing off the drybrushing and grout tracing after the wash. This first one is after the first drybrush with regular gray and a second drybrush with a lighter gray.

After washing and the first drybrush

This photo shows after a third drybrush with a near white gray. I think this went a little too light.

After the third drybrush

And finally, I traced some of the grout line with the gray marker to make them stand out more. I’m starting to like the look of the marker, though I want to try washing over this with a dark gray to darken the grout some.

Tracing the grout

I think I kind of like that final test, although there are still a few things to try. I want to try the original wash with a darker gray, as well as washing a second time AFTER drybrushing. I also want to try out various shades of lighter and darker gray during drybrushing to see which ones look best. While this piece looks good, it’s just a little bit too bright. And finally I’d like to try out adding some more texture by pressing some stones on the foam before stamping it.

As always, let us know if you have any suggestions!

Related Posts

• Better Cobblestone Pictures
• Cobblestone Painting, Take One
• New Flagstone Pics
• Flagstone

Building!

I finally got around to working on foamcore buildings! In a few hours last night I was able to get the first story of a simple building put together using foamcore, matchsticks, and popsicle sticks. I still need to add some stuff to it, including some framing, and it will need to be painted of course. I was going to use some of the new cardstock printouts as base templates for my building, but after fiddling with getting them printed out I decided I would just try it by making my own pattern. I’m pleased with the progress I made so far, though the popsicle sticks didn’t want to cooperate last night.

For those of you playing along at home, here are the materials I used:

Foamcore board
Matchsticks
Popsicle Sticks
White Glue
Craft Knife
Tape Measure (for measuring to make my pattern, you can also use a template)
Pencil

The Materials

The first thing I did was trace out the pattern to cut out. I used the tape measure to measure out three 4″x2″ sections, and then cut one edge short to make it look ruined. I decided on 2″ tall because of the climbing rules for Mordheim… 2″ is about right for a single story (and it’s the size of one story on the official cardboard buildings that came with the box set). You can also just print out some patterns and and trace them instead.

Tracing the pattern

After tracing… cut out the pattern. For the corners you can either cut them clean off and attach them later with glue or do as I’ve done below. I cut the corner piece, but not all the way through. Then I was able to simply bend the foam and it was all still attached. I just need something to fill the gaps in the corner now, which I’ll probably end up doing by putting some sort of wooden framework with matchsticks or something similar.

The pattern after it was cut out

The folded building

After I got this set up I realized that the one side looked weird with a full wall with nothing attached to it. I decided to just trim it down some to look like another ruined wall.

After trimming the wall

Next up was adding some doors and windows to the building. I didn’t have a lot of space so I decided to go with a single door and a single window. I traced out exactly where I wanted them and what sizes before doing any cutting.

Tracing the door and windows out

Doors and windows cut out!

Standing with doors and windows cut out

After that I grabbed some matchsticks and cut them down to make frames for the door and window. The matchsticks worked perfectly for this.

Window and door frame

That was pretty much it for the first story. I went to work on figuring out how to do the second story floor. I considered cutting out another piece of foam for the floor, but decided to try out popsicle sticks for a wooden floor. I put a group of them together, marked out the pattern I wanted, and cut them down to the right shapes and sizes. I tried to glue them side by side, but it wasn’t very strong. I ended up having to glue some beams on the bottom to hold them together.

Top side of the wooden floor

Underside of the wooden floor, note the support beams

I gathered up all the extra clippings from the matchsticks and popsicle sticks to save for later. They should make some good rubble or something.

Waste not!

I stopped there for the night. I didn’t attach the floor to the building yet, but here’s what it looks like sitting on top.

It's starting to look like a building!

Building!

Next up will be creating the second floor walls, adding the frame to fill in the gaps, attaching it all, and then getting it painted. Does anyone have any suggestions for painting or texturing the walls? We still have the textured spray that I could use and then paint over, to give it a more rugged, textured look instead of being so smooth.

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• Foamcore Building Update

A small block with the old stamp pattern, painted up

We managed to get some attempts at painting cobblestone in. It looks okay, but I’m not completely satisfied with the results. I do think that the stamps will work exactly as they are now. The patterns look great when pressed into the foam itself, now we just need to make it look good after painting… and to find a good way of painting without taking up WAY too much time. After going through several different ideas for color schemes (brown grout with dark grey stones, light grout with dark gray stones, and several other combinations) I think we finally settled for a dark grey grout with lighter grey stones. I like the basic color schemes below, they just need to look less flat and more like individual stones.

So, here are all the pics:

Cobblestone on the meteor piece

We painted over the textured spray for this piece

I like the look of the dirt and the meteor path

More of the meteor piece

Other end of the meteor

More...

Side view

A small block with the old stamp pattern, painted up

More of the old pattern

And another...

Last one of the small block

Well, that’s our first attempt at painting the cobblestone. Neither of these were done with the best conditions, the meteor piece was stamped and painted over top of the texture spray and the the small block was using the original stamp instead of the new ones. However, I think they are a good start and with a little more practice we’ll have some awesome looking cobblestone.

Related Posts

• More cobblestone painting
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• Better Cobblestone Pictures
• Making a Cobblestone Stamp, First Attempt

Cobblestone!

After the failed attempt at cobblestone on the well piece, we decided we needed a new idea. We needed something that would look like cobblestone and not just gravel.  We also decided that buying tons of Talus was not cost effective (and finding enough rocks of the right sizes and shapes was not very efficient). I found an idea posted by DarkWingDuck on Tom’s Boring Mordheim Forums for making a cobblestone stamp. This was exactly what we were looking for… it’s simple, it’s consistent, and it’s cheap. Our requirements were slightly different so we decided to come up with our own method. Rather than creating a uniform, patterned cobblestone we wanted something rough and random for our city. We decided on using actual stones to create the pattern to give it a more natural look.

The materials we used:

Super Sculpey (Also available at local crafts stores) – We bought 1 box and had plenty left over.
Clay Sculpting tools – Anything that can flatten and cut the edges for creating a square should work.
Handful of small pebbles – We found a rock we liked and smashed it into smaller pieces.
Wax paper – Foil should work just as well, just need something to place the sculpey on while working with it and for cooking it.
Acrylic Paints – Probably a black and white to be mixed for making shades of grey.

We started by taking some sculpey and making it flat on the wax paper, leaving maybe 1/2″ thickness. Then we used the sculpting tools to cut it into a rectangular shape.

Rectangular Sculpey, ready for a pattern

The next step was to take the small rocks/pebbles and gently push them into the sculpey, one at a time. We left the rocks in until the stamp was full of them.

Our pile of small rocks

Once we filled the stamp up with rocks we gently removed them all and then cooked the stamp in the oven following the instructions on the sculpey box (130C or 275F for 15 minutes).

First Stamp

Second Stamp

Once the stamps are finished cooking (and cooled off) it’s time to test them with some foam. We pressed them directly onto our blocks. One of the things that we learned pretty quickly was that it took a LOT of pressure to make a decent indentation in the foam. We are still trying to figure out a good way to make a larger indentation in the foam.

Foam piece decorated up using the cobblestone stamps

Success! … sort of. We know that the process works, but we noticed that the gaps between the stones themselves looked too large. This should be easily corrected by simply placing the rocks closer together when making the stamp. The next step was to figure out how to paint it all. I quickly tossed some brown paint on to make sure the cobblestone would still stand out some after being painted.

Testing out some painting techniques.

As you can see from the test piece, we might need to make a deeper indentation to make it look better after painting. We still have to decide on colors as well. Some ideas I’ve had are brown base with grey rocks, light grey base with dark grey rocks, or dark grey base with light grey rocks. We’ll have to test them all out to see which looks best, but that’s for another day.

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