Tabletop Geeks

We’ve got a really special treat for this next interview. Sean Patten’s work has been a huge inspiration for me, especially as I’ve gotten back into Mordheim. The Mordheim section he has over at his site Necromundicon is all just amazing. It’s not just about his Mordheim terrain though, as he has created scenery for everything from Mordheim to Warhammer 40k to Star Wars games! On top of all this, he’s even put together several sets of rules for games both in the Warhammer 40k setting and in the Star Wars setting. You can find the rules over at Iron Hands.

As if all of that is not enough, he’s done hand made costumes and props as well! He is truly a talented individual. I highly recommend that you all check out his site, as the few pieces that I’ve shown here are just a small portion of the amazing work that he has done.

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• Interview: cianty
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We had a very good response to the first interview so it looks like we’ll be continuing the segment. This time we’re going with someone a little more focused on rules. cianty is one of the creators of the Border Town Burning supplement to Mordheim. He has had his hand in various other Mordheim projects as well. He is also a moderator on Tom’s Boring Mordheim Forum, the Specialist Games Forum and the Mordheim Yahoo group. On top of all this, he does excellent work with miniatures and especially terrain. So, here we go with our second interview!

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Yesterday I promised you a new feature and today I deliver! Our new feature will be interviews with prominent community members and hobbyists displaying their works and letting you get to know them in the process. There were a couple of reasons behind this idea. The first was simply to highlight some great works and to get to know the people behind them. The other big reason was to give people ideas, inspirations, and maybe even some tips from people who are experienced hobbyists.

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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).

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I took some new pictures of the flagstone in the natural light today. These pics show off the colors much better, and as a bonus they’re not blurry! I got a couple pictures outside in the shade and a picture in direct sunlight for comparison. You can really see the texture and the variety of colors in these images. Enjoy!

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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. Read more »

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Since I struggled to get a good picture of the final cobblestone with the lighting I had before, I rushed home today to take pictures while it was still light outside. Here are a few more pics of the final cobblestone in natural light and without a flash. They look a lot better this way, and a lot darker, but for some reason it looks more blue than it really is. Anyway, check out these new pics. Read more »

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Yet another view of the final cobblestone

Well, after some more messing around with the cobblestone I think we pretty much have the method figured out. While I really liked the last piece from the last post I felt like there was something missing. At the suggestion of my girlfriend I decided to try mixing in some blue and that seemed to do the trick. A little bit of blue mixed in with the gray gave it that extra nudge away from simple grayscale and made it look really nice.

I’ve been testing out various methods with the blue to see which one works best. I’ve found that washes on the cobblestone don’t seem to work all that well, probably because the imprint isn’t all that deep. The trick seems to be drybrushing, lots and lots of drybrushing. It also helps to rough up the surface a little bit first to give it more texture and make the drybrushing work better. I’ll do a short “how-to” on the methods I used for the final cobblestone if you want to try this on your own.

UPDATE: I should probably note that the colors are done, but we’ll probably be adding bits of grass/weeds in the grout and other small details later as well.

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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. Read more »

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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.

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