Friday, June 18, 2010

Micro-Terraforming: 1/3rd Complete

Above is the "before picture."  (Click on the images throughout this post to enlarge).

This is the micro-scale (1/285th, 6mm, 1/300th) terrain board I bought from my friend Adrian several months ago (see "Shipyard," 31 Dec 09 post).  It's a river valley set during an early/late winter, depicting a landscape speckled with snow and mud. 

In order to make the board more versatile, I made several changes.  Starting with the two end panels (seen at the bottom of the above photo), I uprooted all the individual, frosted pine trees on the valley floor and applied two coats of spray paint to the hill (flat white) and the valley floor (flat dark green).  I decided to give the river a glistening look, so I repainted it using gloss blue with some dashes of glossy dark green. 

Then I slathered on Elmer's Glue and doused the hill with Soft Flake Snow from Woodland Scenics, and did the same for the valley floor, using Woodland Scenics's Burnt Grass/Fine Turf.  Since I have modern road sections, I decided to keep the board's road network unpaved.  After I repainted the roads flat brown, I applied fine basing grit from Gale Force Nine.

The end result, for my initial two panels, is the entrance of an "alpine valley:"


I kept the valley floor bare of other features so I could add, remove, or change the type and location of the terrain, depending on what gaming scenario was being played:



While I couldn't change the course of the river, I felt I could still modify it to suit different scenarios.  Strips of tan felt, purchased at Jo-Ann's Fabric, are used in the photo below to create a dry river bed:


While strips of white felt are used to create a frozen river:

(But is it safe for troops to cross? Order the penal troops to advance!)

And if I don't need a river at all, then some strips from an old army blanket does the trick at filling in all that deep blue.  (I must admit, I need more practice at cutting and trimming lengths of cloth).  The gap in the road is filled-in using a piece of latex dirt road I purchased from Monday Knight Productions:


Oh, and the black curtain is part of a studio lighting and back drop kit my wife gave me for Christmas, that I finally got around to using!

Okay, that's two panels done, four more to go...

4 comments:

DeanM said...

Ted:

That's looking good. Looks completely different that what Adrian sold you - also, that Alpine area looks great too. Dean

Ted Henkle said...

Thanks Dean! Since the hills have steep slopes and include some rock-face cliffs, it would be a pain to repaint/reflock them in a different color. I decided to keep the individual, frosted trees on the hills as well. Otherwise, it would be too difficult to place movable terrain on the slopes.

Thanks again.


Ted

Warhammer 40k said...

I really like the water effect that you created with your river. Looks really smart.

Ted Henkle said...

Thanks WH 40K!