Friday, May 19, 2006

Basic Update

I've been making a lot of terrain lately for my upcoming Necromunda campaign. I've never been a fan of the original necromunda terrain. It never seemed to block line of sight very well. I figured I wanted to make something different so I bought a big sheet of 1.5 inch thick insulation foam, half of which became my board. Since the standard Necromunda level is 3 inches thick, I figured that if I glued two sections together, it would form a structure that would be the perfect size. I made several of these and realized that it was really tough to get the sides straight and even. A friend lent me a hot-wire foam cutter, but it's eve harder to cut straight with that than it is with a hobby knife. I also realized that foam could be sanded.

Point it, this has been a learning experience. I eventually decided that I should build some traditional Necromunda terrain, if for no other reason that it's easy. Also, I have a ton of those old Necromunda Bulkheads.

The look I'm going for is the foam being "weathered" concrete and the bulk head and card buildings being "new" construction. Unfortunately, this seems a little futile to explains without pictures. Unfortunately, the only one I have is old:


To the right is my board, folded in half, unpainted. The rest of the foam would latter became the other structures.

Also since I took this picture, I've painted the board. I wanted it to be grey and I just happened to have a gallon of grey house paint. I was afraid that it would be too thick, so I actually watered it down. I also pressed my five-year-old son in service to help me, so it got done pretty quick abet a little sloppy. To give it some depth and shading, I loaded some cheap craft acrylic paint into a spray bottle and coated the entire board. I had watered the paint down and added some white glue. I hoped that the glue would help the paint go into some of the texture I had put on the board, but since there was so much flat, featureless area, it mostly just dried really blotchy. It sort of looked like I had spilled black coffee all over the board. So a couple of days latter, I sprayed it again, but this time substituted dish soap for the glue. The soap broke the surface tension of the paint and help it dry in an even coat.

That's all I have time for right now, but next time I'll go into the magic of MDF.

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