Saturday, December 23, 2017

Cornered!


At long last, the board is complete!  I built the foliage up on all the corner pieces, done with the same methods as the rest of the board.  I have many other articles here on the blog showing how that is done.

These are designed to make the corners where the two backdrops meet much less noticeable, and give the board as a whole a little more depth.


While I don't really intend on having actual units hiding out in these corner pieces, the option is there.  The most likely units would be along the lines of mortar teams, which should fit.


Here's another interesting element that has been added.  I wanted to test some blue LED bulbs for a few purposes... one to make the regular lighting seem more like daylight, but also to create a "nightfighting" appearance!  

This may require a few more of the blue bulbs to provide enough light for pictures, but I am very happy with the extra touch they provide.


While it may be hard to see the difference, it is significant enough for me to notice it right away.  It also made the painted backdrops that much more atmospheric.


For the first time, I moved the short corner backdrop to the opposite side of the table, which allowed me to take a few shots looking into that corner.  I was really happy with the results!


Here's another low angle view of that same corner, sitting on top of the very large corner hill.  This should be a fun view for any squads of infantry which are set up there!


The view from above lets you see a little more of the actual battle mat.  This is from TableWar, and it is one of several which I will be using for our Bolt Action games.  As I have mentioned several times that one of my goals in these articles is to demonstrate how to build your terrain around the designs of your battle mat.

You can see that I am trying to take advantage of the dirt track on the left side of the hill.


Looking into the far corner, there is a real sense of distance.  I have tried to observed for myself in some of our long distance drives similar types of terrain.  This is actually modeled on what I saw.


The open areas of the mat start to have more impact when you get down to ground level!


I made 3 different corner pieces so that the could be oriented in different ways and switched out.  This is the alternate 3rd piece.

Once these were finished, I shot a few test videos of the board to see what it looked like 'live'.  I wanted to see what the lighting looked like, and if it could focus well both close up and far away.

My goal is to create video battle reports as well as my previous style of still image format.  Those video versions will require a lot of editing and upload times, so I may have them be patreon initially.

Anyway, look for a Facebook live video test on this soon!

The patreon link: