Time to bake some sculpey!

Well, with the supplies coming in fast and furious (a box of Reaper figs just showed up!!!!), I can finally get into a lot of the prep work for all the videos.

This big old box came in, courtesy of Amazon.  Very nice price on it, and free shipping, which was pretty amazing given how heavy this was!

This is the original white sculpey that you see me using for almost all the bases.  You get a whole lot in this giant box!  Best to keep it wrapped up when you are not using it, as it will go 'stale' and crumbly otherwise.

The set up.  Some ceramic tiles, a roller (even a piece of PVC pipe will do) and a 'clay extruder'... AKA pasta maker!

You have to work the sculpey a bit so that you get the air bubbles out as much as possible.  Here I am making one of the thicker sheets of sculpey, which I use as chunks of concrete.

Instead of the clay extruder, I use the roller, since the extruder only has a maximum thickness far thinner than what I wanted.  

For the more typical sheets, I put the worked sculpey through the extruder...

Back to the thick sheets.  I let this 'cool down' a little bit before I started rolling it, as the heat from your hands and the friction of kneading it makes it very smushy.

You can see me rolling that sheet, and the extruded pieces on the other tile.

More extruding!

You will want to keep the crank rolling without stopping, to avoid any uneven results.  You also should keep your hand under the stuff coming out, as it will simply pile up at the bottom, and get messed up!

Since sculpey has a bit of a 'fragrance' when baking, I tend to use the toaster over these days.  The disadvantage is that it is pretty small, but the advantage is that I can bake the stuff anywhere there is electricity, and I won't turn the house into a furnace in the summertime.

That is a lesson learned the hard way!

And the final result after a few rounds of baking!  Sculpey sheets ready to turn into bases, tiles, walls, concrete, wood planks, doors, and so much more!!!!

Glory shots! Grotesques vs Seraphim

Before Rich and I set down to play that test game, I set some minis on the table to do some 'glory shots' of the fortifications.

I ended up having to use the flash, but you still get to see a lot!

I love these type of scenes.  It's the best part of having painted minis and terrain!!

At least the flash gave you a decent view of the door.

Those Grotesques look really mad!

The girls aren't scared though, as they jump over the walls to greet the big guys...

I don't think they are gonna hug this one out.

So, I think I will have to set up some more of these. :-)

Enjoy!

Reaper Yvonne... shiny :-)

Hey folks!  I have a set of this particular Reaper miniature coming to use as the figure for the Sky/Earth Non Metallic Metal video.  I am using some Urban Mammoth figures for the Golds, brass and Bronze video.

I did this one years ago, and it was always one of my favorites for SE-NMM.  It had the most open, unhindered surfaces, with several different types of angles.  The sword is just perfect for what I need to do, and there were many other good spots for that 'horizon line'.

All these factors were way more important than they were for the standard NMM video, where reflections are not the issue.  I will also be scanning some images from my Medieval Armor book that has actual photographs of actual humans wearing actual shiny armor in actual scenes. :-)  These will be shown in the video (with credits to the author & publisher, etc.) as reference material.

Speaking of Reaper minis, there should be a big box of those arriving either tomorrow or Friday!  It was at least 10-12 videos worth of minis.

House warming party... more pics!

OK!  A busy day today, which begins with some more 'ground level' views of the painted house...

My next building will probably be a blacksmith's shop, which will be very fun!

I will probably have to build, paint, build, paint, final assemble, then paint if I want to have glowing embers and such...

I am also looking forward to making a different kind of 2 story house, and painting my huge Inn! Here's a link:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2013/01/our-house-is-very-very-very-fine-house.html

The Ruined Chapel: Part 2

All right!  When we last left the chapel, we were putting on the extra wall bracing.  There will be two layers.  The first (the thin strips of foam core) were already applied...

I took additional strips of the same with, but cut them much shorter.

The top end was beveled, and then they were glued to the walls once they had been 'aged'

This was done on all the wall supports.

Meanwhile, for the interior, we needed a floor!  I cut the textured plastic sheet to size, and even cut out some missing tiles, etc.

To show some damage and partial collapse of the walls, I took the left over cut outs of the windows and sliced them up into various 'stone sized' pieces.

Those pieces had the corners chipped away, and they were placed in piles in the corners where the walls appeared to be falling down.

I tried to make sure that the two piles were not the same size and shape, as this was better for composition.  It is also the reason why I made one wall longer than the other!

Now it's time for the final elements of the construction.  A few different types of rocks and gravel were applied to finish things off.  I used the glue and finer grain gravel to fill in any gaps, or hide the join lines in the vertical wall supports, etc.

You can see that process continue here...

A little closer view of the gap filling, and the types of grain used.  

Hiding the edges of the textured plastic sheet...

And now it is left to dry, so that it can be painted!!!

The Ruined Chapel... part 1

This is a piece of terrain that I have been eager to try for quite a while.  I had hoarded the supplies for it, waiting for a chance to give it a try.  One of the interesting items I had saved was some sheets of textured plasticard that looked like tile floors.

Here's a better view.  Normally I would just cut up pieces of matt board or hard board, but this stuff seemed like it would be fun!

To make the walls, I took some of that nifty craft foam that Rich had given me.  Unlike the normal pink foam, this carves extremely well, especially with a very sharp knife.  The pink foam will crumble a little more easily.  I traced out a window pattern that would give some good sight lines to 28mm figures, and but them out.

The pink foam is a special corner piece.

Here you can see that I have hacked away at the white foam, trying to simulate the broken stones as quickly as possible.

I cut some foam board to support the walls.  This would make it a bit more decorative, and provide a better surface for gluing the walls to the base.

The walls begin to rise!  You can see how I am using the corner piece to help join the two walls together...

The walls have been raised.  I tried to keep enough open space in the interior to easily place at least ten 28mm figures inside.

Meanwhile, on the exterior, I wanted to provide cover by using the thickness of the walls to cut down on sight lines from outside the structure.

To create the next decorative element (which also offers some more support to the walls), I cut a bunch of uniformly sized strips of foam core.

I matched whatever damage had been done to the main walls on these support pieces, and glued them in place.

This was done between all the window sections.  Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, where we put in the floor, use the excess window cut outs as fallen stones, and glue in all the rock and gravel!!  It will be lots of fun!