Tuesday 1 March 2016

Pretend tree bases.

Howdy folks,

I've been making terrain piece's intermittently for the past few months now. One type of them has been some forest sections. I thought I'd give a basic description of how I went about making them.


Ingredients:

* A cherished & much loved CD or DVD.
* Bogroll a.k.a. toilet paper.
* Expanded foam scraps
* Static grass
* Pretend Trees
* PVA
* Sand
* Basing material

Oh, and a bit of paint wouldn't go astray either :)


Method:

1/ Cover the centre hole of the CD with a bit of plastic.
2/ Stick down a couple of trees in random locations.
3/ To make some rocks, stick some Expanded foam bits to the base.
4/ Mix some PVA with water 50:50 and paint the foam with it.
5/ Tear off small sections of toilet paper and lay them all over the wet foam.
6/ Paint the PVA mix over the toilet paper to adhere it to the foam.
7/ While it's still wet, sprinkle it with sand. The rock is now done.
8/ Coat the rest of the base with straight PVA & cover it with basing material. Then let it dry.
9/ Shake off the loose basing material, then paint the rocks with black paint & drybrush white.
10/ Ink wash the basing material Dark brown & drybrush with Light brown paint....let it dry.
11/ Paint PVA all around the perimeter of the base, rocks and in sporadic locations too.
12/ Apply static grass to the base and leave to dry.
13/ Once dry, shake off the loose static grass....Job done!



Now here's some tree porn for you all to enjoy,


Here's some tree's.

And here's some more tree's.

Here's a close up of some tree's.

And here's a close up of just one tree.

Oh, and this one is a special one.....oh, no it's not! It's just a close up of some tree's too!!....sorry :(

Here's a selection of some of the tree bases on my "forever almost finished" skirmish tabletop.


All up, I made ten of these tree bases. Which should be enough to game with on most sized tabletop's I reckon. Overall, I'm pretty with how they turned out, except for the static grass colour. It could have matched my grass mat better, but I suppose that's always an issue when using this stuff.....there's just so many different shades of the stuff, trying to colour match it can be nigh impossible. Oh well, it's only a slight problem, the rest of the thing turned out fine IMHO :)

I've made up some Sci-fi terrain bases too, but they still require a bit more work before I can call them finished.


Until next time, keep breathing.

13 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks JB, they should provide a bit of cover hey :)

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  2. Looks great. What is "expanded foam?" It's yanks have so many different types of foam products I don't know which one you're referring to!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Andrew,

      It's the stuff to fill gaps in building structures with i.e. cracks in walls & around pipes where they enter the home etcetera.

      You just spray it where you want to and it expands to fill the crevice. Finally ending up looking like hard foam a.k.a. polystyrene.

      In Australia (where I'm from) we just call it "expanda foam" or "spray foam". Hope this helps clarify it for you.

      Cheers :)

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    2. Thanks! In the USA it's usually called spray foam or spray insulation (at least where I'm at in the USA anyway!). I've been meaning to pick up a can for another terrain project but didn't want to let most of a can go to waste. Now I have another use!

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    3. Thanks! In the USA it's usually called spray foam or spray insulation (at least where I'm at in the USA anyway!). I've been meaning to pick up a can for another terrain project but didn't want to let most of a can go to waste. Now I have another use!

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    4. If your careful, you can clean out the nozzle and tube after you've used it. Then you can use it again later. There's a few YouTube videos showing you how to go about preserving this stuff if your curious?

      Cheers :)

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  3. Excellent. I did something very similar, but I kept some of the reflective areas of the cd revealed to act as pools:

    http://thelostandtheverydamned.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/tutorial-basing-trees.html?m=1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I remember that blog post. Top stuff indeed!

      I was actually the first to comment on it....my moniker on Google+ is "headhead" :)

      Cheers Stuart.

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  4. You're "almost finished" skirmish ring is looking more and more finished . . . what with the addition of more stuff. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Composer :)

      Yeah, I just need to paint up the edge and clean up a few unsightly glue marks on the grass & she'll be done. I'm just a lazy sod, that's all :)

      Cheers.

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