Workbench: Of amber waving grain

Just showing off some more terrain I made.






Check out the explosions in the back ground.

Workbench: Progress on the front

Made some progress. I'm seeing the boards to completion, but there are some serious lessons learned on these boards that will follow to the next iteration.

1. Without wood guards on the edges, getting the insulation foam cut at a perfect 90 degree angle is critically important. A few extra minutes spent on this cut pays off 10-20 fold later on. And even then, corrections later on are inferior.

2. I've heard of it before, but Spray paint and foam should never mingle. Foam sometimes dissolves like coming into contact with the acid blood from Aliens. The roads on the large boards did just this and required extra work.

3. Proper surface preparation and cleanliness is also critical. I skimped on this to some degree and many times flotsam from one board or project would complicate the stage of another.

4. A clear well ordered design stage pays dividends. These boards are following a 16" lowest common denominator (being either 16x32 or 16x16), and while I like the room it gives over 12" and it's not big as 24", in retrospect I wish I went 24".

5. Always test. I like in this I made a slight compromise and did various effects on different sections to see their outcome, and then retrofitted where possible to the others.

Using outdoor paint/primer to give the broad colors.



Spray paint to speed up the details of the rest.



Bringing in some color variation and neutralizing the contrast.



Flocking... Really starting to resemble the color tones of the old ASL boards.




ACTION SHOTS!

Workbench: On the flip side

And on the other side of manic...

When optioned to field terrain boards for a local tourney, I could of took in the more than adequate Warhammer Fantasy boards and decorated them with bocage. Or, I could obsess and take on a project to build some purpose built ones.

Which one did I choose? I chose the obvious one. I chose to refine my art, try some new techniques, and charge into a new set of boards using what I learned from my less than spectacular Battletech board.

Some progress on the 4 test mules:








They're completely modular and interchangeable for numerous permutations. I'll work out the rest of the gaping tonight and maybe even have them painted and flocked. We'll see.

Random trivia: Did you know that Gilligan's Island was modeled after the 7 deadly sins? As confirmed by the show's creator (through various acts of collaboration during production), the professor was pride, Mary Ann envy, Ginger lust, Mr. Howell greed, Mrs. Howell sloth, and the Skipper is Anger/Gluttony.
Who keeps them on the island? Satan himself and the last of the crew; Gilligan.
Think about it.
The corollary didn't seem completely intentional in early preproduction however, but once the comparison was made, they finalized the cast and ran with it as sort of an in joke.

Commercials Done Right

I saw the pinata one quite by accident as a youtube advert. I wasn't paying clear attention to it till I realized what was going on, and then quite nearly lost the morning coffee all over the computer.

These guys need to be given more work, because even awesome commercials aren't going to convince me to drink soy milk.

Workbench: Dog ate it

I was going to post up a pic by pic progression of painting some churchills, but alas the Tamiya Olive Drab paint I have turned... gloss. To be fair, it's an old paint.

I now have a shiny Churchill VII that I need to do something with.

So instead, lets have a kickass music video from Talvisota.



Random Trivia: Did you know that the movie Biodome started out as the third film in the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure franchise? Much of the references to this are littered through out the movie and are nearly unchanged from the original script where Bill and Ted end up in a not so heinous future.