Spring Cleaning Military Orders
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
I got started. My plan was to make the bases then strip/paint the models and then build the set.
I laser cut my design for base toppers. 
I sanded with fine grit sandpaper then used sanding sealer on it. This makes them feel and sound like plastic.
I done this for the rest of the base toppers.
I then mounted a couple of base toppers to the infinity bases and painted them a few times to see what could be done with MDF and the types of finishes. You can see on the one on the right I tried to grout them or pinwash them but as expected this looked quite poor and would require multiple perfect pin washes to make a good effect (perfection does not exist so I wouldn't recommend this).When I was doing the bases I thought this is a piss poor plan. If you think about a person walking into a room for a theatre production. It would be a bit odd for the person to stroll out and know what floor they would be standing on before the set was done and their costume on. I has this backwards. (this was quite fortunate)
I did like my 5 or 6 tests I done on the bases. this helped me understand the material as I normally 3D print my base toppers. This will be my first time using MDF in this way.
Instead I will get to work on the set. the bases worked out basically how I would do the floor. This also set the best of my colours. I will use a dark terracotta colour an off white (yellowed white) for some detail or focal sections, deck tan (green grey) for most of the pattern a dark green. with black thrown in. I was also watching time team and seen a few of the tiles and they all seem to be blackened in the middle. Something to do with the process. I will use black wash on the centre for the translucency.
Some things that I considered and decided:
- I won’t use full white as this will be the highest highlight on models and I will reserve it for that.
- I wont highlight the floor, but I will on the bases this should make the models be the focal point and jump out from the set.
- This will be lightly weathered but I should take the weathering from the models and not do this to the base until this is decided.
- I want the colour selection of everything to be considered. I want the dominant colours to be primary colours. Red, Blue and Yellow. But the focal point should be the models in blue. the Floor red and the walls yellow with some strong graphical elements. This sounds like a horrendous idea but I will play with the tones to try and balance this but make the blue the strongest colour (of the models). This does remind me of my local church and as a kid I spent most of my time looking at anything to keep my attention. All the tones of the church interior were natural but that was sort of the reverse of this with red sandstone walls and a yellow/white marble floor.
- I want to keep the set very traditional but cut some corners to speed things up. (writing this from the future, this didn’t work out to well)
- I am off this week and want to get this done so I can start to play with defiance (my reward for prepping for the rest of the models to arrive at the end of this month)
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