Magical woodland terrain- For Moonstone / Arcworlde / Everything

Back from a lovely time and my ISP has chosen my absence to destroy my internet connection. I’m usinng one of those dongles that is actually a massive improvement on the performance of my ISP.

Anyway…

For once I have a very clear picture in mind of the form I want the platforming/scaffolding to take around these objects.

Just how expensive is balsa wood now!? As I boy I threw gliders worth of it around the local hills Now I have to seek through the darkweb to find shady suppliers of the stuff. Almost. I want a ramshackle rostrum built around these tethered objects, as access to buildings,vantages, etc. I’ve realised this stuff might be fun for Frostgrave too. Another game I like. The platforms are lolly sticks – highly mutilated lolly sticks. I have found that soaking the balsa construction with cheapo superglue once built very effectively reinforces the structures.

I want to leave the components separate in order to paint them more easily.

I’m going somewhere pretty special, but you know when you’re very focused on some task and any distraction from that task is frustrating!? I thought I’d spend as much time as I could on this terrain while some sort of image of the end result was still fresh in my mind.

For scenery like this I don’t really have a better method than to carve away at Insulation foam until there’s some results I like. I’m goingf for a well weathered mudstone or slatey sort of look.

Beyond this stage, I am thinking about having wooden scaffolds placed around the bodies, perhaps with staging to cross up and over? I don’t know yet – whatevre works. I have balsa wood and lolly sticks ordered from ebay – hopefully here when i get back.

I’m going somewhere pretty special, but you know when you’re very focused on some task and any distraction from that task is frustrating!? I thought I’d spend as much time as I could on this terrain while some sort of image of the end result was still fresh in my mind.

For scenery like this I don’t really have a better method than to carve away at Insulation foam until there’s some results I like. I’m goingf for a well weathered mudstone or slatey sort of look.

Beyond this stage, I am thinking about having wooden scaffolds placed around the bodies, perhaps with staging to cross up and over? I don’t know yet – whatevre works. I have balsa wood and lolly sticks ordered from ebay – hopefully here when i get back.

It’s a while since I’ve sculpted large forms. I began by printing out a nice sharp vector sun to use as a template and DAS as a medium. It’s wholly inappropriate, way too soft for my purpose. So I switched to a modelling plastic clay – much more effective for sculpting details.

I want these astro. bodies to be tethered like the folklore stories of the moon. Perhaps, because they’re large they should be set with platforms as set pieces to clamber around? One criticism I have of Moonstone is it often feels very 2-dimensional…

I’m really not sure yet how I’m going to set any of these in the scene. Likely just set dressing.

Somehow I found time to buy and begin painting some of the new faction, plus finishing the remains of my Lesh sculpts

Everything is still looking flat. I’m justt going to apply washes in warmer tones till I start getting a degree of realism that looks good.

I’m very taken with the artistic direction that Moonstone has taken leaning on marginalia and medieval imagery. I love the way those scribes allowed so much humour into the margins – there’s almost too much inspiration. I want to make something of the astronomical srtwork they drew. This means sculpting though. Easy stuff first: a paper star!

I’ve added two or three washes of browns and greens to make the logs look aged in situ:

There are a couple of subtle washes over the rocks while I decide what colour to paint every thing ( all wet-palette work, I never work from specific pots. I can’t give details beyond that.)

By moulding some Das around a HDF core and doing some very simple carving I’m left with something to attach glittery fungus fruits to. This is greenstuff around paperclips with toy beads as a basis for the spores.

I give the beads a simple gradation in paints from dark blues and purple and pinks. Then apply simple highlight spots. Then about three layyers of gloss varnish – till it looks very shiny. Finally I airbrush a layer of metallic effect sheen over the beads. In purples and blues. I rarely use these paints and the affect can range from subtle to retina-detaching.

Like everyone’s idea of a genius I’d left this project set to “private”. That will be the goblins doing, most likely….

Hopefully, you can now see how I constructed the forest logs, with DAS clay over foam blocks and greenstuff caps. Now time to slop some paint around

I’ve also airbrushed the crystals and the rock formations with a heavy-duty undercoat. There’s a small amount of highlighting on the crystals too. I will likely just paint and gloss them and the water and matt varnish the rocks. Once they’re painted of course

A hose down with was (home-made) Always DIY forr terrain – too expensive otherwise.

Having bought and painting these, there’s really only the Witches and the troll character to fully complete this Leshers.  I really don’t like the witch models at all, and will buy them if I can think how to base them. The troll is sculpted to my tastes but I can’t see any synergies for him.

I’ve been buying the few remaining sculpts for the Lesh that I don’t own. The box with Kavanagh was one of them. I don’t rate the human Lesh very highly as models and wanted to do something with this one.

It seemed obvious to me that he should be rolling around on a barrel filled with magical balls? I’m guessing it’s that obvious to everyone else too?

I’ve also bought and painted those new-ish trees for the Lesh. They really are fun to paint.

Back to my terrain. I really wnated to model this:

These are simply DAS  around a HDF core. The hardwork of painting come next for most of this stuff.

I really should have taken more photos but this is what I’ve ended up with:

How I got here is by having a HDF core for each log or stump. then, in greenstuff, sculpting the ends of the logs for  where they’d been chopped. Small rings of greenstuff arranged concentrically which I then chop into and sculpt when semi-set.

The outer bark of the log is modelled in DAS, set with varnish and primed grey.

The DIY sculpting should be clearer in these images

I’m omnivorous when it comes to what I’ll use when creating scenery. I”d like these pieces to outlast their first game however, so I’m using tried and trusted insulation foam, coffee stirers and green stuff. I’ve found that polyurethane (Sp?) varnish really works to set the pieces once I’ve carved them — they feel very fragile up until that point, being insulation foam and therefore mostly air.

If you’re curious as to the how, it is just carving away at the shapes till I have something I like. Some of the rocks or crystals are reinforced with cocktail sticks or pins. For now this is essentially foam and PVC glue. The end result is soft as fluff. A soak in varnish should cure this problem.

Next I need, fallen trees and to start thinking about colour schemes.

Having played a few games of Moonstone recently with some award-winningly drab grimdark scenery – out of necessity, obviously, I really wanted to create something that suits the fairy tale atmosphere of the game. There is some great terrain available on Etsy, but they’ll want money for it, and I want to keep mine where I can look at it.

So I’m going to recreate something very like theirs and hopefully use that as a jumping off point to something of my own.