ADVANCED TECHNIQUES

-tread plate- -tiles- - water- -dripping liquids- -windows- -doors- -door knobs- -hinges- -stone work- -torches-

This article will guide you through some of the 'advanced' techniques of terrain modeling. Before you get all worried and apprehensive about your skill level, let me just say this: These techniques are still very simple, they just take a bit longer, and maybe a bit more effort. Anyway, since I have no 'intermediate' category, anything more advanced than basic assembly is in here!

1: Tread plate
Tread plate (also called diamond plate among other names) is that stuff that a lot of industrial floors are made from. It's got a high-grip surface (hence the name), and looks great in 40K/Necro terrain. You can apparently buy treadplate textured plasticard, but I can't find any.
To make your own tread plate, simply take a piece of tin foil and a piece of fly wire. Press the foil onto the fly wire, and rub it hard or run a rolling pin over it. The fly-wire texture will transfer to the foil. Now glue the foil down to the surface that needs tread-plating. This method gives good, if fragile results. The foil can rip, and the texture can be rubbed out. Possibly lead foil would work better, but I can't find any of that either.

2: Tiles
Tiles are really very simple and can be made a couple of ways. The simplest method is to cut strips of thin card a little longer than your roof is wide. Cut slits into these strips at regular intervals, and you have a row of tiles. To make them look random and/or damaged, cut nicks off the corners, or cut some tiles shorter than others. You can also cut out a lot of individual tiles, but the effect is basically the same. If you want round, decorative tiles, use a hole punch on thin card, and glue the discs on as tiles.
The big question is what do you do to the apex of the roof, where the tiles meet? Usually I bend a strip of card down the middle, cut both ends at angles, and glue it down the center. However, you can achieve a good effect by cutting a straw or plastic tube in half lengthwise, and then cutting it into short sections, to represent 'Spanish' tiles.

3: Water and other liquids
Any kind of liquid is achieved in basically the same way. You make a pond shape, and paint the bottom blue (for water), with a lighter blue highlight around the edges. Next, paint PVA glue over it, and leave it to dry. This takes a while, but you can speed the process up by the application of heat. A hair dryer works, but you have to hold it. I get my desk lamp and bring it down close to the piece. The bulb radiates rather a lot of heat and speeds things up nicely.
You can change the liquid by changing the color. Toxic slime (my favorite!) is just green water, and Lava can be achieved with red or orange.
You can add depth to any liquid by simply adding more coats of PVA. You can also add weeds etc. with flock or lichen. You can make it murky by adding a little paint to the PVA, or get depth with clear.

4: Dripping liquids
It's easy to make dripping liquids with a hot glue gun. Just heat the glue up and apply it to the place you want drips. The stuff dries pretty quick, but be careful: additional glue on top can melt it again. This technique is best for thick, viscous liquids like toxic slime. It doesn't really look like water. When the 'drips' are dry, paint them an appropriate color and cover in PVA, just like a normal water feature.

5: Windows
There are rather a lot of ways to handle windows, but they all boil down to two basic styles: Cut out, or applied. Cut out windows are the ones where you cut the window out of the wall. Applied widows are when you add a frame onto the wall, and paint the area inside to look like a window. Usually with cut out windows you glue something on inside the window so that you can't just see inside the building (which would either look odd, cause you didn't paint it, or would take forever, cause you detailed the interior!) Usually, I just paint windows black, mostly because I can't seem to get painted glass to look right. However, you can use mesh behind windows, glue frames made from card in, give them curtains, or almost anything. Remember, there's also the option of shutters.

6: Doors
There are strict laws which govern door size. Mostly user size. Your average door is about 3 time taller than wide. However, taller doors look more elegant, while broader doors look more robust. (Kind of like the difference between a Dwarf and an Elf) In 28mm scale, doors need to be about 2cm by 3-3.5cm. Variations around these are fine, but this size looks about right. Depending on whether your door is for 40K, Necro or WFB, it will be different. WFB doors tend to be wooden as it was the easiest and most abundant material in those times. Wooden doors are made up of planks, with about 5-6 planks per door, with at least two horizontal pieces to hold them together at top and bottom. 40K doors and Necro doors are often metal sliding 'blast doors' which can easily be made from card. However, doors basically always need a frame, which, again can be thin card or balsa.

7: Door knobs
Doors don't make much sense without knobs. In Fantasy anyway. There are a couple of methods. Stick a round pin head on for a simple knob. Or, take some fuse wire, and wrap it round the handle of a needle file (it's just the right size.) Cut a ring from the resultant 'spring', and glue it to the door as a ring. Add a pin head to cover the gap, and suggest the bolt or staple holding it on. You can also use card to make door knobs, or bent wire to make 'grab' handles.

8: Hinges
Doors look best with hinges. I always use a piece of thin metal tube, and glue it to the edge of the door. Two pieces of card are also glued on to represent the bits of hinge which bolt to the door.

9: Stone work
This method comes from a book I found. Cover the entire surface in air-drying modeling clay. Don't use the stuff you need to bake, or the cardboard might catch fire. Besides, the air drying stuff shrinks less. You need an even layer about 1mm thick. Use you finger, dipped in water to smooth the clay on.
When the clay is dry (about 24hrs later) you can sand it flat, and scribe stone work onto it. Use the back of a scalpel blade for this. You can use a ruler for regular stone work, or just scribe free hand for a random stone look. Make sure you go over each line a few times so it is good and deep. When this is done spray artist's fixative over the lot to stop it flaking, and paint. You can buy stone textured sheet, but it is disappointing stuff, and costs a fair deal. (One slab of clay cost me $4, and has so far sufficed for the well, a small ruin, and the Wizards house, with about enough left for another well. By contrast, one sheet of stone card big enough for one wall of the wizard's house would be about $5)

10: Torches
Torches really look good on fantasy buildings and terrain. The technique is very simple. Just take a tooth pick, and wrap black cotton round the end until a good head has formed. I guess you could use cotton buds, but I think the shape would be wrong. You could try sculpting flaming torches with green stuff, but I can't be bothered. (Painting flames is hard anyway)

I will add more to this page when I come up with more techniques to share.