Weekend update

Didn't have a lot of time to work on terrain this weekend. However I did get some work done. I finished the floor for the temple piece, began building a 3" gazebo piece, did some more organizing in the shop.

This week I want to finish the gardens of morr and the gazebo. The temple can wait till next week.

At some point I will need to clear enough space to start work on minis tirith. I am almost ready to start on some of the smaller buildings like the temple on the back side.

Project Status 1

I am going to do a weekly readers digest version of the status of my projects! This will not have any pictures and is just an idea of when stuff will get done.

Ruined Castle Gate:

The air compressor has stalled my progress here however the piece is done other then painting and final detail work. I am borrowing an air compressor and hope to have the piece done in the next couple days.

Gardens of Morr:

I have 2 of the buildings finished painting and almost complete with the main gate, just a couple details to add there. Once the air brush is working again I plan to do the first 2 coats of paint with the air brush for the remaining pieces which should save me time overall. Hopefully I will be done with the piece middle of next week.

Minas Tirith:

Working on designing the Citadel. I hope to have some sketches up soon of this and begin construction.

Gazebos:

I am still working on the dome pieces and have not made any progress here. Been focusing on casting blocks and working out kinks in that process.

Workspace:

I have more poly bins to mount to finish sorting. Also this weekend I will be installing a sink basin and running water to the shop. This will make things a lot easier. Also need to mount some peg board by my new bench.

Tools:

I made a couple table tops for casting on which are working well. I have the foam to use as a dampener for the vibration table but have yet to fix that. Might get to that this weekend but probably won't happen till next week.

Lots of stuff going on time to complete some of it!

Helms Deep

A member of the hirst arts forum posted a link to a project of helms deep someone did. Since I am attempting to do Minas Tirith I figured I would blog about their Lord of the Rings inspired project as well. You can check it out at: http://onyxworkshop.wordpress.com/about/helms-deep/

He has a really long list of molds listed to accomplish the project. After looking over the pictures I think you can do what he has done with just 5 molds: Wizard Tower, Octagon Tower, Prison Tower, Ruined Tower, and Gothic Bridge. That should give you all the pieces I could identify with a few exceptions such as the round pillars used. These however could easily be replace with the pillars from the ruined tower and still look good. Also you do not get the wall molds, however with a bit of effort you can cut basic blocks in half and make thinner walls out of them.

Overall the project was very well done. Makes me want to try and tackle it before I do Minas Tirith... One project at a time I guess. All spare time is going to casting blocks and learning the tricks to get good casts.

Casting Update

So last night I finished off the vibration/shaker table for casting. Woot Woot!!! So this morning I ran down to the post office and picked up the Merlins Magic that I ordered. Post office was busy and taking forever as I figured it would. It really is no wonder why they are bankrupt! Anyway that is another topic for discussion. The first thing that I realize about the merlins magic is that it has about 1/3rd the volume that an equivelent weight bag of plaster has. I probably should have realized this sooner sinse it cures denser then standard plaster but I didn't. That means my original estimate of 7 times more expensive then plaster just sky rocketed to 20-30 times more expensive!!! This may not be workable for Minas Tirith and only cost effective on smaller projects.

On a side note, when I was assembeling the table last night I used a spray adhesive to help bond the layers of the table top. I didn't realize how close my phone was to the spray and apparently it got quite a bit of overspray on it... Now the screen is all grimey :( Fortunately I have a screen protector film on it so I should be able to just take that off and be good to go!!!

Next Molds

So needless to say I am impressed with the hirst arts molds. I want more of them... heck I want all of them but that will take time. Time to plan my next purchase though. I want to get a 5 mold set so I only have to pay the $7 shipping once for all 5 molds. On top of that you get a 10% discount if you order 5 molds at once!!! Score.

So here are the molds I am looking at:

1) #40 Basic Block Mold
2) #55 Bell Tower Mold
3) #54 Gothic Church Mold
4) #235 Gothic Roof Mold
5) #201 Floor Tiles

This will give me the capability to build the bell tower plan and the church plan with the roof. They will also allow me to start work on the main building of the Citadel as well as the white tower. The citadel will need a couple other molds in order to be complete. I also may start work on some of the outer wall sections.

In order to help raise money for this project and for the terrain projects in general, I have decided to setup an etsy shop and auction things on ebay. I will be taking my time on this terrain and will probably fully paint it. Some of it will likely be custom designs as well. I already have some plans in my head about making a nice center keep at about 2ftx2ft. We will see how this goes.

Minas Tirith: Snafu Number 1

So I was going back over my designs and realized I had messed up reading some of the numbers... I am currently using google sketchup to attempt to redesign my plan. However, it is fairly quickly becoming apparent that if I want this project to be constrained to the 4ft section of the gaming board I am going to have to cut out some of the tiers. It simply won't be playable otherwise. Right now I am considering cutting out 2 of the tiers. One of the medium size ones and one of the smaller ones. Hopefully this will give me the space I need to make the citadel at the top and have all of the outer levels still be playable.

Minas Tirith: Materials Plan

One of the big questions for this project is what am I going to use to make it? I could use carboard and other base materials but that will add a lot more time consumption and probably won't end with the amount of detail I am after in this project. Let's make no mistake here, this is a VERY large project and I don't expect to be done with it for at least 6 months. So adding lots of additional work is not desired. So lets set some requirements.

The materials need to be easy to aquire.
They need to be cheap.
They need to come with as much detail as possible in the textures so I don't have to add that.

Lets start with the core/base of the city. To make this I am going to go with styrofoam insulation. It is relatively cheap as I can get it for between 15 and 30 dollars for a 4' x 8' sheet depending on the thickness. It is easy to work with and it is light. It is also a favorite material for people making modular terrain which is another requirement of this project.

To make all the buildings that will be attached to this foam I did a bit of research. I stumbled upon a site that has created a large variety of molds for casting parts called Hirst Arts (http://www.hirstarts.com/). Basically they have designed a bunch of molds for people to make lego like building pieces that they can then assemble into the structures that they design. Perfect!!! Since the molds are Silicone you can cast any plastic or plaster pieces you want.

I looked at a bunch of molds and did some research on the available materials. I could use a resin to do all of the casting which would save greatly on the weight and make the pieces incredibly more durable. However resin costs $120 for a 2 gallon (2 parts so 4 gallons total) system. In order to make enough pieces for this city I would probably need 6 gallons or more of the resin. On top of that you need to buy special mold release to protect the silicon molds from being eaten up durring the chemical process of the resin and eventually destroying the mold. Because of these issues I decided to go with Plaster of Paris. It is a fairly light plaster and you can get a 25lb bag for about $15, which makes it incredibly cheap as well. The one downside is that it is not as durable. However I don't forsee this piece being abused so hopefully that won't be a problem.

The final main product I am considering using are some rare earth magnets of various sizes. The intent here will be to mount these in the bases along with some metal. This will provide for a locking mechanism within the modular pieces. It will add to the cost but it will also help ensure everything stays aligned as intended.

I have already purchased a couple of the Hirst Arts molds. I have selected the Wizard Tower and Octagon Tower molds to start with. When they arrive I will be writing about constructing those terrain pieces and figuring out how I can apply the pieces to the Minas Tirith project.

Minas Tirith Research

The first step I am going through before starting construction is research. I need to determine the rough size and shape of each of the levels. I also need to take into account how the terrain piece will be played on. I don't want to take all this time to end up with something that is simply not playable.

Doing a search on google provided me with lots of good reference pictures to design around. One of my favorites is of a model that someone else is working on. It provided me with a very good idea of how things are laid out for the top tier of the city where the Citadel is.

Based on this image and the base size of a large model (50mm) I determined that the upper level of the city should be 250mm across. This would allow 5 large models to stand side by side. The Citadel itself would be 125mm across and about 200mm deep. Each of the next 3 levels would be 50mm across. This will provide that narrow feeling you see in the movies where the paths are just wide enough for a troll to make it up. Tier 5 is 75mm out from the tier above it. Tier 6 is 100mm. And tier 7 is 175mm out. This makes for an overall width of 1.2 meters, which is just under 4 feet wide.

After doing some reading on wikipedia I determined that each of the tiers had the same height of 100 feet and that the spire on the top was equivelent to 3 tiers tall at 300 feet. Based on these proportions I decided that 6 inches per tier would give me the appropriate height. So the height from the first tier to the top tier where the citadel is would be 42inches and adding another 18 inches for the spire. This gives me an overall height of 5 feet.

Given this data my target size for the model is going to be 4' x 5' x 5'. This is going to be a massive model and because of that it will not be possible to make it a solid structure. I will have to make this using a modular method. On the plus side using a modular method means that this will be usable for other things besides just the one massive model!