Jscottbowmans thread - Durins Causeway - 15/9/14

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 1:15 am

Hi Folks, I thought I'd start a WIP thread here to share my model and terrain building activity with you...

I have put stuff up on the forum here before some years ago, but it disappeared when the forum crashed sadly, so I've been a bit wary of uploading stuff and having the only copy here since, ... I usually blog. But I figured I can share terrain pics etc from the blog here easily enough for those interested?

Anyway here to set the ball rolling...

With a view to continuing my Fellowship campaign(http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27932)., I have been busy with the dense foam and other materials:

The Watcher in the Water terrain board Pics:

I apologise before hand if some of these pics are too wide? I formatted them for my blog, but that might not suit here, so will alter the size settings for future pics!

The Doors of Durin - printed from an image on the web in black and white them over painted in silver and dark gray.

Since these pics were taken I have added scenic flock, trees and started puring the resin (Woodlands Scenic Realistic Water) for the pool, but its drying is somewhat erratically in the autumnal conditions here... so while its doings its own thing in its own time I started on Durins Causeway...

Durins Causeway:

I made these sections in 25mm width styrofoam, but after making them, though the shape and height looked good the width I felt was too narrow, so I went back and widened them all adding alongside an extra sheet...

More pics to follow!

Batman of The Shire · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 1:59 am

Thats awesome mate, cant wait to see more progress

Oldman Willow · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 2:39 am

Very cool

John · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 6:07 am

Nice. Where are you getting your styrofoam from Scott and what are you paying $$ wise for it? Cheers and keep up the good work.

ste271276 · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 7:11 am

Great thread. Will be following

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 7:18 am

Nice project! My only criticism would be, that the mountain structures around the doors of durin look too "linear", which makes the appearance less natural.
The stairs However look great already!

Hodush · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 7:50 am

Awesome stuff, can't wait to see more!

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 8:06 am

John wrote:

Nice. Where are you getting your styrofoam from Scott and what are you paying $$ wise for it? Cheers and keep up the good work.

Hi John, I'm getting it from Forman Insulation. They have depots around NZ.
I placed an order for 4 sheets of 2.5m x 60mm x 25mm. And was charged ~$250 inc GST including delivery, though they reckon they under charged me on that as they stuffed up in the quote - they didnt have any when I placed order , at the local depot to me (Wello) and it had to come down from Rotorua...
Also they also packed it between two thick sheets of some other dense foam material, so I have that to play with too :-)

Probably use it as a base board...

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 8:11 am

Rognarr wrote:

Nice project! My only criticism would be, that the mountain structures around the doors of durin look too "linear", which makes the appearance less natural.
The stairs However look great already!

Thank you.
I know what you mean but I recalled the comment from Gandalf about dwarf doors being difficult to find, so I didnt want an obviously archway, and wanted to have the doors fairly flush to the surrounding rock... (it was tricky one to get the balance right and then have the doors nice and smooth for the paper mithril letters to be glued down flush over the top too...)

...of course when you then go and paint glowing letters on the door it kinda gives the game away! ;-)

Major_Tom · **Joined:** Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:58 am **Posts:** 58

Durins Causeway looks epic, thats really impressive

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 9:05 am

My word, your not doing things in halves are you !!!
Another fascinating WIP to follow.

pokyha · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 10:56 am

There is a polystyrene place in lower Hutt called Styrobeck plastics limited. I haven't orded through them but they can cut large pieces to size for you. They are on Pharazyn St.

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 11:21 am

jscottbowman wrote:

Rognarr wrote:

Nice project! My only criticism would be, that the mountain structures around the doors of durin look too "linear", which makes the appearance less natural.
The stairs However look great already!

Thank you.
I know what you mean but I recalled the comment from Gandalf about dwarf doors being difficult to find, so I didnt want an obviously archway, and wanted to have the doors fairly flush to the surrounding rock... (it was tricky one to get the balance right and then have the doors nice and smooth for the paper mithril letters to be glued down flush over the top too...)

...of course when you then go and paint glowing letters on the door it kinda gives the game away! ;-)

Ah no.. that's a bit of misunderstanding, sorry. I mean the "mountains" in their layout look a bit too rectangular for my taste. Nothing wrong about the doors or their shape!

Crucium Giger · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 11:35 am

Very nice indeed, I'm always impressed by anyone who takes on a project of this scale.

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 12:09 pm

Rognarr wrote:

jscottbowman wrote:

Rognarr wrote:

Nice project! My only criticism would be, that the mountain structures around the doors of durin look too "linear", which makes the appearance less natural.
The stairs However look great already!

Thank you.
I know what you mean but I recalled the comment from Gandalf about dwarf doors being difficult to find, so I didnt want an obviously archway, and wanted to have the doors fairly flush to the surrounding rock... (it was tricky one to get the balance right and then have the doors nice and smooth for the paper mithril letters to be glued down flush over the top too...)

...of course when you then go and paint glowing letters on the door it kinda gives the game away! ;-)

Ah no.. that's a bit of misunderstanding, sorry. I mean the "mountains" in their layout look a bit too rectangular for my taste. Nothing wrong about the doors or their shape!

Ah yes I see what you mean now... I must confess I was at a bit of a loss as to how to depict these mountains, because in my mind and imagination they would be an immense and pretty sheer cliff face straight up...

Yet over this small represented section I wanted to give it a bit 'shape', and decided to just start layering it back over a little...

It was a bit of a compromise approach...

I also havent built the cliff into the board surface (its a separate piece) as I was concerned a little about storage if the whole thing was one piece, and also had concerns over the doors snagging on the base board and not opening properly...

I am quite content now with the cliff structure and now its painted and dry brushed it has a better depth and 3d-ness to it, which hopefully subsequent pictures will show. My concerns now are getting the darn resin to set properly and getting a level of and colour of flock I am happy with over a rocky surface... thats my biggest headache.
I did it green to start and that was just too much contrast, so re-did with a mid brown and now want to build it up with browns and greens... Must admit I'm no expert, at lot of it is trial and error... still its fun!

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 12:11 pm

pokyha wrote:

There is a polystyrene place in lower Hutt called Styrobeck plastics limited. I haven't orded through them but they can cut large pieces to size for you. They are on Pharazyn St.

Thanks I'll check that out.

Celevue · **Posted:** Thu May 08, 2014 4:16 pm

Looks great - especially happy to see another rendition of movie-style Durin's causeway! Also looking forward to seeing how you will adapt that scenery to the game scenario (we are still contemplating that one ourselves).

Khazad_Stan · **Joined:** Wed May 07, 2014 3:29 pm **Posts:** 4

That's truly epic! Keep up your fantastic work!

jscottbowman · **Posted:** Sat May 10, 2014 3:16 am

In the midst of working on several things as is usually way, I put together an Ale Cart for Hobbiton from an old Bugman's Beers cart, and a spare pair of seated Merry and Pippin hobbits from the Treebeard set...

Also, further work on Durins Causeway:

As always, more pics on blog...
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/middle-earth-medley-wood-elves-ale.html

Goldman25 · **Posted:** Sat May 10, 2014 9:52 am

That ale cart is kinda very awesome

Jscottbowmans thread - Durins Causeway - 15/9/14

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