Orgoth Ruins Project Log (GenCon 2011)

[Terraformer]

Last year right about this time, my other lead artist, Mismuse, and I were frantically putting the finishing touches on a large set of intricate terrain pieces destined for 2011 GenCon. PG_apollosun here made a thread about the events over here last year. But as for the terrain used in that game specifically, and case anyone hasn't seen it yet, here's the project log for our Orgoth Ruins terrain set, a hugely intricate set that's not even fully finished yet!

(I may truncate some of the log to just the highlights so I don't have a hundred posts with 4 pics each. The full and unedited log is back at our own site.)

Like many of our sorted and twisted tales, this one begins with an E-mail from a fascinating person who has traveled the world.

We were contacted with a request to make a series of themed terrain pieces for our client's upcoming Warmachine tournament which he was organizing for GenCon 2011. This immediately piqued our curiosity, because we've been itching to work on something besides The Grim Darkness Of The Future for a long time, but since that's all we're asked to make, we haven't had a lot of opportunities to spread our wings and try different styles. (Also, GenCon! wheeee!)

Some commissioned projects are rather simple and pretty much go like this:

Them: MAEK ME TERRAINS!!!1
Us: Ok. Monies plz k thx bye.

And we then design something that we think looks awesome and send it off and everything’s great. But in this case we were dealing with the flavor rich world of Warmachine, and a specific plan for a full-blown campaign event with an actual narrative.

We had a crash-course learning about Khador, the Orgoth and the origin of the Iron Kingdoms.

The storyline for the campaign was that an ancient Orgoth artifact had been discovered in the jungle, and an excavation had begun by the Khador. But when a later expedition arrives, they find the camps deserted, tools dropped and scattered, and the sense that something evil had been released.

Terrain-wise, the original plan called for about five pieces, including the huge, main centerpiece, which would feature the uncovered artifact (which was left up to us to decide on and design) and the signs of an abandoned archeological dig. The other pieces were a shattered stone seal of some kind, like a giant medallion that had been broken from within, an archeological dig site, a Khador Encampment, and a ring of standing stones.

Also, all of these pieces were to have a jungle ruins theme.

Yeah, so at this point we were bouncing off the walls with excitement. Our client provided us with some pictures he took himself from his own travels around the world, as inspiration for the look and feel of the terrain. Here are a few.





We also dug up some of our own inspiration, looking towards jungle ruins of the far east. One of the primary features that Mismuse wanted to include were Boddhi trees, the giant tropical trees that form from vines and have extensive root systems that flow all over everything.



While we eventually had hundreds of pictures of photo reference, this particular picture of Angkor Wat turned out to be one of my favorites for designing the individual components of the ruins, but more on that later.

Before I could begin hacking my fingers to pieces and pulling all-nighters at the workbench, we needed to come up with a design. Mismuse and I had a series of lengthy discussions about things like “balancing composition against playability” and “Which of us is a bigger buttface.” But eventually we started sketching out some plans.

[Terraformer]

We realized that our usual standby of Sketchup would not be our primary tool for designing something as organic as a jungle setting, but we did use it to sorta, kinda make a rough, weird overhead diagram of our layout.



I think this may have confused our client and each other more than helped. So it was time to break out the traditional pencil & paper designs. Our general plan was a fallen Orgoth tower, with a claw-like structure on the fallen portion. Over the centuries, people built ruins around the tower which also crumbled over time.



This was my first sketch. The annotations are by Mismuse.



From Mismuse?s notes to me: ?Where on God?s green earth is my Boddhi Tree?? was my reaction when I saw this supposedly alternate view (closeup) of the ruins. I also didn?t like the multiple entrance to nowhere.?

Frustration imminent, I made one more attempt after another 3:00 AM coffee and doughnut session.



This was more like it. From here we were able to shake hands at last. This sketch captures the look we were going for, with crumbling ruins laid out in a tactical, playable layout. You can see the trees, roots, ruins and the excavation scaffolding, with the mysterious hole in the ground.

From here we could decide what we needed to do to make this a reality, and we went in separate directions. Mismuse vowed to engineer and design the trees, roots and foliage, while it was my task to make the landscape, ruins and orgothian decor come to life.

[Terraformer]

Step 1. Using my favorite picture of Angkor Wat as a study guide, I started crafting what basically amounted to a custom building-block set, starting with the angular, decorative trim pieces for the ruined walls. This began with a long block of carefully cut “extra firm” super sculpey, a medium I like to use for stone and concrete sculpting.



With a metal straight edge, I made grooves along the length of the block, which I then used other tools to smooth into rounded grooves and bumps.

Finally, using a miter box, I cut the strip into even blocks and then chipped away a the edges with a hobby knife to simulate centuries of wear and tear.



I made several different styles of blocks and columns this way, then gave all the pieces another round of sanding with fine grade sandpaper to make the chipped parts less sharp and more rounded with age.



Then I sculpted the wall sections themselves. Instead of stacking the hundreds of blocks I would need, I opted instead to make a flat piece that I could clad foamcore walls with. In addition, I made a lot of loose blocks of various sizes and shapes that I could use to blend these flat pieces into crumbling sections.

[Terraformer]

Of course, I wouldn’t be sculpting every single block on this monster by hand, or I would be barely be done in time for SpaceGenCon in 2130 AD. The blocks were set for making silicon molds using foamcore forms.



First resin casting. Looks good so far!



The wall pieces fit together perfectly. At this point we were communicating with our client about one of the other pieces, specifically the Broken Seal. We needed to come up with a design to be engraved on the seal, and our client asked if it would be possible to make a copy of the seal, whole and intact, that he could use for a trophy in his campaign. So I knew I had more drawing and sculpting to do.

[Terraformer]

I had to work out a finalized design for the broken seal that would be used both as a terrain piece and a trophy for the campaign. I spent a great deal of time looking at South/Central American carvings, stellas and designs, and eventually sketched up something I thought would fit with the theme.



But first, I had to work out a finalized design for the broken seal that would be used both as a terrain piece and a trophy for the campaign. I spent a great deal of time looking at South/Central American carvings, stellas and designs, and eventually sketched up something I thought would fit with the theme.

I wanted the seal to tell the story of a great warrior who did battle with the Unnamed Evil, which was spreading across everything like an infection.I had the warrior gripping one of the monster?s tentacles with one hand, and holding a lightning bolt with the other.

I submitted this sketch to my client for approval, but his reply brought me back on track, reminding me that these pieces needed to have a more distinct Orgothian look, with armored warriors, and lots of ugly, snarling faces all over everything, and this design was too Central American for that theme. I agreed completely, and reworked the design.



Mismuse helped me redesign the warrior to something more sword & sorcery, with the trademark ugly Orgoth faces. I sent this sketch back and got the green-light for this re-design. Time to hit the sculpey again.



I sculpted a few faces out of Firm Super Sculpey, which chips and crumbles realistically when I weather the edges. These faces would be used in different places all over the set.

I also sculpted a few decorative skulls and chevrons for the seal trim, to be cast in resin or plaster.This saves time and makes the seal trim look nice and uniform.



The seal was sculpted from a variety of mediums, such as different grades of sculpey with resin castings of my previous sculpts, and epoxy putty for filler and detail work.

[Terraformer]

Several cups of silicon and resin later, I had the front and back of my trophy piece. I sanded the back of each half smooth and glued the two pieces together.



I primed and painted the seal in a few natural stone colors, picking out details in the trim with brass and gold to help it really stand out as a trophy.



I cut a pair of brass strips to size and applied a long bead of Green Stuff to each. Green Stuff makes one of the strongest, most effective adhesives for mixed applications, like metal to resin.

I drilled holes through the plates and into the seals as I applied the brass plates, attaching these copper colored, decorative upholstery rivets. Besides looking really cool, they also helped hold the brass plates in place while the Green Stuff set.



And finished. This would be the prize for the winner of the campaign. I set it aside and moved on to the next chapter.

[Terraformer]

I'll continue posting more later!

[Ogrob]

Wow, that stuff is fantastic! For a second, I thought your chipped blocks were painted already, they look that natural.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing your progress on this one.

[dreamspirit]

that's cool, I'm looking forward seeing more. You're quite talented.

[PG_Trevy the Great]

This is really cool...

[Sashgo]

Really really awesome stuff you got there. Can't wait to see the finished ruins

[Terraformer]

With the trophy behind us in the last chapter, it was time to make the actual piece of terrain that would incorporate the broken version of the seal.



Like every other piece of terrain we do, this started with a piece of MDF, and copious amounts of caffeine.

I arranged (randomly threw down) a few pieces of bark and some foam chunks just to get a feel for the size of the objects involved. I cant possibly count the number of times I?ve gotten deep into a project only to realize well into construction that the base is too small, or my components had some kind of problem so I sandbox my thoughts as much as possible before starting.

Using the template of the seal as a guide for cutting the central hole, I used some bits of decorative bark along with pieces of blue high density foam to shape a nice slope around the edges of the hole that the broken seal would be resting over. This didn?t seem very dynamic to me for the base to the seal though,



I attacked another sheet of blue foam with my circle cutter, stacking more layers on top of each other. Circle cutters can be purchased at craft/scrapbooking stores, but their tiny blades are designed for cutting paper only, so I only use it to etch in lines for cutting the foam with a long hobby knife.



Now we have a more temple-like shape coming together, and by this time I had cast a plaster version of the seal. Not just regular plaster of course, art plaster which is more like dental stone/hydrocal, and I also mixed PVA in the batter, which makes setting time longer but increases durability. I cut a couple edges of the structure away so I could make it crumbling.

Breaking the seal was a very high-tech maneuver that involved smashing it against the edge of my table a couple times. I didn?t want to make it shattered into a thousand pieces, that would make it just look like another pile of rubble, and I wanted the picture to remain visible. I lucked out and the breaks came out exactly how I wanted them, so I didn?t need to cast another seal.

Also, you can see I?ve started to clad the foam with my resin brick-work at this point.

?But wait!? you say, ?that thing is round, how are you able to fit your flat sheets of resin bricks onto it??

?Who are you? and how did you get in here?? I reply.



Probably the hardest part about this piece was just deciding on an arrangement for the broken slabs of the seal. I must have tried it a hundred different ways before settling on a position. Here you see I?ve started laying down whole blocks to blend in the edges of the crumbling walls. I used pollyfill as a background medium for the blocks, but since resin doesn?t bond with spackle, I had to let the whole thing dry, then remove each and every block, individually gluing them back down in the same spot with hot glue. This is pretty much the ritual for all mixed-media pieces.

[Terraformer]

I didn?t have resin paver stones that would fit in a circle around the seal-temple, and since I only needed a handful, I just made a custom tiles to go around the piece using a mixture of super sculpey and extra firm sculpey.



After cutting to size, each tile was textured and I added a decorative trim pattern on the outside edges before baking separately. All the messy spackle has been sanded down smooth and ready to be covered with sand texture.



Here I?ve finally finalized the position for the seal shards, and started laying down three different grades of sifted sand using brushed-on and/or dribbled on PVA glue. I broke some of the tiles and added sand around the inside edges, and laid down a few sticks and branches around the base.



Primed!



I undercoated the bricks in burnt umber, the ground was based in light cinammon and highlighted up to beige and sand tones in mottled patterns, while the rocky outcroppings were given a blue/grey color.

[Terraformer]

After burnt umber, I started blending grey tones over the bricks, finally up to a slightly cool toned light grey in the final highlights. Because he final highlights were actually in slight contrast with the base color, it made for a very striking but natural color scheme.



Before getting too far, Mismuse started working out the placement for the scaffolding. We wanted to tie this in with the other pieces that would show excavation in process.

Scaffolding was painted separately in a mix of rich wood tones, and inked with Vallejo Smoke ink, and black ink in the deep recesses and inner corners for shading.



While Mismuse worked on the scaffodling, I started the final details of the ruins, including last, brightest highlights and of course the mossy discoloration.

To apply the moss, I used a sponge to dab first dark green/grey in irregular patches.



Then a lighter, mint-green over that, also dabbed with a rough natural sponge.

[Terraformer]

Almost done on this piece! (We were simultaneously working on the other pieces as well, but in order for this project log to not appear as disjointed as we are at times, I'm following one piece at a time.)

Some final touches on the scaffolding include wrapping some joints with fine cotton twine, which will look like rough, natural sisal rope once painted.



Now the fun part. We agreed early on that we wanted the escaped, unnamed evil to be represented by dark, creeping tendrils spreading over everything, which was also reflected in the iconography of the seal. I rolled pieces of epoxy putty out in long strands and then blended them carefully with some moist sculpting tools. I didn?t want the tendrils to just look like tentacles laid out across everything, I wanted them to feel more like veins growing through the surface itself.



With the scaffolding attached now, I made a few of the tendrils actually climbing up the wood to further emphasize that thing is spreading over everything.



So remember how I?ve been saying all along things like ?vague? and ?unnamed? to describe the evil under the seal?

Well, I just couldn?t do it. I?m obsessed with horrible monsters maybe, and just had to make something really awful peeking out of the darkness under the cracks of the broken seal. I brushed denatured alcohol briefly over the mass of hideousness to blend it all smooth before hand-priming.



I painted the tendrils and monster in dark shades of purple, going for a sickly eggplant coloration.

[Terraformer]

Finally, we put down some patches of flock and foliage, and I used inks to add a little deep shading and weathering streaks/stains onto the ruins.



Then the very last steps were to plop a realistic eyeball into the monster, and add a couple of neodymium magnets to one of the shards and and wall of the ruins, allowing it to be removed as necessary.

(guide for making realistic eyeballs.)

[Terraformer]

Now some finished pictures of this small piece from the set! The real big project is still ahead, stay tuned...

(Also, at this time I had no Warmachine figures of my own, so I had to use this old skelly guy as a model.)

[Terraformer]

Next phase of the project log coming up.

[Mordjinn]

Amazing work! Can't wait to see the whole thing together. The paint work is top notch and since I have lately been struggling with my stone / ground colours and painting techniques I have a couple of questions I hope you have time to answer.

I see you use Folk Art acrylics which are available also in my favourite hobby store.

- So the ground colors are: Light Cinnamon base --> Highlight with beige --> sand (are those all folk art colours and colour names?). Did you do it all with those two colours or did you mix some together?
- Which blue/grey did you use for the rocky outcroppings? It looks really blue to me. Could you show the end result the next time you take photos, please.
- Which greens are good for the moss?

I'd love love love a step by step for the ground and for the rocky outcrops / stones as you really achieved a natural looking but very nicely contrasted finish which I'd love to learn how to do.

Cheers and keep up the great work!

Edit: WHOA! Even more eyecandy while I was typing. I love it!!! Friggin' awesome! Now more than ever I'd love to learn how to paint the ground/stone/rocky outcrops your way. Also which color did you use as a base for the planks?

[Terraformer]

Mord, I do use a lot of craft paints in addition to model colors, my favorite is Delta, but I use a lot of Folk Art and Americana as well as they all have unique colors and tones.


I go into a little more detail on painting the ruins, rocks and ground cover in the next chapter (some of which actually takes place before this piece was done) and you can see a little better which colors I used. I know I used Americana light cinnamon mixed with black for the soil/ground, then Folk Art Asphaltum over that but I have to go back and look through my notes to see how I highlighted it and to make sure I noted the color names and sequence that I applied them in, so hang tight, I'll be publishing more later!

[jojukorh]

I have to say that your work is always frigging amazing and inspiring!! I envy the way how you achieve such a realistic paintscheme.

Im with Mordjinn and humble ask that could there be any chance that you reveal the way how you painted the stones and ground?

EDIT: oh, reply while I was writing..thanks for that!

[Terraformer]

I'll be happy to step-by-step the colors I used for everything, next update!

(BTW, terrain-maker's-tip of the day: always keep a journal! having good notes for what you used and where and why helps out immeasurably for making a lot of terrain.)

[Terraformer]

In our last installment we finished up the smaller Broken Seal piece for this set, now we?re going to focus on the main Jungle Ruins, which we actually worked on simultaneously, but for the sake of making this log coherent, I?ve broken it into a separate chapter.

I had a few more sculpting tasks to complete, the most important of which would be one of the dominant features of the ruins, the giant, leering Orgoth face on the ancient tower.



I started sculpting with extra firm Super Sculpey. I slapped on lots of little bits of clay and started defining the shape of the face.

There are a few things I use while working with sculpey that make my life easier. For one, I work on a glass surface that I can safely bake, and where water makes a non-stick lubricant for epoxy putty, baby powder has the same effect for sculpey. Meanwhile, if I want to bond pieces, I like to make a mix of Liquid Sculpey and sculpey to join pieces, this is best applied with a stick or for larger areas, a small syringe without a needle.



My worst fear is that someday a police officer will knock on the door while I?m working and want to have a tour of the workshop.



Then I started smoothing out the features and adding in lines and details like creases, wrinkles and teeth.

I set the face aside for casting later.



I previously had sketched the outline of my bases on a huge sheet of MDF board, and now that I finally had the components I needed to assemble the actual terrain, I unleashed my duel enchanted reciprocating saws, Sawdust and Buzzsnarl. I passed all my to-cut throws and didn?t have to make any rolls on the eye-damage chart, so I now had a nice rounded, oblong base at the end.

[Terraformer]

I laid down my freshly cast Orgothian face to help me visualize the sizes of the terrain features.



been a time once when I would look at this huge, empty sheet of MDF and have no idea where to begin such an undertaking. Those days are long over. I know now the best way to start is just to start slapping stuff on the damn thing, and deal with problems later. So that?s what comes next, gluing down piles and piles of blue insulation foam, decorative bark and pieces of foamcore, taking many table-level glances at the work to make sure it was fitting our sketches and ideas.



I filled gaps and problem areas in with lightweight spackle (pollyfill) as I went, fleshing out the shapes of slopes, cliffs and attaching foamcore walls as a backing for the ruins. I also slipped a large piece of 1/2″ foamcore with sloped edges into the central area, to give the whole piece just a little extra height and dimension.



Yeah, it?s just a big, huge ugly looking mess. Looks like something you?d find in the trash bin of a cake store.

[Terraformer]

One whole bucket of pollyfill later, and it?s not looking any prettier, but you know what they say about having to break a few eggs to make an omelet. At this point I was smoothing down hills, deciding on the placement of paths, and filling gaps and cracks between bark ?outcroppings.?



Before getting too much further, it was time to place the partially buried tower. Instead of placing the tower first and building around it, I decided for this project I would just hack out the place where the tower should go after the landscape is built. Why? because Mismuse and I had already spent a great deal of time working on the landscape layout and we would rather adjust the size and placement of the tower than the hills and walls around it.



He looks kinda angry. Note the penciled-in circle to the right of the face, this is where the excavation hole will be carved later, tunneling back behind the tower. The funny looking green object is a vibrating massage device. No, really, it?s important for the casting process. Stop looking at me like that.



With the final position for the tower settled, it was time to build the ruins around it. Even though having cast resin pieces helps immensely, there is still a lot of modification that needs to be done to make pieces fit around arches, doorways, Etc.

[Terraformer]

Marking pieces, trimming, marking again, trimming smooth, throwing away the piece because you trimmed it down too much now, starting over, and so on?



Once the pieces fit, they?re glued into place and then blocks and other bits are used to make the walls look deep and solid.



I assembled a ruined archway in the back, an entrance to the structures that over time collapsed and filled with soil and rubble. The construction in this area was where the columns and decorative blocks really shined.



In areas where the walls are crumbling I use only loose blocks, stacking the pieces in a similar configuration as the intact walls, but more loosely. These kinds of effects are very important to make the ruins look more solid overall.

[Terraformer]

I still needed paver-type blocks for the floor of the ruin, so I sculpted these as originals because they were going to be such an assortment of sizes and shapes.



We arranged pavers and fallen blocks around the courtyard of the ruins, finally settling on a composition and then gluing each one down.



And with the last of the blocks laid down, it was finally time to add texture.



For this model I chose epoxy instead of the usual PVA glue. Two part epoxy will set like a hard shell over the entire model, sorta like fiberglass without the glass. The drawback to using Epoxy for sand and gravel is that it?s tricky to work with, has a time limit for how long you can work with it, and it tends to leave a sticky mess all over everything.

[Terraformer]

Spreading the epoxy resin over the mounds. During this process, one brush was killed every 45 minutes.



The first layer of sand was a sifted medium grade, which at this scale would be closer in size to driveway gravel, which would be unrealistic all over a natural setting, so we only used it to get a uniform texture behind everything before using different grades.



After the epoxy set hard, but while we were waiting for it to cure completely for the 24 hours it needed before I could spread PVA over it, I added the electronics in an access hatch that I cut on the underside of the board.

Wait what. Electronics?

We?ll get back to that.



Now a couple more different grades of texture were added, both finer for areas of soft soil, and more coarse for rocky ledges and places where floodwater would run. I also scattered a few tiny, broken sticks and twigs here and there for a forest floor feel.

[Terraformer]

A few big pebbles were dropped into the center pathway, which we wanted to appear like a dry riverbed.



And now an electronics test. Everything looked nice and evil and glowtastic, and the ruins and ground cover looked great, so it was time to move onto the real challenge on this piece.

Trees.

Next update in a little while will have painting info!

[PG_Killdrath]

It's fun to site here hitting F5 and watching the thing take shape as you literally post them as I read them.

[Terraformer]

With the major landscaping and construction finished in the last chapter, we now had a real hurdle ahead of us: the trees and plants. And now with all the time we put into the detail of the ruins and seal, GenCon was looming closer and closer, and we only had a general estimate how long this step would take, so like with many of our big jobs, it was going to be exciting.



We used rolled up or crumpled aluminum foil as placeholders for the trees and roots, placing them on different spots.





Some ideas were good, some needed a little a work, but eventually we settled on a couple of good spots for the trees.



It was time to weave a metal tree. Mismuse put a twisted bundle of steel wire, frayed cable and florist wires into a vice grip for stability as she started twisting strands into trunks and branches.

[Terraformer]

It was really like watching some kind of plant unfold and bloom. She then trimmed some branches and tips to make a variety to the canopy. And what a canopy it was turning out to be. These things were going to be enormous, and they had to be to give a realistic scale to the huge roots sprawling through the ruins.

There's a whole chapter that shows how we practiced a lot of the techniques we're using here, by making small mock-up trees, leaves and jungle plants, and trying different locations before we committed to a technique.



The sculpey parts had to be baked, and because of the size of these things, we had to take them to my kitchen oven to bake, the little workshop sculpey toaster-oven wasn?t meant for things like this. This is probably not healthy.



It became quickly apparent that two huge boddhi trees would create a cover of metal branches and leaves that would make seeing down into the ruins from above difficult, to say nothing of reaching down and trying to move your units. Also, having two huge trees and no small trees would make the scale look closer to G.I. Joe than 30mm Warmachine.

So it was decided before we got too deep that we would scrap one tree, and opt instead for a handful of smaller trees and a beefed-up scaffolding around the excavation area.



After fixing the one large tree in place, we started sculpting the extending limbs with epoxy putty, thinner and thinner towards the ends of the wire strands.

[molejo]

Everything here is simply amazing !

Keep up the good work !

[Terraformer]

And then we planted more, smaller trees around the ruins. I already liked this better, and the smaller trees made the big tree look absolutely huge.

Mismuse took small pieces of clay, rolled into long skinny vines and laid them down on the ground, woven between roots, poking out of cracks, etc. Meanwhile I kept working on sculpting out tapering tree limbs and dangling vines.



Tropical trees like this come from a creeping vine that slowly grows over a previous tree, and then they drop roots as they climb, which we know as hanging vines. These vines can be thin enough to swimg from tree to tree, or fat and heavy like a tree trunk. To replicate this effect, we hung steel wires off the branches, sculpting clay onto them to make vines of different sizes.



Between tag-team sessions on sculpting the trees, I dug a second excavation hole behind the broken tower, connecting with the first one. Here there?s plaster and polyfill spilling out, which will become the pile of excavated dirt under an extended section of scaffolding.



Finally, we had our trees up, and all the construction related details finished. There was one last hard stretch, and that would be applying leaves and painting the whole monstrous thing.

[Terraformer]

This is it, the final push!
In the last chapter we finished all the major construction work and now it was time to break out the plethora of paint bottles that would go into this, but first a liberal coat of primer to start things off.



I almost always use flat black primer on terrain, it lends a nicer contrast to the finished piece. Even if the piece will be brightly colored, I much rather have dark shadows peeking out from inside the corners and recesses.



I started with the ground cover, beginning with a mix of Americana Light Cinnamon and Folk Art Asphaltum mixture, with a tiny bit of black. Before this base color we tried a couple different color choices on the ground actually, the first try came out unnaturally dark and red, so we washed it with a thin coat of black and started over, so yes, despite how smooth it looks in the project logs we really do go through our fair share of trials and errors.



Mismuse takes over for a bit here, she's working on the next stage of highlights; by adding Delta Ceramcoat Bambi Brown into the Asphaltum/Light Cin. mix in larger ratios as we drybrushed in layers.



Before finishing the ground cover, I needed to start painting the rocky projections in a contrasting tone. Unfortunately I dont have a lot of pictures of this process (we were probably half-awake at this point and forgetting to document everything.)

[Terraformer]

But I can show a finished picture and describe the process:



We started with a very basic, dark grey using just a mix of Delta Black and White. While that was still drying we blotched on a few random areas with subtle washes of Vallejo Flat Blue and Green, individually, to preserve the mottle appearance of muddy, jungle rocks.

After that it's just highlighting up to near-white grey at the very edges, letting some ground-cover colors spill into the base of the rocks as well.



After a little studying different pictures, and talking about what actually looks good, we came to the conclusion that the coloration of the actual ruins was more complicated than it looked at first glance, and this is where we originally decided on our color scheme of starting with the deep reddish colored Folk Art Burnt Umber and working up to cool greys and green lichens.



Some neutral greys were added to the burnt umber, lighter and lighter and near-white on the very edges of pieces. Then Vallejo Black Green was stippled on with a sponge, followed by Delta Village Green, then Village Green lightened near white in tiny spots. Next Vallejo Smokey ink was applied in successive layers, making grimy streaks down the blocks. It was after this that we applied the same technique to the broken seal piece, which was actually going on simultaneously as this part of the project.

Next update: painting wooden scaffolding, Painting trees, making individual leaves and painting them, detailing and finale!

[Seventhprophet]

This is looking awesome! Keep up the good work!

[PG_Pake]

Holy crap! Amazing!

[Grifter13]

I sat down to make a couple of hills for scenario games, decided to check the forums, and BAM. Like an hour gone reading this thread and checking out your web sight. Man that is beautiful work. I've got two weeks off starting in July and I now know what I am going to be doing. Thank you for the inspiration.

[azrael71]

WOW