WIP 3D board for the griffingrove Adelaide Dungeon Bowl Cup, Hirst Arts project for Adelaide's summer bloodbowl tourney (feb 18 Options

[anc001]

As some of you know Greenacres Gamers will be hosting the inaugeral
Griffin Grove Adelaide Dungeon Bowl Cup on April 27th 2013.

details here
http://www.ausbowl.com/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=8594





One thing I've been really keen on doing for this tournament is to build a 3D dungeon for the grand final to be played on. This turned me on to Hirst Arts Molds.

As I explored the availability down under I discovered that Griffin Grove stock the molds at about the same as they do if ordered directly from Hirst Arts in the USA (but with cheap local postage instead of international). In addition to selling molds, they also cast to order in dental stone, for those people who only want a small amount or don't have time to make castings themselves.

So I was very happy when Ian Plumb at Griffin Grove Gaming came on board as the major sponsor of the tournament, offering a variety of prizes for players, and of course help with making our grand dungeon for the tournament final!

You can find details of the tournament's prizes here. It is important to note that every player who pre-registers for the tournament will receive a free dungeon kit so they can put together a room to link on to this dungeon project, so hopefully this won't be the last modeling diary associated with Adelaide Dungeon Bowl Cup!

Enough background, on with the project...

I wanted to emphasize the wild untamed wilderness for this dungeon, imagining a large natural cave system. Hirst Art's Cavern style seemed like just the ticket, as shown in the images below. Rather than a man made (or dwarf made/goblin made etc) dungeon of masonry and stacked stone I wanted a cave system with weathered stalagmites, cracked tiles, treacherous waterways and dark corners that might hide monstrous creatures.

Towards this I purchased 4 molds, from Griffin Grove.
cavern floors,
cavern floor accessories,
water cavern walls
extra water cavern walls

The first thing I did, while I waited to get my hands on some good dental plaster, was make some rough castings with some Plaster of Paris. I then tried a few arrangements and got some ideas for the dungeon.





Following the principles in this painting tutorial for these Hirst molds I found a green, beige and white paint in rusty old paint tins in the corner of my shed and slopped on a bit of paint as a test (very hurriedly as I rushed to get out the door to go and play bloodbowl of course!).

It is nice and easy to get the base colours on these, dipping then drybrushing brings out the nice texture and highlights some of the special features of each cast.

Next I tried a base colour that was a 1:1 mix of the dark green I used above and the biege I drybrushed over it, and as it turns out I prefer the original when they are placed side by side:



RHS
Base dark green,
drybrush 1 cream,
drybrush 2 white

LHS
base 1green:1cream,
drybrush 1 cream,
drybrush 2 white.

middle,
Base green,
drybrush 1 1green:1cream,
drybrush 2 cream.

the one in the middle looks nice in good light, I never realised how great the rock texture is on these pieces until I started drybrushing.

there's nowhere in the shed that gives good light for photos, but you get an idea from these shots.



I've gone through with a smaller brush and painted on a bit of white to the crystal structures (stalagmites etc).



after trying a few colour schemes I found one I like for the floors, a nice dark tone.



I also discovered that my rough castings can be improved by sanding them down with a piece of 40grit sandpaper, this takes out the imperfections on the bottom of the piece caused by overfilling the mold or not scraping the mold well enough (doesn't happen very often).



this is what 5kg of hydrocal looks like (cost of ~$20)



(there are other castings not shown here, small pieces like barrels, crates, chests and part tiles, so this is less than 5kg of castings).

From this I can cover about 300-400 squares with floor tiles and about 110 squares with walls.
all up this (by my quick calcualations) would cover an area a bit bigger than your standard blood bowl pitch. Not bad from a weekend's work and $20 of plaster IMHO.

I have found a supplier near me of styrofoam sheeting like used in this tutorial
http://www.hirstarts.com/cavern/cave050.jpg
a 12inch square (one 6th of the size of our dungeon bowl boards in this thread) is $1. (minimum order cost of $30+GST)

They cut to size so it might be the perfect base for a regular BB pitch too.

Will order next week and report back.

This post has been edited by anc001: Mar 30 2013, 12:39 PM

[anc001]

Do you use a wetting agent? If so, what : )

I did use the wetwater method on the Hirst Arts website for early castings.

this is what I do
Add water to the rubber bowl (on a scale so I get the right amount).
Pour plaster into the bowl through a flour sieve (still on the scale so I measure the plaster)
when I get to the right amount (1part water to 2.8 parts hydrostone) mix thoroughly with a spoon
clean off the spoon and set the timer at 15 minutes
molds are usually sitting in a bucket of wet water inbetween casts (but sometimes I just use them dry, particulartly if I'm just doing a couple of castings in a session).
pour from the bowl into large molds (like big floor sections) or use the syringe for fiddly things like buckets and chests
when the 15 minutes are up scrape the molds, set the timer to 30 minutes.
when the timer goes again it is time to take the castings out of the molds and start again.

I've used about 20 kg of hydrostone TB in the last 3 weeks, so I'll have some photos going up in the next few days.

Folks in adelaide who haven't registered their interest in the BB tournament that this dungeon is being built for should send me a PM ASAP if they are interested in attending as its only about 4 weeks away.
see the website for more details
https://sites.google.com/site/adelaidedungeonbowlcup/

This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 25 2011, 08:26 PM