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

[PlasmaDavid]

I have been resiting buying hirst blocks from Griffin for ages, and this freaking awesome project DOES NOT HELP MY CAUSE!

Final product will look magnificent no doubt! Makes me think of the Mario soccergames with their different arenas you can play in...

[anc001]

I have been resiting buying hirst blocks from Griffin for ages, and this freaking awesome project DOES NOT HELP MY CAUSE!

It is so fun. Turning inexpensive dental plaster into awesome scenery and gaming boards is more entertaining than I ever expected.
Every few minutes I find myself thinking: "Ooooh, this block can also be placed this way to make a doorway, or a window, or a staircase..."


This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 9 2011, 06:14 PM

[anc001]

Ok, so I guess those of you familiar with dungeon bowl might be saying-
"hey its all well and good that you are making a 3d dungeon, but I hope you are not planning on using those crappy cardboard counters to represent the all important chests packed with explosives (and if you are lucky the ball)."

On my comute home today I had an idea, and I present the fruits of that inspiration here, a task that at first seemed impossible ended up only taking about 5 minutes inbetween getting home and going out for a meal (waiting for the other half to get ready- that's the key boys: make that time work for you!)


We begin this story with two of these little chaps, hirst arts dungeon chests.


Step one, get your Dremel and attach the finest cutting disk you have

(if you don't have a Dremel close the computer, go get your manhood out of your wife's purse, take some cash while you are there and return back to this thread when you've been to Bunnings to get yourself one!).

Gently put the chest in a vice of some kind and carefully cut off the lid.
if you put it in the vice this way it will crack (D'OH!). Turn it 90 degrees stupid.
:oops:


Take your time, be careful, it will take about 15 seconds if you go slow and steady, blowing away the plaster dust as you go.

SO now you have a dungeon chest's lid.


Next, with a different chest gently cut the lid off and keep the bottom. Another 15 seconds gone.
(the width of the wheel will mean you are left with too small a chest unless you use two as described).


Now we have the two parts


<continued next post>

This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 9 2011, 06:16 PM

[anc001]

Here's the clever bit, grab your carving attachment with the flat bottom and hollow out the chest bottom.



Dental plaster is awesome stuff, I went pretty close to the edge and it didn't crumble or give at all.
This is abit more time intensive, it took about 30 seconds (though most of the time was spend sipping on a beer and remarking to myself how damn clever I was to think of this).

Next, with your rounded carving/engraving attachment hollow out the underside of the lid. Another 15 seconds.



Now we have plenty of space to store treasure, football or loads of TNT.



Grab a crappy brush and a pot of Flesh Ink, slap some on. Don't undercoat prime or treat the surface, check out how good it looks after putting some metal on the support bands and latch. 20 second paint job never looked so good.



I hear some of you negative nellies saying "yes but what if the lid falls off when a dice hits it and my opponent gets a peek at the ball?"

SImple, mix a bit of green stuff, pop a magnet under the lid and one under a base on which the chest will sit, and this will keep the lid held down until you want to pull it off. Here I have drilled a space in a Cavern tile to act as the Chest's base.
For extra credit make a football shape with the leftover Greenstuff.
(you did check the magnet's polarity before you greenstufefd them didn't you?- D'OH!) :oops:



Well there might be one or two of you who are saying, "But my opponent will hear the rattle inside the chest and know it has the ball!"
In that case, with the leftover green stuff from the magnet step feel free to sculpt a few ugly looking bombs, or just pop your favourite severed heads into the empty chests!



There you go folks, 5 minutes including stopping to take all the photos. You'll have a set of 6 done in half an hour.

if you are coming to ADBC and want to make youself a set of these, just ask nicely and I'll cast you up a set of chests.

(Sorry I don't have any BB footballs with me at present to show in the pics).



Do you dare open it? Maybe this is the only chest that isn't packed full of explosives?
:-D

[anc001]

What fun is bloodbowl if you can't take a flying leap off a high place and elbow drop that poor defenseless halfling laying stunned on the cave floor far below?!



The problem is that if you make each step big enough to put a 25mm base on it, the stair becomes large and unattractive, but if you make a skinny attractive staircase like this one the models teeter on the edge waiting to plummet and get chipped.



Take one full floor tile and one half tile, in whichever style suits your staircase.



glue them together like this


now this stand can be placed anywhere along the staircase to make a flat full floor tile for a model to stand on.





As the player goes up and down the stairs just pickup the model by the stair base

You can even make one bigger than one square if needed for bigger models.

Then when you are done you just take the stand off and put it aside.

Hopefully this will mean those of you building a chamber for the Griffin Grove Best Custom Dungeon Chamber competition won't shy away from sets of stairs for your chamber!

[anc001]

I was astounded at how much hydrostone I've gone through in the last 2 weeks, but looking at these images perhaps its not all that surprising.

All the floor tiles I've done. (each stack is 5 high).
The human blitzer in the bottom left box is looking quite dwarfed.



Walls I have yet to paint.






Here are a few of the tools I use:

syringe to fill the more fiddly molds



scale to measure the water and plaster each time I mix (so I get the ratio right with no messing around and also so I don't mix up too much or too little.



Flexible rubber bowl, when ready to mix again just bend it and the plaster comes right out.



This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 19 2011, 03:32 PM

[Magos_Kasen]

Damn cool!

[PlasmaDavid]

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

[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

[PlasmaDavid]

Did you answer my question there, re; what wetting agent? If you did I can't see it X D

[anc001]

http://www.hirstarts.com/casting/advanced.html#wet

just standard dishwasher rinse-aid

[anc001]

As some of you know, I've been casting up small room sized floor sections, measuring 6x4 squares. Now that I have 20 of them I decided to have a go at arranging them in suitable orientations for dungeon bowl games.
Here is a dump of a few layouts, some of which look quite promising for a one on one game of dungeon bowl using our playtested rules.
(some even look good for 4on4 games!)

THese are made with 20 (or fewer) 6x4 pieces and 8 2x2 pieces are used in some layouts.

Will get some paint on these tomorrow!

[anc001]

[anc001]

Hottest 100, beer on tap, $40 of ribeye steak in the fridge waiting to be grilled.
a perfect storm for getting some modelling done in the shed today.











1 month and 1 day until this board sees some action.

[anc001]

now painting the floor sections, the following took about half an hour

stage 1
add some black paint to green house paint,
water it down,
and slop it on



stage 2
heavily drybrush with the original green
( I do this while it is still a bit wet so the colours blend a bit)



stage 3
mix 50% green paint with 50% cream paint and lightly drybrush
(again I did this while the previous drybrush was wet in places, so the two meld a bit in places, giving a more subtle colour gradation.



here is a closer photo of how it looks at this stage
it might look a little different when it has dried, so I won't apply any cream drybrushing at the moment, but maybelater.



This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 26 2011, 02:11 PM

[anc001]

well dipping seems all the rage these days, so here is my dip tip

mix some cheap hobby paint with water.
Dip your plaster barrels halfway
when they dry dip them from the other end.
takes 5 or 10 minutes do a few dozen.



then paint the metal bands and you are done.



This post has been edited by anc001: Jan 26 2011, 03:10 PM

[anc001]

[anc001]

[anc001]

no levels, staircases or waterways yet, but you can get an idea of what it might look like from these shots