Sunday, March 3, 2013

Forge from Grand Manner



I recently also added a forge to the ouside of the city walls of Saint Patern taht I bought from Grand Manner. The size of Grand Manner buildings are of the same range than Tabletop world buildings and their interior are fully detailed.

Here are some pictures. The blacksmith comes from Fenryll and is not included in the forge.

Overall view:

First floor and ground floor:
 

Saint Tugdual Church - Hirst arts molds

One year ago I bought some molds from Hirst arts with the aim to build a church for my city and a city wall. It took me approximately 8 months to realize this project considering the casting and painting times.

Here are some pictures of my church that I wanted to look like a britain church. I also included some pews from recently aquired Inn accessories molds, the priest of Saint Patern, and will come a statue of Mary. We can see in the background the city walls.






Here are detailed views of the city walls.





Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Modular buildings

In order to generate rapidly numerous various builings to complete my terrain project I recently envisaged to prepare modular walls to assemble to build any kind of tavern, Inn or Merchant house. The idea is the following a unit of wall is 2.5 cm large and to assemble easily various wall sections every parts must be multiple of 2.5 cm.

Every wall sections are scratch built with balsa wood and expansed polystirene. For the doors I used plaster casted Hirst Arts doors from Fieldstone Accessories Mold #71. For the windows I used wire netting to give details and the impression of crossed metallic bars usually observed on medieval houses. For the roofs, I decided to prepare a large piece that could be easily cutted with a cutter to adapt its size to the proper dimensions.
To distinguish upper floors from ground floor, the base of the ground floor timber walls contains stones.

Here are some pictures of the premolds and the silicon molds. Here to prepare the molds I used a very simple silicon gum composed of to pastes (blue: positive and white: negative) that becomes hard in five minutes when mixed together. This is a very simple and fast technique to prepare molds in minutes.

Premolds pieces:
 silicon molds:

After casting, the result is not perfect the details from windows doesn't appear well and I then decided to add piece of wire netting directly to the cased walls. But it represents a very easy way to generate in hours walls.


The next step is the assembly and painting. In order to glue walls together, I used pieces of balsa to finish the impression of timbered house. Finally in one day the building is assembled and painted.

Assembled and painted buildings :



For the floors I use thick pieces of balsa on which I engrave the parquet. Because, miniatures will be moved on the tabletop with dice rolls, the floors are composed of 2.5x2.5 cm squares.

Rapid view of the not completely finished interiors:


In conclusion, such houses can be realized in only two days !!!! :-)

Monday, November 12, 2012

First scratch built Tavern

My first scenery project is a scratch built tavern for my future RPG tabletop project. The Tavern is obviously an important place in any role playing game. The first floor will be dedicated to the bedrooms and the ground floor to the lunch room. The roof is removable and the interior accessible for miniatures.

Most of the walls have been realized in cardstock and thin expansed polystirene. The external stairs have been prepared from Hirst Arts molds I recently aquired. Windows are from Thomarillion. The wall is made of thousands of thick paper pieces and has been painted in black.






The next step will be the exterior painting. For the interior I just found three new Inn accessories molds from Hirst Arts (n° 57, 58, 59). I hope I will find them under the Christmas Tree. :-)



Recyclable molds

Today I received my first order from Thomarillion. Mainly doors and windows to build my first Inn. Because I recently found a new type of mold material that can be recycled I decided to evaluate it for the reproduction of some of the windows or doors from Thomarillion. Of course its for my personnal use and I will not sell them.

Here are some pictures of the molding material:


It is pretty easy to use. First of all we mix the powder with hot water in order to obtain a viscous paste. This paste becomes hard at low temperature and permits to mold any kind of piece. At higher temperature the solid becomes liquid viscous and can be reused to produce another mold. My preferred way consist in using a jam pot with small pieces of hard material heated for few minutes in a microwave oven. Be careful it's very hot!!!


To prepare the mold I used a wooden box in which I placed the doors and windows from Thomarillion:


Then I poured the hot paste into the box and waited for 30 minutes it became hard in the fridge.

After 30 minutes, the mold is ready and after removing the original pieces we can introduce the Paris plaster into the mold. 30 minutes later we obtain the following pieces. As you can see, the quality strongly depends on the bubbles that appears on surface and is usually much lower than the original.



 In conclusion I recommend this molding technique only for simple pieces with poor details to reproduce.

The adventure starts here !!!

his adventure takes place at the end of autumn, 1457 in "Saint Patern" city, in the South of Britanny, close to Vannes. Pierre II 'Le simple" just died on the 22th of september and the duchy returned to Arthur III "Le justicier".
The provost of Vannes, certain Gastin, carried for the attention of Arthur III two deaths whom we attribute to a criminal poisoning. Two villagers succumbed to a malignant substance, covering itself with horrible green and purulent patches! A woman, Eloise (pronounce É-loiz), was formally accused to be a witch by locals and locked into the crypt of the cimmetery while waiting for a transfer towards Vannes. The case becomes even stranger because the famous Eloise simply disappeared from the closed cellar where she waited for the guards of the provost. There was only a single door, any means to escape and nevertheless, the beggar is not any more there!

Arthur III manipulates marvelously the poison, but only that of the words. His skills in lethal substance and in physical evaporation are more than reduced. It is for that reason that he went to visit the monk Gildas at the "Abbaye de Rhuys", known at this time for its competences in criminal investigations, and ask him to go to Saint Patern city to understand what happened.


Gildas summons his most experienced followers and explains to them that accompanied with men at arms of Duke they will go to investigate at Saint Patern in the greatest secrecy to clarify the strange story. A map of the city, as well as various documents giving evidence of their ducale mission is handed to them.

In this medieval atmosphere where reigns religion, superstition, power struggles, dark faiths, myths and legends of Brittany, alchemy, popular and monastic magic, the valiant adventurers will have to show discernment to disentangle the truth of the forgery.