Friday, August 1, 2008

My Lizardman Temple

As previously mentioned in my blog, I hit Garage Sales almost every weekend. Over a year ago I found a piece that just screamed "make terrain out of me". After feigning mild indifference to the nice lady running the garage sale, I made an offer of 5 bucks. The bargain was struck and I was the proud owner of the T-Wrecks Hot Wheels Playset.
When I got home I ripped T-Wrecks head off, saved a few small bits, but threw most of it away. I really just wanted the head. I put the head on a shelf till I had a good idea what to do. It sat for over a year till I came up with my idea, A Lizardman Temple. Or just the entrance part. I must confess at this point that I was very lax in taking pictures of the WIP. I'm kicking myself now.


I'll just briefly go over what I did with pics of the Temple thrown in. I took a 2x4 sheet of MDF board and cut an irregular pattern on one side. I left other side untouched as it's meant to be a board edge piece of terrain.


Then I spent a few nights gluing down pink foam insulation board building up the cliff. It might be over kill but I used Liquid Nails cause I like how fast it drys. I used a Woodland Scenics Foam cutter to shape the pink board.


Once I had all the pink board down, I needed to fill in cracks. I tried 3 different things. First I tried Woodland Scenics Foam Putty. Very odd stuff. It looks like it would be good for different things but it took days to dry. Then I bought some Spackle in a tube, for wall touch-ups, too hard to squeeze out of the tube. Last I went to tried and true Elmers Wood Putty. works like a champ.


Ok the boards are cut and glued, cracks filled in. Now to the paint. I know some paints can "melt" the foam board so I "seal" the board with plain white Latex house paint. I had a lot of stone surface to do so I bought a small can of model spray paint, dark gray. Dry brush on 2 lighter shades of grey and the stone is done.


My "grass" method is very simple. I just paint the grass areas with a generous amount of Green paint and pour a ton of flocking onto it till it drys. Shake off the excess and dump it back into my grassing bin. I go back with different colors and put those down with a white glue spray. This helps self the grass and adds different shades to avoid the "golf course" look.


Now I go and add more vegetation with a hot glue gun. Some is Woodland Scenics Foliage, and some Walmart Plastic plants, cut up and painted. I add some "creeping vines" with dark flock and a hot glue gun. And that's it.


Oh I forgot to mention and you can't see from the pics, the mouth opening is a passage that goes thru to the back of the piece. I toyed with adding a 2nd board with the temple proper, but our dreams are large and our free time is limited. Hope you enjoyed the pics.

Ciao for now, Xin