Tag: snow

Tutorial – Frozen Pond

I have been busy building terrain to play in Frostgrave, a skirmish game set in a ruined city that has been frozen over in the past. I’ve been experimenting using aquarium and terrarium terrain to build cheap nice looking terrain pieces. I’ve done up this quick tutorial on making a frozen pond.

 

Things you will need:

  • Terrarium pond (Can be found at pet stores in lizard section)
  • Cracked ice fluorescent light cover (Big plastic sheets at hardware store)
  • Paint (I used a couple shades of blue)
  • Paper for making template
  • Woodland Scenics Realistic Water
  • Snow Flock
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First thing is to make a paper template of the inside of the dish, you could make your own outer dish with foam as well if you didn’t want to buy a premade one.

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Trace the pattern out onto the cracked ice sheet.

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Start cutting it out and realize you flipped it over and need to start over (you can skip this step if you like). I use a hobby knife and some pliers to score and snap the plastic.

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Cut it a little bigger and then shave it down so it fits.

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It fits!

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Get a couple different shades of blue. You can use cheap craft paint as this will be covered up.

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Paint the basin with the darkest color in the middle where the water would be the deepest.

Pour about 1/8″ of realistic water into the basin and let set over night.

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If you want just water in the basin you can stop here.

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Glue the plastic down. I used spray adhesive but any clear glue will work.

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Pour another layer of realistic water over the top (optional but I like the extra shininess)

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Combine snow flock and realistic water into a paste and apply to the gaps where the snow would drift into.

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Finished product!




Frozen River

Cracked Ice
Close up
Models on ice

I finally found an affordable solution for making the frozen river for my ice board.  Ceiling panels for florescent lights to simulate the ice. This is a translucent cracked ice type and runs about 10 bucks for a 2×4 foot section.  Two of them will be enough to do the large river on my table.  Certainly better than the estimated $100 bucks worth of resin I thought I was going to need.  I had thought about trying it, but saw it in action here and new it would be perfect.

The one problem I ran into is that the panels are actually 23.5 inches vs 47.5 inches.  So for one of the panels I needed to use multiple pieces.  Rather than have a straight seam, I cracked and broke it into pieces and then used Woodland Scenics Realistic Water to make it look like the water was flowing up through the crack.  The water seeped under the plastic to give a really nice looking effect.  I’m really happy, I just need to do some snow banks along the edges to cover up the rough cutting.




Completed Rangers












Ranger paint test scheme

Ranger with Snow Camo Cloak

I did a test paint scheme on a Ranger tonight.  Ended up trying 4 shades of grey and white paint to do a snow camo scheme.  Pretty happy with how it turned out.  I need to do some work on his backpack and gear and get some details done on the front, but it gives me template for the squad.




Ice Table WIP #3

 
I managed to get all of the white portions painted yesterday and it is really coming together.  I will give the snow areas a coating of Future floor to give a nice glistening effect and then I just need to figure out how to do my ice.  I’m thinking clear resin with a little blue and a little white ink or paint mixed in.  I’ll try to pick some up this evening for testing purposes over the weekend.



Ice Table WIP #3

 

Did a little more work the last few days.  Put the third board section together (also have enough left over to do a fourth board later), and sanded the flat snowy portions of the board.  Next step will to do the white over-brushing to give a better snow effect.  I will probably end up gloss coating the board as well to have it look a little more snow-like.  I still need to figure out how to do the iced-over river.  Probably use resin with a little white and blue paint mixed in to cloud it up a little and give that a try.  Also time to start making plans for the various terrain bits that I will be doing.  Probably will start on the ice-crystal forests tonight and plan some pumping station style buildings.  Not sure what else I want to do.
I also found a similar board here that someone has built, and will be using some of his ideas, especially on the ice crystal forest.  Hopefully mine looks as good when it’s finished.