Calzone's Custom Terrain: Elven Bridge (10/08/09)

[Calzone]

Hi guys, I'm fairly new here (been a lurker for a while, and recently started posting), but though I'd share my custom terrain projects as i got around to them. I apologize for the blurriness of some pictures, they were taken with my cell phone's camera.

Elven Bridge
My current project is a bridge in kind of an elven/natural style. The original concept was that a couple of trees were arced toward each other when they were young, and grew together, fusing into a solid mass. Over centuries, the wood warped as the trees slowly fought for real estate, clutching at boulders and each other as they struggled to survive. Space for walking was hewn along the arch of the trees, resulting in the bridge.

Click the Spoiler for construction details (lengthy):

Spoiler Alert!

Disclaimer: This was the first real terrain project I've done. I've never worked with sculpey/wireform before, and I've never done model painting on this scale. There are likely better ways to do what I've done.

Construction:

I began by deciding what footprint I wanted for the bridge, using my heroscape terrain and some glyph tiles for the feet of the bridge. I decided that the bridge should be built two tiles wide, but have a single hex-width path that ran across it. I also wanted it to be tall enough that at least medium size figures could pass under it, but not so big that Grimnak, a dragon, etc. could.



Using wireform, I made a rough skeleton of how I wanted my bridge to look. Wireform is a thin metal mesh that you can cut and bend to use as an armature for your sculpting material. When bending my wireform, I made sure to shape the bottom to fit the hexes it would sit on, and make curves that would roughly approximate how I wanted the tree limbs/trunks to look.







NOTE: I did not make a wireform armature for the underside of my bridge initially. This was a mistake (my bridge was about 1/4" thick, way too thin). I had to go back and add a piece of wireform to the underside, and it was a mess. Save yourself some trouble and cut your wireform big enough to rough in ALL of your model.

I did all my sculpting in Sculpey. It's fairly cheap (under $6/lb at WalMart), and easy to work with. This was my first time using Sculpey, but I was very satisfied with it as a sculpting medium.

(Just kind of turn your head sideways for this one, i forgot to rotate it


Before getting to the sculpting, look at your armature. Are there flat areas where you can sculpt hexes to hold your figures, or will you have to build jutting platforms? If you visualize a layer of clay over it, does it look about like what you want? Does it meet any gameplay issues (such as character clearance) you wanted from it? In my case, i had to smush the bridge down in some areas to make space for hexes. (as an easy check, I put a bit of clay on the bottom of some glyphs and stuck them to the armature where the hexes would be.) Also, notice in the picture that I made clay "feet" for my bridge. This let me anchor the armature in place to made sure it was the correct span, looked right, etc. Don't worry if the armature wants to pull away from the feet some, just anchor it as best as you can and we'll fix that later.

Make sure you get the general shape of the armature right BEFORE you begin coating it in clay. It's a lot harder to make these changes after the clay is on it.




Next i covered the armature in clay. I began by rolling my Sculpey out in thin sheets, which I laid over my armature. Make sure you roll the sculpey thin (~1/8" or thinner).



Press it carefully into all the curves in your armature. If you press too hard, you'll push the clay through the mesh and have to lay more sculpey over it, so be careful. I used multiple hand-size sheets to cover my armature, overlapping each one slightly and carefully smoothing over the sharp edges of the overlap with my fingers. Overlap your sheets with the feet of the bridge and smooth them together. This should keep the armature from pulling away from the feet if it was doing it earlier.



Continue placing sheets over the armature until the whole thing is covered, top and bottom. Use small finger-sized sheets to patch where the mesh shows through or there is a gap between sheets.



Take a look at your bridge. Make sure you're happy with the general shape. At this stage, you may want to pull your bridge (CAREFULLY) off the terrain, as sculpey will do its best to remove the paint from the hexes it sits on. If you do, take some measures to insure you don't deform your bridge so it won't fit on the hexes anymore. I left mine on and decided I would repaint the hexes if needed.

Now, look at the curves of your bridge, plan where your big details will go. In my case, I planned where small trunks, big gnarled branches, etc. would wind, following the general curves of the trunk. Start sculpting the main features. I would pull of a piece of sculpey about the size of my branch, shape it roughly to size, and lay it on the bridge. Then I would push/pull/smush/bend the clay to get the rough shape I wanted, using my fingers. Then I'd use an exacto knife, small round stick, or other object to remove excess material, blend the piece into the bridge, smooth out rough spots, etc. If it seems difficult, don't worry. Try it, and if it looks crappy, rip the clay off, roll it into a ball, and try again.



I continued to rough in features, using glyph tiles as placeholders for hexes:







Make sure your hexes will line up more-or-less with terrain hexes directly beneath them.

Time to replace the glyphs with real hexes. At this time, I made a sculpey mold of the top of a hex and baked it.



When the mold was hardened, I put some clay in the mold to get the hex imprint on the top, and replaced a glyph with that hex-imprinted clay. I had to build up some areas to support the hexes better.



As you go along, keep refining the details bit by bit. Don't worry about messing up; it's clay, there's no time limit, you can always try again.



Remember, sculpey doesn't have enough strength to support itself when shaped into long, thin things like branches. I sculpted over a couple days, and some mornings some of the unsupported clay had drooped a little. If you want thin or top heavy stuff like branches, etc, make an armature for it out of wire to hold the shape, and coat it with sculpey.




A view from the top to make sure my hexes match up with the terrain:


When you've got most of the detail done, do a couple of last reviews. Look for sections where clay needs to be smoothed, for clay seams that need to be joined together, fingerprints, etc. When I did my last look, There were areas that needed to be better defined, smoothed, etc. that i decided to fix after baking. (I didn't have sculpting tools, but I had a good set of needle files.) Bake your sculpey according to the directions on the box. I don't recommend putting it in the oven on the heroscape terrain (my bad!). Instead, carefully transfer it to a baking sheet, making sure not to deform it. Then, bake it.

I apologize for a lack of pictures for the next few steps. After it's baked and cooled, place the bridge back on the hexes to make sure it still fits. Mine had shifted in the oven! If it no longer fits, see if the clay has enough play to make it fit, even if there are some cracks...you can glue those later. If it still doesn't fit, add a bit more clay and/or carve off some spots. If you added clay, bake it again, but be careful: rebaking the clay may make some finer areas crumbly or fragile. After the baking, I took out my files and smoothed out some areas and outlined the branches and roots to make them more distinct. After the detailing was done, I began painting.

Here are the current pics. I've only done three coats of paint so far. I still have to add some moss details, highlighting/drybrushing for everything, and finish it with a wash, but it's coming along.









Questions, comments, constructive criticism are heartily welcomed. Hope you enjoy!

[A_Train]

Looks really good, especially for a first time using the materials.
Looks like you could easily make a Marro bridge with a similar method. I'd like to see that.

[Trav11111]

Wow, that is cool. Looks like it took a lot of work, but it paid off.

[Bloodthorn]

Absolutely fantastic! Not only did you make a great piece of terrain, but you provided a tutorial to go along with it. Great job. +rep

[NecroBlade]

Looks great and nice detail on the process!

[Lamaclown]

Great job, Calzone!
I echo A_Train, I would love to see you do a Marro bridge this way. If this first bridge is any indication I am sure you would do great at it.

[karl with a k]

Thats looks really really really AWESOME!

[Calzone]

Thanks everyone for your positive feedback, it's very encouraging!

I've still got a little painting to finish on my elven bridge, but i should finish it here in a day or two.

I hadn't given a lot of thought to doing a Marro bridge, but after thinking about it, it seems like a lot of fun. I'll start doing some concept sketches and post them here for initial impressions if you guys don't mind contributing some feedback.

A couple other projects I'm working on the side:

- Distressed pillars (wedding cake ionic columns)
- Cherry blossom trees
- a red lacquered Japanese-style bridge

Look for updates in the next few days!

[spiteofthedice]

Holy crap, Calzone. That bridge looks great. You got in an incredible amount of detail. I hope more is to come.

~Spite

[habs1009]

Woah!

[Fedex worker]

Wow, nice job for your first custom thing. They way you built it actually seemed easier then many other ways, and I really like the paint job you gave it! Good Job!

[pegasus]

This is turning out real nice. The look and feel is excellent. Good colour scheme too.
Only question I have is that the hex parts look a wee bit wobbly and uneven. So I'm not sure how steady your game pieces would sit on them, but maybe that's just the picture and lighting.