Can't See the Forest for the Trees (Part 2)

Like, what was I thinking with that title? It's terrible.

Anyway.

Had a spot of warmer weather this weekend, so I managed to make a little progress on my "green" terrain.

After cutting out all of the filter pieces and pulling the fibers apart to make them work, let me offer a few words of advice: 1) The little blue specs that come off during this process really start to add up and make a mess, so either do this outside or somewhere you can easily sweep (garage, porch, etc.) and 2) you need to wear gloves, because it will start to tear the skin on your hands to pieces.

So after getting it all ready, I hit them with a quick brown spray paint, then used some spray adhesive to apply the flock.

Clumpy fluffs of foliage sprayed brown

After adding the first bits of flocking (it will get more later once assembled into a tree proper)

Needing to let these bits dry but not wanting to waste the good weather, I decided to go ahead and test putting together and flocking the fluff on one of the smaller armature trees.

Bit of spray adhesive to the armature and then just sticking the small leftover chunks of fluff from the bigger trees

All flocked up! 

All that's left for the mock up is to paint the trunks, and I have to say, I'm quite excited about how it turned out! I'm not as excited to do this 11 more times... but still, excited.

Hopefully Part 3 will finish this series out, with a final picture of all the trees together! Maybe if this decent weather will hold through this upcoming weekend...

Can't See the Forest for the Trees (Part 1)

It's been something of a joke for a while now that desert settings for my table is just my "thang." Whether it's an arid, alien world or simply a trash-filled wasteland, it's just what I've always gravitated towards in my terrain building and my paint schemes.

Deciding that I needed to branch out a bit (and because I didn't want all of my fantasy terrain to be in the desert, too) I tried to break it down into the most crucial elements for each/any setting.

For example, in a desert, I would say that big rocky crags, like you would find on a canyon wall, are the most striking and obvious element to use for non-specific terrain.

So, I began work on two tables:

 - A "green" table, with trees and plant-life
 - A "cyberpunk" table, devoid of typical landscapes tropes in favor of concrete/rust with neon accents

This is the first post in a series about working on the primary element of the "green" table: Some big, badass trees.

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For starters, I went out on Pinterest (which is a fantastic resource for examples) and began a search for cool looking trees on tables. The problem, as I saw it, was that trees in miniature gaming terrain are either too small/dinky, they're unsightly plastic looking things, or they're awesome fixtures of a permanent table. I need something that hits a comfortable middle ground; trees that are big enough to feel important and substantial, and still have a good model-train-feel to them, but that I can move around and set up differently on a gaming surface.

And as luck would have it, I came across this promising tutorial:  https://www.beastsofwar.com/terrain/terrainscaping-awesome-tabletop-trees/

The example picture I originally found on Pinterest

There would be a few changes here and there, but overall I really liked how durable this would be and yet still create a substantial table presence.  A quick trip to Home Depot and HobbyTownUSA later, and it was off to the races.

(I'm not going to re-list everything from the article out here except where there are notable exceptions)

 Having never used spray glue myself, let me first say that I've discovered cheaper = better in this instance. I started out with this expensive, super adhesive blah blah blah... but it sprays very thick and clumpy, and is not ideal for this purpose. I went back and picked up the cheapest can of aerosol adhesive and have been much happier with it!

No! No gloopy jazzm sprayer! No!

 I also decided to pick up some Woodland Scenic armatures along with the flocking material, so I could make some smaller trees with less foliage for variety. (I did get the biggest armatures I could find, though)

These things are sharp on the edges of the plastic when you bend them up! Death by a thousand cuts...

And then, the best discovery of all for regular use of these materials:

So gud.

Seriously, this wood filler is really thick and easy to work with straight from the carton, and it dries very hard even before applying a coat of watered-down-wood-glue to everything. This should be in every terrain builder's inventory.

So here are some progress shots of the first steps, which was mainly just attaching the dowels/armatures to the washers (though I used hot glue rather than the foam padding in the article) and then building up the trunks. I'll save the rest for next time.

Gon' be a big treeeeee...

Don't forget the wood glue over all of the built up trunk when it's finally dry a couple days later!

The next step will involve spraying everything brown, getting the trunks painted up, and then adding some foliage!