Mountain base project Pt3

The project is just about done now. I left it at the end of part two just about looking like a base but otherwise you needed alot of imagination to see the finished job.
The three big jobs I had left was to paint it, add the snow and do the railings.
 The painting was straight forward with a base coat of a mid grey, all washed in raw umber. Once that was dry I dry brushed with progressively lighter tones of grey with a last dusting of white. I also painted the ground work to look like mud so if I missed any areas with the snow it still looked good.
The railings ended up being worth it but each 30cm of railings was made up of about 65 pieces so patience was the word- it took me about one hour a foot to complete!

base coat added. Raw umber wash improves the look- sort of!

before the snow

a good shot of the railings

The snow is snow flakes from Deluxe Materials. I painted diluted PVA glue on all the areas I want the snow and then sprinkle the flakes all over the board. To help seal it and make it tough, I then spray it with very watered down PVA glue with some surgical spirit added to help it mix with the snow. I keep going with the process until I am happy with the look. It means the board is very wet so leave it to dry for a good 24 hours. Once it is dry you should have hard snow. If you have missed some areas then just repeat the above process.

 The cable car was finished as well with me building a steel support structure from plasticard. I have added some icicles to this but the photos haven't worked so you will just have to imagine them or come and see them at Salute this year at the Crooked Dice game.

 You can see how the cable car works in the above picture. A wooden dowel painted black is pushed into a hole in the villains lair and then it is supported by the steel structure at the other end. The cable car then rests on top of the cable so it can be moved during the game. The car has movable doors so you can get figures inside it so it should catch the eye during a game.

That is just about it for this project. I still have to work on the interior design for the lair but I am coming to the conclusion that this isn't my strongest skill but hopefully it will look suitably 60's in style.
Once I have delivered it to Karl at Crooked dice, the next time I will see it will be at this years Salute. I understand the figures are being painted by Kevin Dalimore so the whole thing should look terrific.

Mountain base project pt2

I have been hard at work on the mountain hide away this week so again, here is a last update before the end of the year.
I now have built the whole layout and textured most of it so you can really see what the finished base will look like.

The first time I have cut a base board into this sort of shape!

The cable car in position. when finished it will hang from a cable

The whole thing is 4ft x 4ft so you can guess how much foam board I have used- sheets and sheets of it!
At this stage I now sorted out the laser cut windows for the villains liar. It needed large imposing but perfect windows- ideal for laser cutting.

The windows have to go around the lair as you can see above- about 90cm of window altogether at about 5cm high. The plan was to sandwich a sheet of clear plasticard in between two window frames. The frames arrived this week so was able to fix them in place, keeping my fingers crossed that I had the right measurements. All was well.

I had another set of frames for the room in the bottom right- alot smaller but still best made by a laser cutter.

these windows are 3cm high

The rest of the week was taken up finishing off detail-

rock face and supporting pillars added and a shaped roof

more roof shape detail

mdf roof added. I have to sort out the finish on this

another roof shot

windows and roof.

The first job I have when I start again is the railings. If you look at the original sketch you can see there is alot of railings-

There must be 10 feet of railings

I thought it would be a good idea to design a more interesting railing rather than just a normal metal one so I got in touch with the laser cutter with a few ideas and I got this back-

A great idea especially if I can make it look like concrete. I got the pieces at the same time as I got the windows-

hundreds of pieces!

I think it will keep me busy for a while. It should be worth it though.
That is it for this year on this mountain project. I need to add details inside the villains lair (a bit of interior decorating!), work out how to get the cable car to hang on a wire convincingly and then paint it all and turn it into a snowy scene.