Narcissus' terrain

Narcissus... don't know what to tell you! This is amazing. Your talent creating rust is par none. We all bow to your incredible talent. I honestly can't figure it out. I mean, I hear DeafNala giving instructions and I understand. I know I can't do it yet... but I understand what he does. Same thing with Laney and Komfritten... I can follow what they say, I'm amazed by what they do... I still know I can't do it yet.

But your work? I may as well try to figure out how to navigate to the Warp and visit the Emperor. When you explain it is so far beyond my imagination that is like 'in one ear, out the other.'

PLEASE don't stop. At least I can wonder at your genius.


What to add, besides uncompromising adoration? FLASH. I think I can help you with that. The problem I see you guys are having is that the Flash is directly reflecting on the subject. Look at this picture below. What do you see?





INDIRECT light! Sure, pro equipment or photo-booth works VERY well, but there is a cheap way to do this. The money you invest ALSO helps with painting. Take a couple regular lamps (does not matter) and put NATURAL LIGHT bulbs. The bulb is the key! Any other light is 'yellowish' or 'blueish'. Natural Lights looks (and photographs) EXACTLY as if the subject were outside. It would be nice if the bulb are not exposed (you can accidentally touch them).

Put the model over LIGHT background. I like white, but DeafNala has great results with baby blue. Pleace each lamp on the side (slightly forward, towards you) of the model (2 or 3 feet away) and point the lamps at the subject. You will get TWO nasty shadows (diagonal back). Now, put a white paper over the light (if you can tape it is good!)... now... look carefully. The objective is to minimize the shadows (as close as you can to eliminating them, but still visible.) Play with the distance of the lamp and subject. If you have to move the lamps too far and still get too much shadow, then as an alternative, you can point the lights AWAY from the subject towards a WHITE surface. The white surface should reflect the light back in the right amount. Once you reach it... you are ready to take pictures WITHOUT flash.

Now.. look at the pics above. You see the tricks? Why this works? Because you are putting as much indirect light as possible, minimizing glare and shadow.

Hope this helps. The Tutorials on taking pics are pretty good. Check that section! Good luck and thanks for sharing your wonderful art!

Thanks Mordheimer. My issue is definitely with flash and not taking time with setting up pictures. I had been thinking about making a little light booth but I think I may just try adding some parchment paper or white tissue or something over my lamps (to diffuse the picture) and setting the photo up better.

The rust on these pieces is incredibly easy, it is just a bit tedious. Just basecoat, then lightly sponge dark brown, medium brown, boltgun metal, vermin brown and then add streaks with gryphon sepia and tamiya clear orange (just two layers of devlan mud or gryphon sepia works fine too). Try it out on some scrap or something. Just use a little piece of blister foam or a little foam brush. I have that tutorial on my blog that I will post up over here as well (when I get some time).

Narcissus wrote:

Gatlag-Thanks. Maybe on the next one I will add a dead body to it as well...

Awesome! Still want to do dead pool myself, maybe that will be good project to try out those Woodlands crystals!
But first I really realy have to work out this other "great" idea I have...I just need time for it....

Woohoo, over 2,000 views now.

Here are some updated pictures of the waste water reservoir. I tried some better lighting techniques, with mixed success, but I think the pictures now look a little better.

Grats on your 2000 annivers'ry!

The pictures are way better, and I still find that the water effects with the swirling green is very cool - it looks absolutely deadly!

I see the rat now - I see it! And now it's not an albino anymore =) It's a fun ol' rat.

As said OH so many times before (but repeating is not stupid!), the rust is really good. I just believe in it.

Way to go - hoping to get my IG's finished too, so I can go on with the Shanty-challenge soon. Happy building!

Superb pics! WOW! I can see the evil rat very well. Congratz in excellent terrain! You are now officially on my list to places to rob. Hehehehe... after I hit Mudboy, I go to your place! So, if you ever see someone with a pantyhose on his head holding a box... do NOT shoot! You may hit your terrain!

Thanks for sharing!

I started making a modular canal system this week. I am visiting my parents so I decided that it would be a good time to start it as I can use my Dad's power tools . I'll have some WIP pictures tomorrow.

Oops. Those WIP pictures took a bit longer than expected to post. Here is my modular canal system so far. Built using 1/4" hardboard, moulding, screws, glue, paint, and power tools. I am writing a big long tutorial on my blog. Here are the pictures of what I have so far.







As you can see, the selection of different pieces allows for lots of different layouts. It is definitely too much for just one 4x4 table. I need to add some more bridges to my collection as well.

Looks good! Great progress!

Uh.. need to get back into building again - need more hours a day...

I was thinking, maybe to soften up the transitions between the pieces, you could ad some » false « connections, so to speak. It could make the onlooker wondering where they were connected..hope I made sense...

Oh, and please put a figure in there. I'm not sure on the scale;-)

Komfritten-I had thought of that too. I was thinking of making some pipes that connected two pieces. Not sure how well it will work with the water effect though. The canals are 4.25" wide. The 12" pieces should align most of the joints with the locations of bridges on my board. We'll have to see how it all looks when completed.

Really cool work as usual - how do you manage to work so fast (and keep focused).

These will be a great compliment to the other pieces you've done. On the water effects - are you going for clean or polluted water?

Laney:D

Laney-I'm definitely not very focussed! These basic canal bits got to this stage 2 weeks ago. I tend to jump between projects all the time. I think they should fit well with my other industrial pieces. I really need to finish the board itself though. As I'm sure you would have guessed, I am planning to go polluted river all the way. These will get the full grime, muck, pollution, and debris treatment!

Wow very sweet man! I also wish I'd more time for such great projects!

It has been a while since I finished any more terrain. Oops! Here are some walkways I finished quickly for a tutorial. I made a tutorial on painting rust and exposed metal for Komfritten's space hulk. You can find it here.

Here are some pictures of the finished walkways.








This makes me want to build my own little space hulk...

That painting on those walkways is phenomenal, it looks so real, I can't wait till I have some money and free time and can finish my squad and then have a go at terrain, seeing all the great stuff people do here is really inspiring.

Can't wait to see the canals all polluted up and painted. Keep up the good work

That is so great Narc! I'm not definite about the colour yet, as I really want it to be dark and gloomy, but also be "realistic" metal-effects... the dilemma

Your tutorial is really good to me, as I know better understand HOW you do it - the rest is doing it enoug! heheh

Will try to get some samples done tonight and post them - hopefully I will get results I can live with

This is a bit embarrassing, it has been eleven months since I have built any terrain. Or at least finished any!

Even more embarrassing, here is a painted model that I constructed in November, 2010! Two years ago! I half painted it and then didn't finish it. Today I decided I would experiment with airbrushing terrain using this piece. The pictures are a bit washed out as it is too big to fit in my light box.

Total painting time was about 1 hour 10 minutes for the airbrushing and then about 10 minutes of dry brushing and adding the runs with a wash. I had already painted the buildings brown and had done a little bit of work on the white areas previously (I painted over it with the airbrush though).




I showed the burnt areas using some black.


I painted the roof, each tile individually, in under 10 minutes including colour changes.


Most of the areas have at least 2 highlights.





Comments and criticisms appreciated as always!

Thats great! I also found out that painting terrain with the AB is cool, fun and fast! Even though you get a little "fluffy" feeling, I find that that can be helped with the crude paintbrush afterwards.

I like the colours, and I like the fast and done style!

I would consider making the tiles (the roof and floor both) darker, and with less highlight to make a bigger contrast. And probably in three colours where the "real" colour is the "middle" one, framed out by the dark / black and the lighter / white.

I might have asked already, but... how did you do the catwalks?

Thanks Komfritten. I agree. Airbrush terrain might look a bit less realistic due to the blending, but it is fast and fits the cartoony look of GW stuff in a way. The tiles and flagstones have three layers to them, they just got a bit washed out in the pictures. The top highlight kind of overpowered everything in the picture.

Arachas (welcome back!)-here is a WIP picture of the catwalks:


For each of them I cut a rectagular shape out of foamcore for the main surface. I then added foamcore railings or just cardboard. I then added some cardboard strips, granny grating, and rivets before painting them up. They were really fast. I also added some balsa wood supports underneath so that they can hook into some of the other terrain I have made and are a bit more stable.

You can see here how they hook together:

Sweet ass piece o' terrain man!
And painted so fast! Airbrushing really kicks rear!
Those walkways are the shit btw!

Thanks Gatlag. Airbrushing is only faster sometimes. Sometimes I spend half the time or more trying to make paint come out properly. I really like it for painting terrain though. I was able to paint the whole piece in less time than it would take to paint just the white areas by brush.

Just a note, pictures of the finished terrain piece are on the previous page. Since Mordheimer only scrolls until he sees a picture, here is a picture:

More are on page 8.

I knew I had seen those catwalks before. Thanks for reposting that, I'm just extremely lazy.

Here are some pictures of my painted modular canals. I started this project a year ago and even included a tutorial on my blog on how to build modular canals. At the time I promised they would be painted by the end of the month. Oops! I guess I was waiting to improve my skills. The first set is completely painted now.


These models were actually really quick to paint. I painted chips and wear on the side using a sponge and brown and silver paint as I showed in a tutorial on chipped metal. I used a big sponge brush and painted it very quickly. I then used my airbrush to airbrush rust stains in places (used Vallejo Model Air Burnt Umber).


I then painted the water areas using a mix of a dark green and black (craft paints). While it was still wet I put a line of light green down the center. I then used a large brush to roughly blend it in the center of the water section. I was careful to use long strokes along the length of the water to ensure there were no places where the lines stopped.


To seal the model I quickly coated them in matte varnish (Testors Dull Coat). I used Americana "Triple Thick" gloss varnish on the water. I painted it on with a brush, once again being careful to keep the brush strokes in the same direction as the water.


This all went very quickly. I probably spent only 2 hours or so after the initial grey base coat. The pieces are modular and can be arranged in a wide variety of different ways. These sections are 6 feet in total. Once I paint the other sections the versatility will be greatly increased.