miscellaneous: battlefoam

Back in November I took advantage of Battlefoam's Black Friday sale and ordered up a whole mess of custom foam for various projects. Last Friday, it arrived.

Two trays of custom-sized foam, two trays of Battlefoam-sized foam, and eight trays of Spartan-sized foam snuggly packed inside a new Spartan Bag. All the foam was custom-cut based on designs I sent them.

First we'll look inside the bag...

I used the Battlefoam Custom Tray Creator for my Dystopian Wars FSA foam. As you can see, it fits the models well and I added a little room for expansion of my forces.

The remainder of the foam in my "Spartan Games Bag Custom Load Out" bundle was designed for my Aeronautica Imperialis models and made from designs I mapped out in Illustrator and sent in as PDFs.

All 6 trays fit quite snuggly in the P.A.C.K. 216 I bought at Adepticon a couple years ago.

The Battlefoam-sized trays were designed using the Custom Tray Creator and laid out to fit all 2000 points of Iron Warriors I have planned in a single Spartan Bag. My only quibble here is that the "Vindicator" hole from the Custom Tray Creator is extremely tight at the dozer blade. While this'll help during transport, I worry about wear on the paint job as I pull the model in and out of the tray. We'll see once I've actually painted the damn things.

Last, but not least, is the custom-sized, custom-cut foam trays I had designed for Wizkid's Star Trek: Fleet Captains. The foam has been made mostly unnecessary in the latest printing of the game, as Wizkid's has re-jiggered the inside of the box to better support the models and cards without breakage. However, I'd already designed this thing up in Illustrator and paid for the foam, so I went ahead with it.

As you can see, some of the ships sit pretty low in their holes. I had Battlefoam send me the insides of the holes, and will likely pull out the wire foam cutter to make varying height bases in the bottom of each hole. As with the Aeronautica foam, I probably could've designed the holes a bit tighter, but this being my first experience with Battlefoam's foam, I played it safe rather than sorry.

The lid sticks up a 1/4" or so due to the foam's base. I think it's a small price to pay for the protection the foam offers.

My initial impressions overall are positive. The foam appears to be of high quality and fits most of the figures snug. All quibbles are based less on practical application than theoretical at this point. With one of the Fleet Captains foams winging its way to Los Angeles soon, and most of the other trays headed to Adepticon with me, we'll see how the models, and my impression of the foam, hold up.

build: sea table: take 2, part 2

Almost a month ago I restarted my sea table, after screwing it up on the first go 'round. While I initially took "a couple days off" to stew over whether I liked the paint job, my nervousness about screwing it up again made it easy to be distracted with other hobby projects. This past weekend I took the opportunity during the kid's nap time to bite the bullet, mix up a small batch of glass coat and finish one of the three boards. Part of this was due to necessity, no telling how long the kids will nap from day-to-day, and partly due to economy, if I screwed it up again, I'd have only wasted one 2' x 4' board. I'm happy to report that it worked well enough for me to spend today's nap time coating up a second board and document the process as I went along.

Step 1: gather supplies

L-to-R: Cheap, throw-away brush. Glass coat. Popsicle stick. Shallow, see-through container. Four 3 oz. cups. Straw.

Step 2: pour glass coat

The glass coat is labelled "Side A" and "Side B" so I've labelled the cups accordingly and filled two cups of each part. Because of the hobby fail with the last table, I filled the "B" cups 2-3 millimeters higher than the corresponding "A" cup. I'm pretty sure you can follow the package directions and go even-stevens as long as you mix thoroughly.

Step 3: make water

• Top left: Pour the contents of each cup into your mixing container. Again, because of the hobby fail last time, I chose to use a shallow, see-through container this go 'round to so I could have visual confirmation that the two parts mixed thoroughly.
  
• Top right: Using your popsicle stick, mix thoroughly. I went through for a good two minutes mixing the parts. As you start you'll see milky, silvery strands where the two parts are mixing. Eventually, the color will even out through most of the mix and, depending on how vigorously you stirred, you'll have a multitude of bubbles. In this regard, the slower you stir the better.
  
• Bottom left: Add 7 drops of blue ink.
  
• Bottom right: Again, mix thoroughly until the color is mostly even throughout the mix. After this step, I gently agitate the container to bring the bigger bubbles to the surface and then slowly exhale over them. This breaks the bubbles readily, while fanned air does not. I've read that it has something to do with an exhalation's higher quantities of carbon dioxide.

Step 4: pour!

Dump your glass coat mixture over your board. I try to spread it as far as possible now so that it's easier to spread out by brush in the next step. As far as I've found, there's no good way to rinse out hardening resin, so go ahead and throw away your mixing container. It's useless to you now.

Step 5: spread!

Using your cheap brush, spread the glass coat mix over your board making sure that every inch has some glass coat on it. Go for a relatively even coat across the board, but don't sweat it if it's a little thicker in some areas than others. If you've got some latex gloves handy, go ahead and don them now. Cheap brushes like to leave a few bristles on the board and you may need to go fishing them out. Like the mixing container, your cheap brush is now useless. Chuck it.

Step 6: prep your towels

The one supply I forgot to put in the group shot - paper towels. You'll use several with each board. I go ahead and make 'em double-layered (left) before I scrunch 'em (right), and find it more efficient to blot double-fisted. Your mileage may vary.

Step 7: blot!

Methodically blot the surface of your board. I alternate hands and rotate as I go just to make sure no patterns appear in the surface. The above pic was taken halfway through the process. The reflection of the blinds shows where I stopped to take the picture.

Step 8: blow bubbles

Unfortunately, the pics for this step didn't turn out at all. I'm afraid you'll have to rely solely on my description. Using your straw, methodically blow over the surface of the board. As you pass over them, it's kinda fun to watch 'em pop.

Step 9: re-blot!
Step 10: re-blow!

I find that one blot pass leaves too smooth a surface for my liking, so I repeat the process of blot and blow across the entire board. By this time, the resin has started to stiffen and has even less elasticity to pull itself back into larger blobs.

That's it! There's nothing left to do but let the glass coat cure 'till it's solid. I believe the instructions say 72 hours for a complete cure, but check your instructions to be sure. If you've got the time and space, there's no reason you couldn't do a complete 4' x 6' board in 2-3 hours.

paint: work-in-progress: lush islands

With my rock islands completed, save some wave-work, I turned my sights to what I've been calling the "lush islands". The group of four islands whose concept was inspired by this photo:

The islands themselves were shaped a couple weeks ago, after seeing the inspiration photo, but not after studying it. I realized too late that the contours in my head didn't match the photo, but still think the "lush island" concept can shine through, despite the island shapes barely resembling the islands in the photo.

"The Floating Forests" & Candiru Island: foamy

All islands in the chain were completed using the following steps. As with the last set of islands, I'm using crappy, years-old acrylic paint for most of the colors, as they're already on-hand and they're far less per-ounce than any game-branded paints. I picked Candiru to photograph because I needed "how-to" photos of my beach work, and it's the only island in the chain with some. Without further ado, here's Step 1...

Step 1: Autumn Brown: applied over all of the island, save the beach

Step 2: Trail Tan: applied in a thick drybrush

Step 3: Neutral Grey: stippled to predominately vertical edges

Step 4: Ivory: light drybrush to the non-beaches

Step 5: Raw Umber & Lamp Black: mixed 1:1, thinned heavily, washed over the rock

Step 6: Ivory: thinned, cover the whole beach

Step 7: Morrow White: drybrushed over the beach to taste

And that's it. The island is painted. But so is the acrylic, where overzealous painting slopped paint onto the base around the island's edges. The best way I've found to clean up the messy edges is to take a q-tip wetted with water and moisten the paint on the acrylic, then scrape the paint off with a fingernail. This step isn't that difficult, but would've been made unnecessary with better planning. Future sets of islands will have their styrofoam sections painted before gluing them to their bases.

After cleaning up the edges, it's time to make the "lush islands" look, well, lush. For that, we need vegetation.

Pre-Vegetation: a variety of foliage in different sizes and colors

The colors and amounts of each depend entirely on the look you're going for. I didn't take measurements when blending the foliage, instead going by how the blend looked after mixing. The last batch I made was mixed approximately 2:2:1, from left to right.

I'll also add that the "Bushes" size was a tad larger than I liked, so the majority of those pieces were hand-torn into more manageable chunks prior to mixing. I probably couldn't gotten away with buying the same color in the "Underbrush" size.

Vegetation: blended to taste

The next step is all about getting the foliage to stick to the island. PVA or Elmer's glues work well for this as most of them are cheap and will dry clear, two very useful properties. I first tried sticking the foliage to watered down Elmer's, as you would when flocking a table, but the foliage wouldn't stick. I ended up applying the glue straight from the bottle...

Step 8: Apply Glue: PVA/Elmer's glue, applied directly to the island

Step 9: Spread Glue: using a cheap/rubbish brush, spread the glue to where you want vegetation

Step 10: Forestation: smother the glue in foliage

You may find that chunks of foliage like to sit on top of other foliage instead of settling all the way to the island. The easy way to test this is to flip the model over and give it a light shake and checking for barren patches. I find that gently, but firmly, pressing the foliage into the glue worked a treat for getting most of the veg, or any gap filling veg, to stay. If you're missing spots, most likely at the edges, you can always apply more glue and strategically place what colors and sizes of foliage you need to fill the gaps with variety.

"The Floating Forests" & Candiru Island: lush!

And that's it! Deeply forested islands that might hide lost tribes of head-shrinking cannibals. They're not "finished", as I still need to add painted waves and shallow waters, but they're playable...

paint: work in progress: rock islands, part 2

At the end of my last post about my rock islands I was less than thrilled with how light my "volcanic" rock had turned out. A couple washes of extremely watered down Lamp Black did a nice job of toning them down without losing the highlights.

Step 7: Lamp Black: thinned down to lightly tinted water, washed over the whole model

"The Barren Mountains" and Sleeping Turtle Island: looking more volcanic

The Lamp Black wash pretty much killed the brown stippling I put on the island. If I had it to do over, I'd either skip that step, or use a lighter brown with more strategic placement. I think that would more closely mimic the variation seen in the inspiration...

Inspiration: rock islands

I still need to clean up the edges of the islands where paint got on the acrylic. Then I'll try adding the impression of waves and shallow water around the islands. Not sure if that'll be topside or underneath the acrylic at this point, I'll have to test it out. So far, I don't think they look too bad in situ, so to speak.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pics of the beach or forestation steps while finishing up Sleeping Turtle Island. I was too busy winging it. I'll be sure to record the process this week/weekend as I work on the next island chain...

"The Floating Forests" and Candiru Island

paint: work-in-progress: rock islands

Put some basic color down on the "The Barren Mountains" and Sleeping Turtle Island. Where I can get away with it, the terrain will try to deplete my stock of old, cheap Latex paint I got 5-6 years ago from Hobby Lobby for a poorly executed Flames of War terrain project. I also refuse to spend as much time on painting the terrain as I did the models, as I like what little grasp on sanity I have left...

Step 1: Graphite: even covering over the entire island

Step 2: Raw Umber: liberally stippled across the island

Step 3: Lamp Black: stippled less liberally over the raw umber

Step 4: Graphite: drybrushed to hit the ridges

Step 5: Neutral Grey: drybrushed over the graphite

Not entirely happy with how they turned out. Seeing the pics, I probably should've stopped after the Graphite dry brush or had a much lighter hand with the Neutral Grey. I'm going to experiment with some severely watered down Lamp Black as a wash to see if I can bring it closer to the dark, volcanic rock I was going for.

Also not happy about the visible seam where I glued the foam boards together. It's too late for these guys, but I'll try to find a way to fix that in future pieces. I'm guessing a fine-grit and/or wet sanding might do the trick.

"The Barren Mountains" and Sleeping Turtle Island: painted, but poorly

build: sea table: take 2, part 1

So, a couple days after posting about my sea table, I went back to check the glaze coat and take some glamour shots. In several spots the glaze was still tacky, like congealed syrup. Well damn. I done screwed it up. The test coats dried correctly, and I'm 99% sure I got the resin/hardener ratio spot-on. This leaves my mixing method suspect. I used tall, opaque, plastic cups to mix the glaze, and I've a feeling that I might have left several areas less mixed than others. As I poured, I noticed the blue-tinge from the ink appeared to get lighter, which would support this theory. This left me with two options, try to fix it, or start over.

Either solutions required buying a new quart of glaze coat, so I first tried to fix it on a single panel. I carefully mixed up a second layer of glaze, combining resin and hardener in a clear, shallow container and mixing thoroughly before pouring. The mixing method worked, and it hardened like a champ. A new de-bubblig method using a straw to better focus my exhalations also worked like a champ. However, stippling to produce waves left sticky areas exposed, while not stippling left a surface neither flat enough to be glass, nor wavy enough to evoke waves. Ultimately, it was a knowledge success, but a hobby fail.

So back to the store I went...

Round 2: FIGHT!

Since the islands I've been working on are more tropical, I took the opportunity to pick up a couple new shades of paint in the hopes of lightening up the board overall. Don't get me wrong, I thought the board looked amazing, but I did feel that the blue-tinged glaze coat ended it a shade dark for South Pacific-themed islands. I grabbed a new pot of "Rich Navy" as well as the shades "Pool Party" and "Tropical Surf".

Step 1: Edging

I used an old dark blue craft paint I had hanging around to darken the edges. On the first table it was the last painting step, and the edges ended up slightly tinted, despite my best efforts.

Step 2: Rich Navy

Again, roller brushed all over the board and using up almost all of the sample pot.

Step 3: Caribbean Sea

Sponged on using a stippling technique, covering more of the board than last time.

Step 4: Pool Party

Sponged on in a light coat across the entire board.

Step 5: Totally Teal
Step 6: Tropical Surf

The Teal was sponged in thick clumps in whatever place and pattern struck my fancy. The Surf was then added in even smaller, more diffuse patterns across the board. Theoretically, these are your highest/brightest waves.

As of right now, I've got mixed feelings on the second board. I like the more varied forms of the green/algae/seaweed, and the board is certainly lighter than the last. I'm afraid, however, that I may have gone a bit too far the other way, been heavy-handed with the sponge, and used too many colors. I think the Prussian Blue-tinted glaze will tone all that down a bit, but really don't want to come back with "sea table: take 3" because I screwed this up.

I think I'll marinate on these colors a day or two before glaze coating. It's easy and cheap to fix the paint. It's a PITA to have to start all over.