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Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
Moscovian
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:38 pm 
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I am looking to do some landscape for Epic ideally with some rolling sand dunes and canyons as well.  While regular sand is pretty small, I noticed it is relatively large compared to 6mm figures and I don't want my army crawling over 'boulders'.  

Another concern would be getting the shape of the dunes correct.

Lastly, I'd like to build some canyon like sections into the terrain as well, but I'm at a loss of how to even start.

Does anyone have any advice on building terrain of this type please?

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vanvlak
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 4:44 pm 
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Other than sculpting polystyrene, there is a good, if slightly tedious, way:
1 - cut several disc shaped sections of card or plasticard (the former is cheaper!)
2 - stack and stick these one by one on top of each other, with the centre of each disc being shifted slightly away from the centre of the previous one.
3 - slowly but surely you would get a tall column which would have the appearance of a stack of discs which were shuffled together untidily and not straightened out.
4 - apply undercoat and paint, preferably making streaks of different shades parallel to the plane of the discs. The effect would be similar to a very heavily wind-eroded column of rock.
5 - do the same with card shapes showing contours of a hill. Repeat as above with the largest at the bottom, and you can get a similar eroded appearance. You can also create a rock dune instead of a sand dune.

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firestorm40k
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:22 pm 
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If you're worried about sand being too coarse (a problem I've encountered), I'd recommend using Sand for Children's play areas/sand pits; it's quite fine.  I used it on my desert boards:



The hills and mountains were made from polystyrene, cut with hot-wire cutters, then covered with sand and painted.

Hope this helps! :) :cool:
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TheLimey
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:29 pm 
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Take a look at a Geology text online for dune shapes. They are more than just a big mound o'sand.

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Moscovian
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:50 pm 
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Have a linky-dinky for me?

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TheLimey
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:15 pm 
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Ok, here's an ok -ish version, but it does have the classic shape diagram showing the slip face and the cross section. Let me dig up the notes when I used to teacjh, and I may have something better to send to you.

Sand dunes

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Onyx
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:02 am 
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With finding images, I've found that doing a Google Image Search for pics can be very useful and quick.

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Charad
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 5:34 am 
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Indeed sand from children's play areas are quite fine. I have used same sand on all my epic models and I don't think it is too rough.
That foam-like polystyrene is good for making almost any terrain features.

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bmans5
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 7:38 am 
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only problem with sand from children's play areas is the sand to urine content :)

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Charad
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:42 am 
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That is why you can boil it before use. :D

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J0k3r
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:01 am 
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Mey Mosc,

now heres somwhere that sounds like its from the 40k universe:  The valley of Desolation in the Karoo Desert




Also for trees what about boababs?






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nealhunt
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 2:14 pm 
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The pine bark used for landscaping mulch makes for good stone columns.  It's naturally layered so it breaks off like sedimentary rock layers.  Because it's a wood product, simple white glue or wood glue works perfectly on it.  Glue the chips into columns, prime, and drybrush and it's done.

It's really easy to create "balanced" rocks or bridges or arches or whatever.  You just build up the shapes almost like legos, gluing as you go.  If they turn out too ragged, they can be sanded, scraped with a knife or shaped with wire brushes to smooth them out.

Arches National Monument has a lot of really cool shapes for reference.  The Painted Desert could be a source for cool paint scheme ideas in a desert.

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Moscovian
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 2:57 pm 
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Great ideas, everyone.  Please continue to post any other ideas as I'm still weeks away from starting this project.  Hopefully this scenery will go into Raiders (if I can make it well enough).

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nealhunt
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 3:58 pm 
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Canyon ideas:  I think you'll need to build up the board, then "dig down" to make authentic looking canyons.  One of the guys I play with made a gulley terrain set for LotR by gluing a stack of foam insulation together and using a heavy duty wire brush to scrape/carve down into it to form the gulley.  A canyon could be done the same way.  Form the general shape with the foam, then wirebrush it to get natural looking contours.

If you're really careful with it, or don't mind if it doesn't match up exactly, you could probably set that up like modular terrain in the same fashion people do with riverbeds.

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Dave
 Post subject: Looking for help on desert-canyon terrain
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 4:16 pm 
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Take a look at these if you like:

http://uk.games-workshop.com/heraldsofd ... %2Dlair/1/

http://uk.games-workshop.com/heraldsoft ... thedead/1/

http://uk.games-workshop.com/legionsofm ... terrain/1/

Also, reptile aquarium sand from a pet store is very fine and cheap as well.  I used it to base my Termagants, you can see pictures in my blog.

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