A sample illustration of some of the work by BittenByDesign.com

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Modhails space hulk project website (click on his name below to check it out) has some totally awe inspiring pieces of 3D terrain for space hulk, and he responded to one of my comments with the below. (edited so it makes a little bit more sense away from the comment discussion)

modhail Says:

I’ll just give a few tips to get you by, until I can start working on the beast again:

-PLAN! I spent 3 months just planning what I wanted/needed, discussing how best to go about it, gathering references, collecting bits to use for scenery.
-Make sure you get your measurements straight! You don’t want to end up with corridor sections that are too large or too small… Don’t forget to figure for the thickness of the details you will add to the walls
-Realise things of this size and detail are long term projects, don’t expect to get it all finished in one summer. I don’t expect to finish this beast before 2010…
-Don’t forget this is fun, don’t let it become a chore. 

As to detailing:
-Get more reference material. The more you have, the more ideas you’ll get. Leaf throught all Games workhop publications you have, looking at artwork and pictures of terrain. Look at industrial architecture, architecture in general, etc. Get the Aliens trilogy and look at all the set photo’s. Do this all with a sketchbook at hand…
-Learn to think in layers and simple shapes. Most detail can be made by putting several layers of material on top of each other, or by combining several simple shapes. Those large vent stack, for example, are just the caps from bottles of sportsdrinks, stuck onto PVC tubing… This is camouflaged by adding some tubes and riveted bands of mayo tube foil…
-Stock up on plastic tubing of different sizes. This projects consumes tubing like crazy!
-Build a stockpile of odd bits and bobs. The most seemingly useless stuff can suddenly become awesome if glued into a space hulk at the right place and painted over. Take for example the vent stacks mentioned earlier. And the moulding along the top of the corridors with the massive tubes? Those are just plastic ice cream sticks…

Some very helpful tips in there. And I will be adding some of the extra bits he talks about to my rather HUGE stockpile of bits and pieces ready for any terrain building I do.

If anyone has any other tips, just drop them in the comment section so we can all share in them.

Ever get sick of the same old layout of the battlefield for your games? Well, this is the system we came up with (house rules).Simply divide the table into zones, we normally use six to eight. Then roll a dice for each of the areas.

1. 1. Open / craters / rubble / debris
2. 2. Building ruin up to one storey
3. 3. Building ruin up to two stories
4. 4. Building ruin up to three stories
5. 5. Feature terrain* / fortified building
6. 6. Special

*Can be city sign, courtyard, hab block, temple, graveyard, park with statue, etc.

Special Result

1. 1. Carpark / tip / wreckers yard
2. 2. warehouse / factory / power station
3. 3. tower / fort / police station
4. 4. landing pad / overgrown garden
5. 5. visitors choice / attacker choice**
6. 6. homeside choice / defender choice**

*Can be a terrain piece matched to their army, or anything in the terrain collection they want.The alternative is to build up a region you know, like your local shops, your street, or from pictures like StalingradFor other types of terrain, simply replace the listed items with similar things from your collection. For example:

Jungle

1. 1. open / grassland
2. 2. high grass / shrubs (6+ cover save)
3. 3. trees (copse or stand) (5+ cover save)
4. 4. Thick scrub / jungle (4+ cover save)
5. 5. Feature – swamp / venus mantrap / etc
6. 6. Special

Jungle Special

1. 1. River
2. 2. overgrown ruin
3. 3. logging station / mineworks
4. 4. quarry / tip / landing pad / plantation
5. 5. visitor choice
6. 6. homeside choice

This makes for an interesting way of randomly generating your battlefields. And also makes sure no one is setting the table to suit their own army every time. It also can be changed to add any new features that you add to your collection as you build your terrain.

Ever want your urban terrain to stand apart from everyone else’s?

An easy way is to draw in ballpoint pen in reverse on an eraser. Put as much ink on as you can, then press it onto a wall, piece of ground, etc. It will end up looking like a half worn away piece of graffiti. Excellent for single words or graffiti style writing.

This is the simplest and you can always try metallic ink pens as well.

Another way to spice up your models is to add posters. Don’t have a laser printer? It’s easy. Find a suitable sized image from a magazine. Cut it out. Now using some very fine sandpaper/very fine emery board, lightly sand down the the back of the paper. This is to thin down the paper so it sticks down better and conforms to the shape of the piece you are gluing it to. You can also sand the edges of the front so it looks worn from being out in the weather for a long time. You can use some watered down PVA glue to get the paper to conform to any texture underneath and wipe away any excess glue. As the glue dries shiny, you may want to give it a quick coat of matt varnish after the glue has totally dried.

For repeated designs, a stencil is the easiest option. Just a bit of card with the shape cut out that you can use to mask an area as you use the mask to drybush the area.

If you want to add advertising posters made from boxes (candy chocolate gum and so on) it is the same as for cutting out the magazine images. Simply cut the box to shape, and sand down the back and sides, then you can add that to a wall, or if you want it to be a bit more special, you can add a trim made from mathcsticks or similar. Painted black and highlighted grey. For billboard style posters, cut out your image, fold it up in one way, then in the reverse, so then when you give it am light sand, the edges of the folds are high enough to be sanded as well. (you could probably do this whilst it is still folded). When adding it to a building, you can tear out a section so it looks like it has fallen away from the wall as most large format posters are done in smaller sections placed together to make up a larger poster. This helps the illusion of the billboard surrounding, possibly adding some little pieces that look like lights to illuminate the billboard would help this too.

Other methods of ink stamping or paint stamping involve cutting a design out of a potato, but these are pretty rough and are more suited for stamping things that look like icons and symbols daubed on the ground/building.

In the coming weeks and months, all my terrain ideas, crazy conversions and sites that inspire me are going to appear.

But feel free to share your favourites as well!