There just isn’t enough terrain making articles or guides online, I sometimes feel like the whole hobby has been swamped by store bought kits and whilst they’re gorgeous and do have their uses, I can’t help but feel loads of you gamer types are being cheated out of the incredibly wholesome hobby that is terrain making. It’s like spending a Sunday afternoon baking cakes but better.
My main goal is to help those who don’t think that they’re capable of making terrain by showing them how easy it can be by using just a handful of materials and tools that should be accessible to everyone. I’ll be entertaining more exotic tools and crazy techniques with which to hurt yourself at a later date but my first bunch of articles will most likely concentrate on getting decent results with basic techniques and materials so everyone has a chance to have a play.
If you’ve been there, seen it, done it etc. then please hang around anyway, I’d love your thoughts and feedback.
Why?!
Why make your own terrain? A few reasons spring to mind:
- It’s satisfying! – when was the last time you actually made something from scratch?
- It’s very green – welcome to the dark side of recycling.
- It’s cheap! – the main driving factor for most people.
Getting Started
Tools
- sharp modelling knife
- ruler
- wood glue
- pencil
Materials
- cereal packet card!
Today we’re going to make something out of… wait for it… cereal packet card! Hopefully you’re a god fearing cereal eater like the rest of us and can lay your hands on some kind of thin card, it doesn’t necessarily have to be cereal packet card but just any kind of thin card disguised as packaging will do. As long as it’s not embossed then it’s all good, you have no idea how out of place the Kellogs logo looks in the 41st millennium.
You’ll see that you don’t really need a lot; something sharp, something straight, something sticky and something pencily. Oh and something materialy.
For this article, I’m going to keep it simple and make a simple fantasy house / hut / call it whatever you will. It will have 4 walls, a roof, a door and maybe a window if the occupants are lucky and I’m going to make it using nothing but cereal packet card and wood glue.
Working with card, and indeed any other sheet material, is simply a case of ‘flattening’ your design out, take a look at this and try and work out what the hell it is:
Four walls? check… Roof? check… That’s the basic plans for my fantasy house. Let’s make that template a little more workable and less basic:
I’ve added tabs to the areas that will need them and I’ve also chopped the 4 walls into two seperate sections with 2 walls apiece. This is just to make it easier in transferring the design on to the card (as not many cereal packets will stretch to fitting all four walls on in one big long strip)
So if you’re still following me then you should have something that looks similar to the above, it doesn’t have to be a perfect replica, just a basic shape will do with some basic features.
The next step
Now, if you drew your plan straight onto your cereal packet card then bravo, you can skip the next step you clever little bean.. but if you didn’t, just tape the plan on to your cereal packet card, take a pin and poke a hole through the plan AND the card at the end of every straight line (what? no straight lines? use a ruler you tool) – once you’ve done that, simply connect the dots and et voila! As if by magic, your building plan has been transferred to the cereal packet card! It should look something like this:
Now cut that shit out. Use a ruler (preferably metal, plastic rulers have a tendency to enjoy being cut by sharp blades) and a sharp knife and cut your walls and roof out, be sure to cut out any windows and doors as well. We’ll sort them out when it comes to detailing.
You should have something looking like this on your desk:
The more astute of you will notice the ‘A4′ on my cutting board and will then be questioning the scale of this building, yes, I made it a bit smaller than I normally would, mostly for speed but everything is still applicable, even at a larger size.
Before you go any further, it’s worth taking the time to score the card where it will be bent. It’s always best to score on the outside of the bend, i.e. on the side that will be facing outwards. Take your ruler and a knife and gently run the blade across the card, basically make a very slight cut into the card but not through it.
Getting sticky
Next up, the easy bit. Wood glue is perfect. I’ve found it best if you put wood glue on both sides to be joined, wipe most of it away with a scrap of card so that you’re left with a thin coat of glue and then slap them together. They should grip together pretty firmly right from the word go but it’s still best to leave it to cure overnight. Once you’ve gotten everything glued together then it should look something like this:
If it doesn’t, you went wrong somewhere. Go back to the start and try again.
If it does, congratulations! You’ve taken your first step into terrain making. It’s all down hill from here. If you’re worried that it looks a bit like a few sheets of cardboard glued together at the moment then that’s ok… because that’s what it is. I’ll cover detailing with cereal packet card in the next article… here’s a sneak peek. Oooh thrilling stuff.
