The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 1
Hello all,
It has been a while since an update and a bit has happened. First off I am now the "Minister of terrain" for the NOVA 2012.
Not sure what the NOVA is? Look
here and
here!!!
What
this means is that I am responsible for making sure the terrain at the
NOVA is good to go for all systems running at the NOVA.
This means a LOT of work.
The NOVA staff and I (Along with an army of volunteers) will be having terrain building sessions starting in January.
This mission will have 2 parts-
1. Pimp my terrain: Taking existing terrain and putting a shine on it
2. New stuff: building new terrain for 40K, Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes, Infinity, and Flames of War.
Here are some pictures of the example pieces I acquired. These are from the NOVA 2011.
Well That's it for now...
Till next time
RGH
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Road to the NOVA #2 Supply list
From the 2011 build project
Terrain Supplies list-
Expanded
Hello all,
I
have compiled a list of the most common Items the NOVA terrain build
team will need to complete our projects by “Showtime” 2012. I have
included what I think are best places to find these items as well as the
most common uses, pros, and cons for them. Please feel free to add any
ideas for materials or products that might help.
Glue – Craft Store (Michael’s or A.C Moore)
a. Elmer’s All Purpose Glue (Elmers Wood Glue share most of the same properties except it is also great for wood projects.)
- Advantage: can be found almost anywhere
- Great for gluing sand or flock to a base or terrain piece.
- Dries a little slow
- No good for adhering materials like plastic, metal, or plaster.
b. Aleene’s Tacky Glue
- Easy to find at craft stores and chain stores like Wal-Martii. Dries quicker than Elmer’s
- Fantastic for plaster (Molded Bricks and rocks)
- Works well for adhering scenery to bases
c. Aleen’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue
- Dries clear (but glossy)
- Slow Dry time
- Most of the same properties as regular Aleen’s
d. Hot Glue – Requires Hot glue Gun
- Stupid fast drying (cooling) time
- Good for the “Quick Fix”
- Good for adhering scenery to bases
- Tends to be messy (Glue strings)
- Can be adjusted with applied heat
Glue – Hobby Store- (Games Workshop, Hobby Works, Game Parlor)
a. Super glue- Bob Industries, Games Workshop, and many others
- Great for a "Quick Fix”
- Fast dry time
- OK for plastic scenery
- Good for Metal to plastic adhesion
- Can be messy (fingers sticking to scenery or fingers sticking together)
- Best for resin models and scenery
- Krazy Glue and cheap superglues should be avoided
b. Plastic Glue- Games Workshop, Bob Industries, and many others
- Best for plastic kits
- Not good for much else
- Medium set time but strong adhesion once dry
Foam Board- Craft Store (Michael’s or A.C Moore)
a. Black-
- Best for scenery (hardest to find around here)
- Great for 40K Buildings
- Great for Fantasy houses
- Will work as a base but may warp over time.
b. White
- Most common type (Can be found at craft stores and also places like Wal-Mart, some drug stores, and grocery stores)
- Great for 40K Buildings
- Great for Fantasy houses
- Will work as a base but may warp over time.
c. Black on one side white on the other
- A Hybrid of the above (I have only ever found them at Michael’s)
- Great for 40K Buildings
- Great for Fantasy houses
- Will work as a base but may warp over time.
Pink foam (Home Depot or Lowes)
- Look here for example
- Good for walls and some types of buildings
- Cuts with a hot wire foam knife
- Best for hills!
- Will warp
Foam board Knife- (Craft Store)
Hot wire Knife
- Usable on construction foam (pink/blue) and Styrofoam
- Use in a well ventilated space
- Toxic fumes
- Fastest way to cut foam
- No good vs. foam board
- Example
Basing material (Craft or Hobby stores)
- Sand
- Texture base
- Small gravel
- Because sand by itself is boring
- Flock Good for color contrast
- Can be mixed for interesting effects
Wood bases- (Home Depot or Lowes)
- Sturdy!
- Has to be cut at store into small enough pieces to be used in wargaming.
- Store will cut to size
- makes scenery pieces heavier
Craft Paint (Michael’s or A.C Moore)
Black
- Best basecoat for 40K scenery
White
- Can be used for extreme highlights
- Mixed with black to get shades of grey (also great for 40K)
Brown
- Great for Fantasy terrain
Other colors as needed.
- Metallic’s for highlights (40K)
- Reds and Greens for accents
Texture Spray Paint (Michael’s, A.C Moore, Home Depot, or Lowes)
- Color is not important
- Texture is the important part
- Great for adding quick texture to a terrain piece before painting
- MAKE SURE IT IS DRY BEFORE BASECOATING
This
is a list of opinions on some of the materials for making terrain. next
time I will try to start a building tutorial to show the process we
will be using to prepare for the 2012 NOVA Open...
I look forward to any other ideas or comments
Later
RGH
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The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 3
15mm scale model of US capital found at the WARDMAN PARK MARRIOTT- in Washington DCHello All,
Happy
New year to all. Today marked the first of the NOVA open build
sessions. These sessions are intended to get us ready for NOVA 2012 only
8 short months away. in this session we felted tables. LOTS of tables!
I did not get a complete count but by the estimates provided we
completed 36 6X4 Tables and 35 4X4 tables
Here is the board we were using to keep track of this process
Here are a few of the finished tables loaded into the truck.
With
a new year comes new faces and this year has been no exception. Several
new volunteers showed up and were quickly put to work. There was some
grumbling about labor laws and stuff but Mr. Brandt could not be moved.
In all seriousness these new guys hit the ground running and did not
stop till the work was done!
"Labor laws be damned!" says task master Mike (seen entering the shot on the left)
Tables Tables and more tables- We needed someplace to put all those Buildings and hills!
That
is not to say that NOVA veterans did not do their share. Quite the
contrary, as Several members of the famous 2011 team made appearances or
at least made their presence felt.
Beware of the Man in the Black hat!
Dakota doing her best statue impressionIt true Brandt style lunch was served and was , as always, a hit! Thanks
L. :)
Lunch is served! (If you were not there you really missed out!)So
to wrap up- Felt attached to around 70 tables: DONE! Make New
Friends:DONE!, Great Lunch: DONE!, and Good Time Had By All: DONE!!!
Till Next time...
Later
RGH
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Monday, January 16, 2012
The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 4
**
Buildings and scatter- Here we go!!!!
Good Morning all,
Saturday
was build session 2 for the NOVA 2012. I am happy to report that it was
a roaring success. We had around 8 to 10 folks show up. We started the
day finishing up the last tables (18 I think) then went straight to
work on the terrain.
BTW-
Everyone signed the last table and those who were at session 1 but not 2
had their names added by the staff. Just giving credit where credit is
due. :)
We broke the group up into 3 teams.
Team 1- Buildings
Team 2- scatter terrain
Team 3- MDA board bases
Using
my favorite building material (foam board) team 1 was able to construct
13 buildings from concept to constructed. Not bad since they only had
around 4 hours to work on it.
Team
2 used the hobbyist's best friends, pink foam and and (2) hot wire
knives, to make a staggering 22 pieces of scatter terrain. This was the
team I was lucky enough to be on. I will say that close proximity to
wire knives can get you light headed even with good ventilation. so be
careful. :)
Team
3- had the most unrewarding job of the three and will get first choice
next time for jobs! These guys cut and shaped over 80 12X12 MDA boards
for bases. Then the rounded the edges with sand paper. They did this out
in the cold while the rest of us were warm inside.
I salute you team three.
in
all over 80 boards were prepped and 35 pieces of terrain are ready for
sand and paint. Not to mention the 18 tables that were completed.
Buildings ready to paint
Lots of Scatter Terrain
WAY TO GO TEAM!!!Once again the food was killer. We had tacos and taquitos- Not really sure where but I will post it when I find out.
Well that's it for now
Later
RGH
** Image used without permission- for amusement only
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The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 5
BUILD SESSION 3
(Picture Above is of my check list prior to heading out into the cold on Saturday)Well We did it!- 3 sessions in January.
The
third installment for the NOVA terrain project went off well despite
the cold weather and Ice. We had a pretty good turnout of around 7
people. We even had two folks show up before Mike or I arrived!
Much
was accomplished and we learned several valuable lessons. for example:
Painting in really cold weather is a bad idea. This happened when we
decided to texture paint some of the projects from last week. The
projects are OK they just took forever to dry.
With texture paint
unavailable we moved to good old household Spackle to give the
buildings a "stucco" like appearance. This worked out well as you can
see below.
Once everything from
last week was prepped for painting we tackled some new projects. The
team decided to forgo painting until the weather warms up and instead
concentrate on building as much as we can in January and February.
We
only had one working foam cutter as the other seems to have died. Even
that did not stop our group of diehard volunteers who managed to build
even more scatter terrain than they did the week before.
(The pink pieces above were from week two but you get the idea!)
On the building front we managed to get somewhere around 12 more buildings ready for texture!
At
the Sunday Staff meeting our illustrious leader Mr. Brandt stated that
we have managed to get somewhere around 80 pieces of terrain built in
just three Saturdays along with the 80+ tables prepped this is a hell of
a start for 2012!
Thanks to all of you.Keep up the great work!RGH
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The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 6
Molds , Castings, and Monuments... Oh My!
Well here we are with building session 4 come and gone. In this last session we covered three major undertakings.
The
first is the mold making for our ongoing projects. We are making molds
for a project that will be fully revealed soon. till then here are some
teasers...
The second is the casting project. Using a series of molds created by our staff and many of the fantastic molds from
Hirst Arts
we are attempting to cast tons of extra bits to be added to our
buildings and scatter terrain. Check out these shots of castings already
in progress as well as some of the newest scatter pieces made with some
the cast parts. By the way we are using an really fantastic product
called
Merlin's Magic. you should check it out.
Lastly
we began the Monuments project in Ernest. As you can see the Washington
Monument project is under way but there is still much to be done!
Sceen here is part of our staff hard at work on the second project "The national Air and Space Museum." Wait till you see it.
Till next time
Later
RGH
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The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 7
Night of the count...Hello all,
As you may have already seen on the
Whiskey 40K
blog some of us spent the day after Valentines day at the storage
locker counting up all of the terrain for the 40K Gt at NOVA 2012.
Here is a recap of what is still needed:
44 pieces of "scatter" terrain
30 hills
85 los blocking ruins/equivalent
118 partially-los blocking ruins/equivalent
Or, 277 pieces of terrainThis
is not an unobtainable number! It just means a lot more work is needed
in the coming months. So if you are reading this and want to lend a hand
please let us know. We could always use more help. As our CFO says
"Many hands make the work easier."
This can best be seen with the
Table Felting Project!
Take a look at all are hard work below:
That's a LOT of tables!Below is some of our terrain some from 2011 and some of the new stuff.
Some of the stuff from last year- Still looks good!
Some WIP previews as well as 2 pieces I did last November.
The bottom line is that we have a long way to go but the finish line is closer than we think!
For more information visit the
Whiskey & 40K site for even more information see the
NOVA open site for all the facts Join our team of volunteers!
Until Next Time- Later
RGH
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The Road to the NOVA 2012 Part 8
March Madness in the form of buildings!!!!
Used without permission
Hello all,
This
past Saturday we had the first build session for March! For those that
were there FANTASTIC JOB!!!! You folks went above and beyond
expectation. We had a goal of 50 buildings for the day - constructed and
ready for texture we managed to do 51. That in itself was huge but wait
there's more.....
We also knocked out the remaining 30 hills for
a grand total of 81 pieces of terrain ready for texture and paint! WAY
TO GO TEAM!
Our people really showed their artistic talents on
Saturday as they did not let a little thing like a deadline stop them
from producing scenery that would make the folks at warhammer world
Green with envy.
These 5 members of team 1 worked hard and knocked out well over their quota of foam-board ruins
This is just a (very) small sample of what was built on Saturday! Wait till you see what we do to them next!
The Artists from team 2 are seen here showing why they earn the big bucks! (or would if we paid them!)
Just take a look at some the pieces that will be in use at the 2012 NOVA. I for one cannot wait to see them finished.Not
all of the work completed Saturday was of the building kind. someone
had to make the really cool bases that all of our NOVA terrain will sit
on. It's a thankless job but someone has to do it. This time around that
someone was Frank. A special thanks to you buddy! 
Man that is a lot of Sawdust! good thing my suggestion to do the sanding in the living room got vetoed!
THANKS L.All the while our NOVA Executive Director was slaving away at the computer making sure that the event WILL go off without a hitch!
As always the eats were not to be missed. But you better get their fast before our hungrier staffers get to the treats!
Save some for the rest of us.
I hope to see everyone at the next session.
NOVA Open Website (Link)
Whiskey & 40K (Link)
Till next time
Later
RGH
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The Road To NOVA part 9
Too Busy to take pictures.
Hello all,
Just a quick update.
Yesterday we had our 2nd build for March. It was a strange but overall
successful day. Our Target number was 65 we manager to hit 38 pieces of
terrain built. Here is how this was a success.
- There was a
tournament down South that many of our prime builders and artists
attended rather than spend the day cutting foam and gluing pieces
together. (Fun over work? What were they thinking) ;p
- We only had between 3 and 5 builders at any given time. (thanks Guys)
- Our Grand Poo-bah was not available to assist.
- On the time saver front Mrs. RGH figured out a super time saving way to efficiently cut foam board. (Way to go baby)
- Our
team worked in a strong assembly line format that allowed us to make
all the parts first then build the heck out of them. (38 peices in
about 3 hours) NOT BAD!
In all it was a success.
Until next time
RGH
