Trees'd to Meet You

(If you expected a good pun, you must be new here.)


To follow up on my previous post about Toob trees, here are some photos of how I have based them.


Here is a shot of ten trees on a 1-inch grid.  Each tube contains ten trees and this picture includes the variety of nine of them (I don't plan on using the palm tree that is included in each set).

A close-up of the bases.  These are on 25mm wooden bases from Litko and covered with standard basing materials.

I've based many this way, enough to fill a small box.

Here is the box-full arrayed on the grid.

To facilitate stability, ease and eye-appeal, I've created larger bases with 2-5 trees per base and some additional scenic elements.

The bases are three-inch wooden circles I picked up at a craft store.  To the bases I've added twigs, rocks, lichen and other mosses, flower tufts.

A bit of everything here.

I've also created larger 6.5 inch bases as well, which could represent impassible areas, or be used in parts of the table not likely to see much action.

The crossroads.

The briar patch.

Meadow's edge.

Dense woodland.

Some detailed close-ups of the larger bases.

I took this picture, by golly I'm gonna use it.

The general idea is to create functional and durable terrain that also gives a sense of being wooded areas, not just trees on well-manicured grounds.

Beating Around the Bush

Bushes, hedges, shrubberies...

You just knew these guys were going to show.

Over the years I have grabbed bushes from different places for use in wargaming. 
For this post, I thought I would show the handful of types I have and how they compare.

First up are Christmas bushes I got during one holiday season.  They are inexpensive and still available in various Christmas Village packages, are made of plastic bristle brushes with painted beads of styrofoam attached.  I am not all that fond of them, but they are functional.

Oh Christmas Tree...

The figure next to them is from Blue Moon's gothic horror line, 28mm.  This is a good match for this model and these work nicely with this scale.

What are you doing behind these bushes?

Here they are with 6mm Romans from Baccus.  Compared to the miniatures, these look like small trees rather than bushes.

Zentraedi Regult battlepod from Robotech

The next type are hedges that come from Citadel/Games Workshop.  These are also a brush type with flocking material glued on.  These came as part of a tree set and I am not sure if they are still available for sale.

The bristles show through the flocking which ruins the effect.

Your mother wants to know where you've been.

Again, these work well with larger scale/size miniatures, but perhaps not so well with smaller ones.

Tall hedges.

The next ones are from Gale Force Nine, they are sold as hedgerows and are made of cast resin that has been painted.  They perhaps have a less 'realistic' look to them but they are sturdier than the brush kind and don't shed flocking material when handled.
They are sold as appropriate for 10-15mm miniatures, but they are mostly scale neutral.

(I neglected to take a picture of them without any miniatures standing nearby.)

Out drinking again, eh?

On the taller end for bushes/hedges with 6mm, but make good looking overgrown bushes or small trees.  Messy, much like my yard.

The following hedges are sold as HO scale railroading terrain.  They are of the plastic scrubbing pad type, cut in strips and with flocking material glued on.

Scrub a dub-dub, a hedge not to rub.

HO scale is 1/87, which is roughly three times larger than 6mm miniatures.

She will never approve of you.

They work as low hedges/bushes in 28mm, for some lovely landscaping.

A good height for 6mm.

Lastly, some shrubs that I put together while watching television.  I had several 20x40mm Litko bases that I wasn't planning on using and  came up with this purpose for them. 
I glued rocks and sand to them, then on top of that some flocking grass and clump foliage from railroad modeling.  I made at least twenty of these, some with rocks, some with flowers, some just  plain.

These have a more natural look that the others lack, but are also the kind to be less likely to be found in well maintained grounds or yards.

Aren't you gonna do something about these weeds?

A Housing Project

Going back to my trio of Burn In Designs brownstone buildings (the first one was finished and you can view this brief post about it).  For the next building I wanted to jazz it up a bit.

After I filled the cracks and added a styrene rod chimney, I got to painting it to look pretty much like the other one:

Reused photo from previous post.

This is acceptable looking - buildings are not necessarily going to be exciting.
I got to thinking about how to add something to it, though.  Graffiti seems like an option to explore, as well as wall murals or advertisements.


On one side of the building I added 'painted over' graffiti (when they put blocks of paint over graffiti) as well as more 'fresh' stuff.  I used some old WWII German vehicle decals to use as the graffiti.

Better than I could do freehand...

Looks good enough, but due to the roughness of the surface of the building (it is sort of like plywood), the fact that they are decals is pretty obvious, especially if the angle you look at them is right.

This is after being coated in matt sealant.

On the other side I wanted to do something different.  Frequently, advertisements are directly painted/pasted onto the sides of buildings rather than on billboards.  I printed up a poster in an appropriate size, cut it out and glued it onto the building.





A timeless message...

Overall, it adds some character to an otherwise boring looking building.


Previously I posted about a few resin buildings I got from GameCraft.  The next building I tackled was one of these, a five story building with a restaurant on the ground floor.




Attempt to green stuff the bubbles in the back.

Front of the building.

Unlike the first resin building from GameCraft that I completed, this one has detail on four of the six sides of the building and it is nicely done (the previous building had nice detail, but only on the front side of the structure).

This was fun to paint and came out pretty nice looking.

Hazy photograph, one day I'll learn how to take a good picture.

Although I added Milliput to the back of the building to fill bubbles, it didn't work as well as I wanted.  The detailed sides of the building were perfect, but the back was heavily pitted.  Not such a big deal, I can live with it, but I decided to see if I could cover it up with an advertisement, like I did with the brownstone example above.

This time I printed up a more relevant Robotech/Macross poster.

Bubbles still obvious, but mostly covered up.  Most of the time, this side of the building won't be seen.

Lastly, I finished up another GameCraft acrylic house.  This one is taller than the ones that I have done so far.

That's all for now!