“Dr. Zoidberg I presume”.
After a few weeks of making a large mess in the man-cave I finally have a 28mm space jungle.
The self imposed brief for this jungle project was:
- Large: sufficient pieces to comfortably cover a 6 x 4′ area.
- Comprehensive: lots of generic foliage, plus a variety of more interesting scenario and narrative driving pieces (hostile plants mainly).
- Integrated: I have two terrain mats/sets, one wasteland and one urban. I dont want to have a third for numerous practical reasons. So the jungle had to fit in with the wasteland terrain (like my graveyard).
- Easily stored: there is no point making some heavily modeled terrain pieces that look great but cannot be stacked somewhere: they will just get dusty and broken. I have learned that lesson. I wont make that mistake again. Probably.
- Durable: I dont want to have to make another astro jungle. This is the last forest terrain set that I will ever build I hope.
- Modular : I like my area terrain to be easily broken into smaller parts that can be used in concert with other elements. Woods + hill = wooded hill, plants + ruins = overgrown ruins etc. This gives me the most flexibility with my terrain sets and aids storage. Im obsessed with storage.
- Practical: extensively modeled forest models complete with rocks and ruins and undergrowth are beautiful to look at, but usually a lot of hassle to place miniatures in and around. I wanted to avoid that issue.
- Sci-fi: while there is nothing wrong with Earth like foliage plus an occasional alien thing to represent an extra-terrestrial forest, I wanted my forest to be alien and unfamiliar through and through. Science-fiction gaming is my chosen “period” and I have purged my miniature collection of more or less everything that doesnt tie in with that, which means that I dont have to maintain cross compatibility with other genres/periods, so I can push this project to be alien.
- Budget: always a factor, but as I have spread the expense of accumulating the items required for this terrain set over the last three or four years its less of an issue than might be expected. I didnt plan it that way of course, but its how I tend to accumulate things for most of my hobby projects.
- Achievable: having a wonderful plan for hand-crafted custom items is one thing, having the resources to get it seen through from start to finish is another. Im goal orientated and achievable goals give me enthusiasm to engage in further projects, whereas having badly planned projects stall makes me demoralised. So finding the correct balance of work versus quality is key.
Still with me? Next up was inspiration/research. Visually I wanted the table to look at least a little bit like the Star Wars planet “Felucia”: bright and unfamiliar.
(I plucked these images from various sources but didnt record from where. Hopefully that wont bother anybody too much, but if the image belongs to you then let me know and I will credit you or take it down):
These beautiful Felucia images were aspirational: things to be borne in mind, rather than directly copied. A wargame table that looked like the images above would be fantastic, but realistically beyond my scope. Although I am sure that some mad, talented bastard out there has done it 🙂
The most interesting plants in my miniature jungle have been documented already HERE, HERE and HERE. This post is about making the more “common or garden” parts of the jungle. So here goes.
I bought plastic palm trees and aquarium plants on Ebay. I focused on getting as many interesting bright colours as I could, rather than just green.
The aquarium plants were supplied attached to some sort of water resistant plaster ballast. I considered leaving them attached and blending them into the plastic bases, but decided that the foliage needed to mixed up more than that in order to look the way I wanted it too. That decision added huge time to the project, but did make for a better end result in my opinion.
The plastic palm trees were glued into holes drilled in the brown plastic bases from Renedra. Three of these fit on each of the CD bases that I prepped last year. They can be moved to allow miniatures to be placed “in” the jungle/on the CD base.
The long process of sticking bits of plastic plant to the bases and then texturing them with various mixes of filler and sand started here. Skip forward about a week and it was done.
I set up a few shots to illustrate. Bear in mind that I cant get very good lighting on large areas currently, so these shots could be better. They illustrate the overall look though.
Smarter than the average cudbear.
The Mouthicans defend Mouthonia from men in shiny rubber suits.
Dunger Stampede
Super lightning awesome mecha dragon fight!
After about a month of working on various miniature space jungle stuff, Im a bit too close to the project to see it properly: I literally cannot see the wood for the trees. I think that the project is a success, but it will be a month or six before I can see it reasonably objectively.
Filed under: Terrain, Workbench | Tagged: 2014, 40K, 40K Skirmish, Alien Flora & Fauna, Deathworld, Rogue Trader, Sci-fi |
sho3box 
Very awesome end result of it all! I think it look great! I will deffinately draw some inspiration from this. I also have accumulated lots of stuff for terrain the last couple of year, I really hope to finish some terrain this year too 🙂
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Thanks Jonas, Im glad it gets the Deathworld Adventures seal of approval 🙂
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Fantastic jungle. Great work.
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Thanks mattblackgod, for the compliment and for sharing the images of your own work. Some of the shots of your jungle were very helpful to me during the planning stages of this project.
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Very cool to get that lot finished, great work. The photos came out pretty good I think.
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Thanks, it was a substantial bit of work alright. There isnt enough fill lighting in the shots, but that was bad planning by me really. The next time it will be a bit better.
You are right though, the photos are not that bad and they convey the vibe of the thing pretty well I think.
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I LOVE your table.
I also like how you have carefully considered the practicallity of every item. Are you by any chance an engineer?
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Thanks wachinayn.
I am not an engineer, but I am reasonably methodical. Experience of working on hobby things like this has made me a bit more careful about how I approach things. Age and experience do both eventually start to count I suppose 🙂
Thanks for the feedback.
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Great job, Paul! I’m still reeling from building my jungle terrain a few years back, never again. I totally see your point about durability!
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Thanks Mikko. I bought my palm tree models from the link to the the Ebay seller that you provided you with the same items actually.
Assembly and finishing of all of those tree bases was tedious, slow and time consuming. I am pleased with the result and getting a jungle table ready to game on has been on the to-do list for over twenty years, but frankly I am glad that its finished now.
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I love the colours! I like the ‘Avatar’ jungle as well, very mysterious and inspiring.
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Thanks Barks.
Im not a fan of Avatar – its a tedious film in my opinion – but my Deathworld jungle is definitely inspired in some ways by some of the vivid imagery from that film. I meant to mention that in the post, but I forgot, so thanks for reminding me 🙂
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Very inspirational stuff mate, I hope to do some sort of scifi stuff this year (god knows I’ve got the lead for it!) and part of that is to create a bit of a jungly, otherworldly vibe. I’ll try to copy as much as possible from you and Jonas.
Got some multi coloured lichen in the mail yesterday – that’s fairly oldschool and works just as well on the fantasy table as it does on the scifi table. Multi purpose will be the order of the day from now on.
We’re soon done redecorating the den in our basement, it will double (or triple) as playroom for kids, guest room and movie/console lounge (complete with projector and a decent surround system). Once that’s done, my man-cave will be restored and I’ll be able to get back to working on a new playing surface more suitable for both scifi and fantasy. Something a little more rough looking than the current links-like battle mat I’ve got. =)
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Thanks Mattias.
I had a small bag of multi-coloured lichen to hand when putting this stuff together, but by the time I got the the ground cover part of the process my patience was wearing thin. I may add it at a later date… or I may not. I definitely get a bit of a retro kick from seeing lichen used well with modern paint jobs.
Curis used the stuff brilliantly with his Furnace Valley squats, worth checking out.
Will Stillburg be getting a futuristic, less 19th hole treatment as part of the man-cave refurbishing?
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[…] The bark was painted in a similar way to most of the areas on the Reaper bones Familiar “Stumpy” that I painted last year. The foliage on Char’lee was painted to match the green areas on Stumpy and L’Oreal (the space elf model that is a primary influence on this project). The fungus on the model is painted in two different colours, also matching elements of L’Oreals palette, which in turn tie in reasonably well with my jungle terrain. […]
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Reblogged this on chazsexington.
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[…] with other scenery and settings. In particular, ruins mesh well with jungle terrain (such as my Krellborn IX deathworld set), making a setting as suitable for goblins, dwarves and knights to explore as it is for Inquisitors […]
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[…] superb jungle terrain for the Inquisitor Cynole game at BOYL 2016, and to Paul’s stunning deathworld jungle project over on Sho3box. I’m not about to question such hobby geniuses, (genii?), so I decided to […]
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