Sci fi trees

Well, to pilfer from Radiohead, Fake Plastic Trees, loads of 'em (27 actually). The Bad Squiddo Ghost of Gaia is for scale purposes.

There isn't much to say about them. They are disassembled IKEA plastic plants stuck onto MDF bases with blobs of green stuff, coated in ballast and given a blast of varnish to fix the ballast in place.

I think I may have to weigh the bases down, probably with metal washers or something, but I think they'll do for science fiction landscapes on distant planets.

The backdrop is one of the Jon Hodgson Handiwork Games sci fi ones.

Another little diorama

 Strange lights had been seen in the ruins of the old abbey on the hill. A woman from the government and a group of armed ATS women went to investigate. German agents were suspected.

No one expected alien beings. The big questions now were "Why are they here?" and "Were they allies of the UK or Germany?"

The ATS group all all by Bad Squiddo and the aliens are Radon Zombies of the Ionosphere by Bob Murch, available via North Star.

This was a fun idea and I think it came out OK. 

The Ruins are from Renedra and the background is by Jon Hodgson.

The technical (ha!) details are the same as in previous posts of my dioramas, i.e. the camera was a Pentax K-70 DSLR and Pentax  DA 1:3.5-5.6 18-55mm AL WR standard zoom lens, mounted on a tripod. The picture was shot using aperture priority with an aperture of f25 and an ISO 400 film speed. I used a JJC TM electronic remote shutter release to prevent any camera shake. I staged the picture in my lightbox, which has variable brightness LED lights.

Four Renedra plastic 28mm huts (scroll down to see them all)

I've had these kits lying around for a couple of years, maybe longer. I thought it was time to get them put together and painted.

First, a simple wooden hut;

Next a stone hut;

A wattle and daub one. I think that this might be my favourite;

And finally, a Norse hut on a larger base. I added a few Gamer's Grass tufts on this base.;

Behind every hut is a nice Jon Hodgson backdrop (books available from the Bad Squiddo website).

These are very simple kits, generally three roof pieces and four walls, the Norse one being a little bit more complicated. It also comes with various accessories like truckle beds, a fire and various pots. I haven't made the beds and pots up yet, though. I'll find a use for them, I expect.

I did have to fill in a few areas with green stuff, no doubt my faulty construction techniques. They are absolute simplicity to paint too. I think that they look pretty good. All I need to do now is get them onto a gaming table.

My next task is some Renedra fencing to assemble and paint.

The perils of adventuring in the Badlands

Here's another little diorama I shot using my Renedra ruins;

I think that all the minis here were from North Star, including the plastic Ghouls and Zombies who are part of the Frostgrave "Undead Encounters" set of originally Mantic figures. The Grey Wizard is a Copplestone figure, the Elf warrior an Oathmark one and the rest are all Frostgrave minis. The evil Necromancer is a resin cast that was the subject of a North Star painting competition a couple of years ago (I took part, but didn't win).

Clearly, the Necromancer is a powerful spellcaster, seeing as he is able to unleash his foul underlings in daylight. Let's hope that the mysterious Grey Wizard has a few useful spells up his voluminous sleeve.

The camera and other details are the same as in my previous diorama post, in case you are interested.

I shot a few more similar scenes that I'll post every now and again.
 

The Battlezone scatter stuff....

 .... and this really is the last of it!

Below is a big piece of Battlezone pipework, which will fit in anywhere, seeing as one end rises from below ground and the other end has a couple of closures. The piece at the back is a length of 2cm plastic plumbing pipe stuck on a couple of little legs capped shut at one end and with a connecting piece at the other. It is designed to come out of the side of a building. Why might that be? Who cares, but it'll look good.

Here are a couple of large generators with attached pipework. These will fit in anywhere, ideally with a building at the end of the pipes.

There is also a platform made up from a few odds and ends and a pallet of some kind of cargo.

Finally, I've made a few barricades/roadblocks from a few odds and ends of doors and wall sections, held up with braces. These are bound to be useful. Everyone and everything needs to hide or shelter from getting shot at. In all of these pieces, I've chosen a grimdark colour palette, especially for the generators. Maybe how they work is an obscure and arcane secret, but so long as the initiates/operators chant the correct prayers the things will keep on generating whatever they generate?

Once again, my Bad Squiddo Ghost of Gaia is here to provide a sense of scale.

So, that's it for the Battlezone stuff.

Here's a small diorama I've put together

I've been playing around with my lightbox, DSLR and tripod.

In this photo, a group of Pirates from Bad Squiddo and North Star run slap bang wallop into a mysterious masked figure and his Stone Troll. Intent on finding plunder in the old ruins on the hill above the bay, they didn't think that anything nasty might be lurking up there. Things may not turn out well for these intrepid, if impetuous adventurers.

The Stone Troll is actually a North Star Frostgrave Coal Man and the mysterious masked figure is Malcor from the Maze of Malcor Frostgrave collection, also from North Star.

The background for this shot is a scene from one of my Jon Hodgson books and a small scenic piece I recently made using Renedra plastic ruins on an A4 MDF base.;

I primarily made this to use in photos but it should also be useful as actual gaming scenery. The twisting plants growing around the ruins are model railway wire foliage branches. The grass, gravel and earth are from a variety of sources.

For those of you who are interested in such things, I took this picture with my Pentax K-70 DSLR and Pentax  DA 1:3.5-5.6 18-55mm AL WR standard zoom lens. The picture was shot using aperture priority with an aperture of f25 and an ISO 400 film speed. I've recently bought a JJC TM electronic remote shutter release (cheaper than the Pentax model) which makes slow shutter speed photography a lot easier. I'm thinking about using my Sigma 50mm 1:2.8 DG Macro lens in future lightbox experiments.

The last of the Battlezone buildings

These are the last of the actual buildings. There are a few pieces of scatter that I'll put in my next post.

Above we have a nice piece that gives players the opportunity to put figures above street level. Below is a similar piece, with some nice railings added on, obviously for Health and Safety reasons. Once again, we have mysterious plumbing emerging from this building.

The final piece below is a complicated two-sided creation, with an upper gallery running along its length and a crawl space below that because nothing horrible ever lurks in crawl spaces in science fiction films, does it?

These last two pieces have a lamp post like the first one, but I had to cut that off in the photos to get sensibly-sized and shaped images.

The eagle-eyed will notice that the electrical panels on these buildings are all orientated differently. The ways of electricians are clearly as inexplicable as those of plumbers in the grimdark future.

I'm really pleased with how these pieces have turned out. They will be really useful on the table.