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Early Access: Crafting Better Cave Tiles for D&D!
🕑 Added 2020-11-15 21:23:47 +0000 UTCHi guys!
Got there - Just about...
So a full week of photography and editing later, and I'm ready to release this video
I've already dropped a preview of what it contains, so I'll just including the pinned comment detailed in this post like last time so you guys have access to them before I release it publicly. The formatting is a little messed up for some reason, but it's still readable :)
I'm really happy with how these turned out, and I hope you guys get a lot of use out of them! I know I will...caves pop up constantly...
Pinned comment details:
Some tricks for working with spreading casting plaster:
- I mixed small amounts at a time so it didnt set on me too quickly.
- For the first layer I used a 2:1 mix of plaster to water, both to make it tougher and a bit thicker initally for filling up all the tin foil gaps.
- When I went back with the second layer I used a 1:1 mixture, pretty watery because it'll set faster when contacting the layer underneath. This doesn't need as much brushing, it'll flow into the texture pretty well on its own, the main goal is just to make sure it doesn't pool anywhere.
- It can sometimes separate a bit when left to sit while you brush a bit on, so it's worth stirring the pot each time you get a fresh bit on your brush.
- Lather it over the tin foil as quickly as you can, thick as you like, and use the brush to spread it across the stalagmite until both the tin foil is covered and you can see the texture beneath.
- Cleaning and drying the brush with a FRESH water pot after every few brushfuls is important, or the leftover plaster in the water seems to cause the new plaster to dry near instantly. This also stops the plaster from setting IN the brush. You only need a fresh pot every time you mix up a new batch, but you could use a new pot each time you wash the brush by having a row of plastic cups with fresh water in each - it can only help :)
- Bear in mind that the second coat will set faster than the first because it's going over other plaster, so keeping the mix thin and working quickly is advised. Don't worry too much about preserving the texture completely once in the second stage, it will get lumpy and covered in places, but that's part of the stalagmite look, don't worry about it.
Is this a bit fiddly to work with? Yes. But it gives awesome results. You can use BMCs caulking mix from his recent underdark terrain video, but I found I didn't like the texture as much, and honestly I found it fiddly in other ways. Like trying to get a thick enough protective layer without either leaving brush strokes or leaving it a formless blob. It's good stuff, but I personally didn't like working with it, at least without more time to experiment with its features. Props to BMC for the creation though, it's definitely interesting.
More details on how to make bridge/edge pieces:
- To make these I cut some shapes from foam, and trimmed them down to 3/8" thick with the hot wire table, so they line up with a floor tile.
- For the corners I took some 3" wide foam, and sketched on a rough semicircle that doesn’t stick out too much, which I hoped would line up when connected to the tile at the top…
- For the bridge I just took a 6" long, 3" wide piece of foam and cut wibbles into the edges.
- For all of the wibbly edges I took an exacto knife and cut the underside down a bit, just like I did for the other cave tiles but more so.
- Once that was done I used them as a stencil to draw and cut out two chipboard pieces to fit the bottom, cut a 1" wide, 1/2" deep slot out of the flat edge of one of them (on both sides, for the bridge), and tacky glued that to the bottom, with the other stencilled bit on top. Then you just need to trim the card down with a sharp knife.
- I textured the flat tops with the caveman technique, and used tin foil on the underhanging bits of foam to make the cuts look more rounded and natural.
- Finally I made more stalactites for the bottom, hot glued them in place firmly and used modelling compound to cover the card and hot glue on the undersides, and then casting plaster to cover the stalactites.
They're pretty much a weird shaped floor tile with stalactites on the bottom, but hopefully this detail helps if you wanted to make them yourself and had questions :)
Details on the leopard spot technique:
In general:
- Make sure the mix is thin and watery, you want the colour to be faded. This way you can dab over bits you;ve already painted for stronger colour. It's easy to add paint, impossible to take it off…
- Cast up some text pieces, whether that’s plaster rocks or lumps of tin foil covered in plaster to test your mixes on before using them on your main piece. These mixes can be a bit like cooking, and you want to check you're happy with the result before using on your hard work!
On the rocks:
- I used a 50/50 yellow ochre to tan mix to get the base colour of more sandy stone, which is dulled down by the final colour and I used in fairly large patches on the less sharp rocks that looked more sedimentary.
- I used some burnt umber ( a reddish brown) in the cracks of the sharper rocks, I was trying to imitate seams of iron or other minerals. This one I thinned down about half as much to get a much richer colour.
- I coated the whole thing in a mix of 50/50 black and tan, over both of the other colours to blend, shade and tone them down, as well as across the rest of the piece that wasn’t yet painted.
On the stalagmite
- I used a 3:1 tan to yellow ochre mix for the whole thing.
- I then gave the whole thing a wash of 1:1:2 black to tan to medium grey, which I layered on a few times at the bottom to blend it better into the tile.
- I changed up the mixture here because the casting plaster seemed to get different colours (more brown) when layered over tin foil, so I adapted a bit. It still came out more yellow thanI would have liked, if I was going to do it again I might drop the yellow ochre completely and just do a layer of thinned down tan.
Details on adding dirt to mountainblocks:
- I generally tried here to sprinkle it into cracks from an above angle for the square blocks, and for the sloped blocks, at an angle from above that more or less worked whether it was on its side or standing upright. This is just personal taste!
Matt varnish:
- This won't seal in a thicker layer of dirt, but for the dusting I did it works well and darkened down the dirt and blended it a bit better too.
- I would use some newspaper to cover the plaster bits, my rocks seemed to frost up quite badly, possibly something to do with how cold they are.
- I just held up some newspaper curved around them for later pieces and sprayed piece by piece, which solved the problem. The paint is soaked into the plaster anyway, so it doesn't need a varnish in the same way.
Comments
PensiveBadger
Honestly I'm not sure. I'm a little worried it was the sd card and I'll need to replace it, which is an expense I could do without, but I'll be keeping an eye on it in the next few videos to see if it's a problem again :/
Helanya
Question: Did you figure out what caused the footage to become corrupted?
