Iron Chef: Guant's Lava Pits

[Guant]

OMFGWTFBBQ, its time for another round of Iron Chef of Scenery. And this time its no hold bars with the theme being a free topic. So I choice to do something volcanic as Ive been helping out my local hobby store build some volcanic terrain. And what better way to make it them by showing people how to make lava, volcanic rocky out croppings, and how to paint light from the lava on the rocks; the end result being freak'n awsome. So with any more wasted time lets begin
From Guants Workbench: Lava Pits

Materials:
3/4'' high density insulation foam
An empty paint bottle
Bendy Straws
Matches or a lighter
Hotglue/glue gun
White/PVA Glue
wood or putty filler
100 toothpicks(These are optional as they are the secret ingredient I HAVE to use for the competition)
1/4'' foam core board
Assorted paint colors(disscused later)
Bitz from your bitz box for detailing


1) Planning it out like Pele
Now Im making this 40k themed so its going to have that futurist feel to it but you can alter your designs in any way to make this piece fitting for fantasy, lord of the rings, or any other table top game on the market. The plan is to make a crater for the lave to be flow from, a waterfall of lave from the crater and a pool of lava with an island in the middle of it. On this island I plan on making some sort of thermo generator looking thing with a bridge that connects it to the rest of the table/piece of scenery. This makes for a good objective, example "Sir why did we power our shields from a generator with no defense system around it?" "Cause we can, thats why. And now we are going to fight every alien on the planet to stop them from taking control of it!" "Oh ok, sounds like a plan to me".
My point exactly.

Anyway to start this on cut out an 8''x12'' piece of 1/4'' foam core board. Make the edges wavy and uneven, remember this is supposed to be volcanic and ominous looking. Once you have a shape that you like trace is onto the 3/4 foam and cut the foam piece out. Map out where you want the lava lake to be and the crater as well as the river of lava/waterfall. Cut out the lake portion and then glue the foam to the foamcore base with white glue.

Next make a second level on one side of the lake with another piece of 3/4'' foam. draw out where the river and crater are going to be on this one and glue in ontop of the first piece. Now use a third piece of foam to make the crater ina similar fashion as you did with the lake. Draw out the crater/river, cut out the outline and glue it to the goriwng mountian. Also cut out a circular piece of the center platform and glue it into the lake. Use a figure to make sure it is big enough for at least one to stand on and factor in that something to represent the thermogenerator is also going on here.

For my generator I used the top of my broken dice box and an empty paint can from GW. I simply glued them together and onto my platform. Once that was done I used some bendy straws to make pipes going into the 'yet to be made' lava lake. There is nothing more awsome then pipes coming out of a swirling lake 'o lava. The end result should look something like this(though keep in mind that this picture also includes the work done in step 2)


2) Burning Down the House

Alright boys and girls is time to get out those matchs and lighters, cause we're going to be playing with fire. The next step is DANGEROUS and should ONLY BE PERFORMED OUTDOORS OR WITH A MASK ON IN A WELL VENTILATED AREA. Take it from me cause im sure that 20 years from now Im going to get cancer or something to that extent from all the fumes ive inhaled by mistake, don't make the same mistakes I did and do this in your room or you might end up look like me here.
Thats an actual photo of me taken just minutes after performing this step and is a testament to just how dangerous this stuff is.

All joking aside heed my warning and lets get on with it. The trick to making volcanic scenery look good is randomness. There is no order in nature so remember that as you literally burn and melt away the foam. Take a match, lighter or other heat source and run it along the foam. This will melt it back making it look like melted rock, once its been painted. Holding the flame in one area longer will result in deeper holes which look cool and should be placed sporadically. Remember it wants to look evil, its a freak'n volcano for emperors sake. Burn everything at least once and do back over certain areas again to make really cool effects. However do it in stages. You can always melt more but if you go to far you mgiht have to start all over again. Its best to take a piece of scrape and test out this a few times before committing to sculpting your master piece with a live flame the way I did. The areas around the lavafall/crater/pool shoud be melted the most as that is realistically the area that would have been melted the most. Use reference pictures if you have to and then just go crazy. A hotfoam cutter can also be used here to get come cool jagged effects but Im not going into that for now. Another day Ill do an entire piece of how to use foam cutters.

AND REMEMBER THE FOAM WILL RELEASE TOXIC FUMES AND THE FLAME ITSELF IS HOT(AS I FOUND OUT THE HARD WAY), BE CAREFUL.

3)Fleshing out the Details
OK so now we get to building the foot bridge that makes the piece cool. To start I ran three pieces of I-beam plasticard to make the horizontal supports for the bridge. I added the one in the middle for extra strength. I glued them in place with hotglue becuase plastic glue eats the foam base, though you would also use white glue.



I then ran a thick line of tacky glue(aka really thick white glue) down each of the beams and started to place the tooth picks in a line. This was a pain in the ass let me tell you. Once that was finished I simply ran two pieces of strip plasticard down each side of the bridge to help hide the uneven ends of the toothpicks. This also helps to give it a more futuristic look(yeah right, lol). You could jsut make the bridge deck out of plasticard if you want a real scifi bridge and then decorate it with other plasticard dodads and scrapes.



I then started to detail the base in the middle of the lava lake. This involved adding random pieces that looked right from the command vechile sprue. I used the Ig eagle looking radar dish from ontop, the chaos piece becuase it had all the pipes on it and the space marine piece cause it looked like a small computer housing.



Then I made lava from hotglue!!! To make the crater which for me means the part of the volcano where the lava plume is, just take some cardboard or heavy paper, roll a small piece into a tube and glue it to where you want the crater. Then start pouring hoglue over it in large amounts. It will run down and form the shape after abut 3 or 4 applications. Then just fill in the rest of the lava river and lake with hotglue. Use a similar method to get the lava water fall to look like it is in motion. And remember cause its hotglue you can always go back later and reowkr the shape of the glue with the hottip of the gun.



You may be thinking to yourself now "OMFG this looks like crap, it cant be right" but your wrong. most pieces of scenery look bad before they look good. Stick with it becuase we are going to start paint soon and thats when things will really start to come together.




More photos and updates to come, stay tuned. And remember that rep. points keep me and other LO users off the streets and out of your home.

WELL THEN I have to say Im sorry to everybody here for my sudden and unexplained peroid of not posting and nothingness. My computer decided to literally explode and contract all sorts of viruses about two weeks ago and its taken me some time to get everything fixed and back into working order. For the most part this consisted of me randomly deleting files and stopping .exe programs from running. And I guess it worked cause some time last night I regained control of the internet and of my USB ports. So I downloaded the pictures and wrote this up.

I feel that due to my lack of meeting the deadline(even though it really wasn't my fault) that the voting should only be between Shonuff and Guass being they meet all the requirements and deadlines.

So any way heres the final product.




To make lava look like that I painted it a dark dark red. On top of that I randomly splotted(no thats not a word) a watered down orange. Once everything had dried I highlighted some parts with a light yellow. Once the highlight was dry I made a wash of 1:1 water to dark red paint and drenched the damn thing in it. When that was dry I went over cetain parts with a drybrushing of orange and yellow. To make the sucker look wet (cause molten rock is to be considered 'wet') liberally apply a coat of GLOSS varnish over everything. This will make everything look awesome.



To finish up the forty some odd toothpicks I needed to use I made a sign. I got the decals from Warseer and tweaked them in photoshop. Yes thats right you can see Guant and Shonuff battle to the death in THE PIT for only $49.99 a ticket, all funds raised go to help save puppies from the likes of Chaos. BUY THEM NOW

I then glued toothpicks over the back in three layers for support and then made two triple layered legs fro the sign and up t over the entrance to the platform thing. For the actual platform I jsut painted it occordingly to how stuff like that should look, you know pipes made pf metal, lights and buttons red and green, ect.



And there you have it the end of yet another From Guants Workbench. Hope everyone learned something here, cause i know i did. Actually I learned two things
1) Viruses suck and make you miss deadlines

and

2)Hotglue is very very very hot


Guant

[gauss_storm]

Sounds good Guant, can't wait to see it.

[Guant]

And here we have our first tantilizing look at whats been brewing in my mind over the last few weeks. My tooth picks are going to in corporated into a foot bridge that goes over the lava lake to the cool look thermal conductor thingie ma-bober. I have to head off to work now so Ill edit this later so it starts to look more like a Guants Workshop thread. Till then fight on Iron Scenery Chefs.

[omgitsduane]

Looks good so far, I was a little worried about what might encompass a lava scene, but you've put a lot of detail into it which is what I love.

[Shonuff]

Oh YEAH! *Kool Aid Man break into your thread*

It's on! Someone woke up the Gaunt, and he's coming out swinging!

I love the concept of the lava piece, Gaunt. Looks like it should be vry very impressive.
Got to say I hope you win this one.

You know, if you'd like, we could do a friendly wager on the outcome..
Winner takes your Ultramarine Sicarius statue objctive marker
*STILL WANTS ONE*

Game on Gaunt....game on!.

[Guant]

LOL, your not getting that figure. Though I might make a new statue out of that new Vetern figure I got from GW, maybe. But new pictures will arrive shortly



Ah yes, now its starting to look like a Guants Workbench piece.

[Guant]

Updated into the usual format of my workbench series. MOAR updates on the way.

[gywo copta]

I'm really excited to see how this turns out... especially how the bridge will look and be incoprorated.

[Shadow Nugz]

You must have an amazing mind! He has some sort of Paint program in his head! I see why you are so amazing now.

[gauss_storm]

Originally Posted by Shadow Nugz

You must have an amazing mind! He has some sort of Paint program in his head! I see why you are so amazing now.

By amazing you mean completely insane, did you see the look on his face?!

But it's looks very good already, I'm excited to see the painting since the center of most lava pieces is the paint job.