Progress on my 28mm Dark Ages Village Project - Part 2 PAINTED BUILDINGS

So this is an update on my ongoing dark ages village project. Looking for a Scandinavian theme pre 1066 so lots of bare wood and thatch. Ive painted a few of the buildings from part 1 but also added in a few more recent builds. Check them put :)

Two longhouses

Figs to scale

Thatch detailing- not bad for scourer pads, chopsticks and some cheap paint!

Grainstore on stilts- stops pesky vermin getting in and the harsh winters ruining your goods!

The first two buildings I made- chopstick free but look fine alongside the other buildings.

More to come as soon as I get round to painting the rest!

Viking Longhouse for 28mm Dark Ages Wargaming

After a birthday meal at Yo!sushi I have gained a tonne more chopsticks so thought I'd give another building a go.

You guessed it- I'm using chopsticks, foamboard, clippers, a craft knife, hot glue gun and some wire. And a cutting mat, always use this if your mum/ partner has a tablecloth. No matter how tacky it is.

Basing materials supplied by Famous Gaming, check them out!

The walls were made from some mis-cut bunker sides my brother made for his sets on Famous Gaming  Check it out, sells cheap modelling supplies! 

The walls were matched up, wired into place using pegs and then hot glued. Door was cut in 1 side, windows were left as they are.

Another angle.

The sides were covered as standard- chopsticks roughly cut for a rough hewn look. Added a snow shelter over the door from the tips of chopsticks and a foamboard offcut. The roof is again two mis-cut sheets, standard foamboard cut by you will work just as well.

A chimney was added using a foamboard offcut and some rectangular chopstick ends

Snow shelter added above each window

Other side

Scourer thatch was starded as per normal, see older posts for a detailed demo. Basically cut to length, split down the middle to thin them, rough them up and overlay them for a realistic look.

This continued all the way round, including the snow shelters.

Views from all angles. 

It was then glued to a base, sand was glued on (from famous gaming), undercoated black and left to dry.

All wooden parts then got coated in burnt umber

Had to give it a few coats to really sit well. A mix of burnt umber and burnt sienna was added as a final coat to give it a redder look. The roof got a heavy drybrush of country maple.

The roof then had a layer of golden brown applied.

This was then highlighted with a drybrush of tan. The side walls were also drybrushed in tan to give it depth and to give a worn look.

Side by side with another building.

Scales up perfectly!

Great build from scrap lying around my house :D

Any suggestions, comments or questions please ask, thanks for looking!

Building a Viking / Saxon Grainstore for 28mm Dark Ages Wargaming

This tutorial is how to make a Scandinavian grainstore- perfect for Vikings or Saxons!

The methods used on this build are very similar to previous builds so check them out for a more detailed explanation of certain techniques.

Basing materials supplied by Famous Gaming, check them out!

Part 1: Materials- Some foamboard, some plastic chopsticks, a craft knife, hot glue gun, ruler and pencil. A sheet of foamboard about A4 size should suffice, I used scraps but you'd have leftovers if you bought an A4 sheet from a shop.

The foamboard was cut to give a bevelled base and the 4 walls of the building

2 triangles were cut to be the triangular gable ends

This was all glued together and a floor was added- the floor on this build is 100% necessary!

I then cut a door from the odd shape left from cutting the two triangles and glued this on. Then I built a frame around the door and a ledge, using the rectangular chopstick ends. I also started to glue the upright chopsticks in place. These were cut into to give a rougher hewn appearance, see my older posts for more on this :)

This continued all the way around the building.

I then paired up 10 of the rectangular ends and glued them to the base. These provide the stilts that the building will stand on.

Tadah! I didnt glue the building on top so it is able to be moved for storage etc. Two beams were added to the roof for extra support and to look fancy. Coming along nicely.

The roof was made from strips of scouring pad cut and overlaid. Rough them up for a more authentic thatch look.

Splitting the pads will make the thatch much more realistic and also make it go much further. This isn't the building in the tutorial but around now was when my camera decided to hate life so there's a bit of a  jump.

After this point more steps were added using the rectangular ends and a chopstick beam frame was added under the building to stop it sliding when placed on the stilts.  Then it got undercoated in black spray paint 

The whole thing got painted in burnt umber brown acrylic paint- few coats for the chopsticks and light coats for the roof.

The roof then got further coats of country maple acrylic to add some highlights.

It then got a pretty thick brushing of golden brown acrylic- but not completely covering the previous 2 brown layers.

To finish it off the roof got a final highlight of tan acrylic paint, its a sandy colour that works well with the golden brown to create a thatched look.

The base was painted in a similar way- sprayed black, painted with burnt umber, dry brushed with country maple and tan.

As the pic above shows it works out nicely for scale and is a pretty unusual model- not many people seem to make grainstores for their 28mm. All in all very happy with this build :)

Any suggestions, questions or comments ask away!

Progress on my 28mm Dark Ages Village Project- Part 1 inc. Jarl's Longhouse

So as I'm not working today and don't feel like approaching any of my uni work I thought I'd crack on with my attempt at making a 28mm viking village.

This is the progression from yesterday's posts- I'm working pretty quick on this project.

If you intend to follow the Jarl's longhouse build, pre-warning you that you'll be needing to eat a lot of asian cuisine.

Basing materials supplied by Famous Gaming, check them out!

The Jarl's Longhouse pre-paint looks like this:

If you're keen scroll on down!

So Part 1: some wicker style fencing & updates from yesterday!

The kit needed: trusty glue gun with something to stop it dripping on that lovely tablecloth, some chopsticks from Yo! sushi, a length of cut hardboard, some old broken headphones, some wire, clippers and a stanley knife.

added a bevel for realism

chopped the chopsticks into useable lengths, neated em up and cut into them to create a more log like appearance. The ones on the left have been trimmed, see the difference?

Ready for sticking

I tried them in a completely linear arrangement and didnt have so much success so switched to a slightly staggered one. Then glued them all in place with the hot glue.

Cut the wire and headphone leads into strips to represent wicker and other bendy boughs from trees and arrange them between the chopstick posts. Add some hot glue here and there to get it to stick together. Trim off any excess glue with the clippers or knife

Wove wiring in the same way around my corrall, and added a tuft in the corner.

Then based it in with PVA glue, an old crappy brush and a basing mix of different sand grains, old plaster bits and small rock particles. All are available at Famous Gaming on eBay, check out their rubble mix, its awesome. Also based everything from yesterday, and added some fine sand to the walls of the buildings to allow for a plaster effect.

I then moved on to gluing down the thatch roofs form yesterday. I mixed about 70% pva glue to 30% water and put it into a mister bottle, the kind that hair dressers and gardeners use and sprayed it across the roof. You could use pva and a brush but this method is a hell of a lot faster. WARNING: Do this outside unless you like glue EVERYWHERE.

Part 2: Jarl's Longhouse

I like the buildings I made yesterday but I couldnt help thinking they were a bit peasanty and i really needed to get to work on something substantial for my Jarl and his Huscarls to call home.

For this build I used: hot glue gun, scissors, craft knife, scourer pads, a ruler, a cut rectangle of hardboard as a base, 4-8 pins, lengths of 5mm foamboard offcuts and LOADS of chopsticks. 

I used about 35 chopsticks in total. They're the kind you get from Yo!Sushi and Wagamama's, the nice thick ones not the thin crappy ones Tesco give you with their second rate sushi. I hoard these and have finally found a use for them! If like me you go mad for asian cuisine and like log buildings, give yours a wipe and pocket them for later- they only go in the bin otherwise!

On to the construction- The side walls were 4.5cm high and 16.5cm long and the gable ends were 9cm wide and 10cm high to the apex. This was partly dictated to by figure scale but mostly down to what was available in my pile of offcuts.

After sticking in a few pins I was able to see what i was working with. I cut a door into one of the gable ends, using a mini for scale.

I then cut the chopsticks to the correct lengths, trimmed them up to make them look for 'loggy' and hot glued them to the face of the foamboard. The overlaps were intentional to allow for a few interlocking sections later on. Notice the red blotches? Yeahhhhh stanley knives are sharp.

So this continued around the sides, adding glue to the joining areas and leaving the pins in for extra security. I then added two panels for the roof, cut to size. This allowed me to hot glue a chimney made from the square end sections of the chopsticks to the roof. I also used the square ends to add a door frame to the front. The logs down the sides and back were less uniform that the ones on the front on purpose, i wanted a more realistic patchwork kind of look. 

See the plasticard crossed A frame top? Yeah ignore that....

I also glued a thin section between the gable ends and chimney to allow me to create the roof peak.

After deciding the foamboard crossed beams looked a bit out of place on something made of carefully carved wood, i opted to make them again from the squares left over from the beams. This was easy enough, just a bit fiddly to get the crossed areas glued in place.

WIP on the logs and crossbeams

View from the rear pre-thatch

For the thatching I cut the scourer into strips the length of the roof before carefully peeling the strips in half. Also note the extra row of chopsticks on the roof as beams? The scourer fit perfectly with their addition and I dont think they look too out of place.

Then rough up the scourer strips, literally yank on them and pull out bits here and there.

Hot glue gun them into place, starting at the bottom to allow easy layering. Use any small tufts of scouer to fill any gaps, a nice rough appearance is what were after.

I then continued layering until i reached this point, looks pretty good to me! Satsuma.

The village so far! Once its dried fully: painting!