Work In Progress: The Forgotten Vikings and Tray

Funny how you focus on a project and forget something as large as a movement tray, but I did.  So I put another togther quickly and started painting.  As I got this ready, I decided to add a few more Vikings to the table.  One is a replacement for one of the uglier berserkers.

Above is the pre-clearcoat casualty on the tray, and his helmet.  Below is a dying Saxon.

Below are the WIPs of the additions.  Don't know if I will finish most of these for Adepticon, will see.  I'm struggling with what to do on a display base, the way that I want to do it and I still have a go-kart to get ready for the track now a month away.  So I may not get the display done.

The above berserker is a converted Warlord Games barbarian.  You'll also note the Old Glory Viking killing a Saxon. 

This Saturday I hope to get some games in with the army, won't be totally done, but close enough to game with.  Will see if it works.  Then the following Saturday will be probably spent building the new kart, I feel the need for speed, just wish the snow would melt sooner.

Progress: The Movement tray casaulties Dead...er...Done

On to the clear coat table and flocking.

All of the trays on this desk are basically done.  As you can see some are for the Vikings some are for the Romans.

Apologize for the photos, these are taken by my work camera and I've touched them up and edited them a bit, I'll figure out what it likes for settings, as I look for a new camera.  I used a bunch of transfers on the barbarian shields, the Saxon and Viking shields I all hand painted. 

I think these have turned out really well, using some Perry, Warlord Games, Old Glory, and other casaulties that I created with a variety of parts and pieces and things that I casted.

They definitely help create that feel that I want for the Legions and Shieldwalls.  I look forward to doing more like this in the future as I have even more ideas on how to tell a story with rank and file.  When I get to the Fireforge stuff more of this will happen, as I have some thoughts about doing similar things within the ranks.

So up later today these and the others and all of the Vikings will get shot with clear coat and then the really tedious work of flocking will begin.  I also have some transfers to put on the shields for the last Roman unit I made and to finish up building one more Viking movement tray.  Somehow I miscounted.

Work In Progress on the Desk: Movement Trays Part 2

Well some more progress. 

The Roman Trays are coming along alright.

Above, the two on the left are Viking trays.

The above Chaos Warrior trays are essentially done.

I still have to add the blood, shield details, highlight and shade all of the figures, but I'm getting there.

Work In Progress: The Movement Trays

 Well its movement tray time.  I already have a couple of the Viking trays done.  These others are covering just about all of my current armies:  Vikings, new Roman trays, Warriors of Chaos Knights trays.

So further progress being made to a playable army in the Vikings and replacing the majority of my Roman movement trays.

More Viking Accessories...

 Ten Vikings and ten Warriors of Chaos Chosen have been primed and moved to my painting table.  As I get started painting, I needed to get some more of the movement trays ready, above is the second one nearing completion.  Again added casaulties for the eye candy may add a couple broken weapons and such also.

 Above you see one of the hapless saxon victims.  Below is another of the victims, and close up of the rocks, some of which are fake and some are real.  You can also see underneath the rocks and ballast the apoxie sculp was imprinted with some real slate and an old tooth brush to give it some texture.  Also on my Tutorials page you can find my movement tray tutorial, great for ancients and fantasy.

And below are the shield wall markers.  This is an idea that I've borrowed from Mike Butcher, you can see his blog in my blog list called the Butcher's Bill.  I've seen Mike's saxons and teamed up with them a couple times and he always comes up with some cool ideas for accessories.

So getting closer.  I still need to build the Saga models, I have another unit of hirdmen that I'm finishing up, Clash of Empire's command models, WAB captured standard markers, and a longship.  Three game systems and one army.

Movement Tray, Part 4 and Forest Litter Basing Tutorial

Finishing up my movement tray tutorial, onto the flocking of the trays and showing of my techniques for also obtaining a forest litter. So in reality this is a two for one tutorial.

Items needed:

· Bases and Movement Trays, ;)

· Sand or Model Railroad ballast

· Italian Seasoning, the type without any powders

· Glue: White Glue, Elmers Glue, Super Glue

· Thin or Fast Super Glue (Consistency of Water)

Pictured below is one of my new Red Box Games marauders, another gorgeous Tre Manor sculpt, with a blank base. For these examples I’m going to use Gorilla Superglue simply because it will cure quicker than White Glue or Elmer’s Glue. 

I applied the glue to the base and spread it using a toothpick, added a fake rock, and then applied an HO Scale Model Railroad Ballast as the flock. Then I simply tipped the base and cleaned off the excess.

Next I take the Italian Seasoning. Apply a pinch of it randomly here and there on the base. Then you use the Thin or Fast Super Glue and apply some drops of it over the Italian Seasoning.

< I RECOMMEND YOU WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!>> Definitely be aware of my warning, this glue has a lot of accelerant in it and if gets on exposed skin it will be warm to hot. It will almost instantly stick your eye lid to your eye ball if you get it in your eyes. I know someone this has happened to, wear glasses or goggles.   Also make sure as always with superglues that you have adequate ventilation. READ ALL OF THE WARNING LABELS.   Now that is out of the way, a drop here and there over the seasoning will do two things, stick it to the base and reinforce the seasonings herbs to where they can hold up to a drybrushing of paint later.

After that is done, tip the base and remove the excess, and you get what is shown below.

 

And with the movement tray it is just a bigger version of the base. So the final look is what is shown below.

After that is up to you to do the painting. Most of the time with the seasoning I will stipple and drybrush 3-5 colors on it for the Warriors of Chaos, to get the end product as shown in the pic below.

There you have it, how I do my movement trays and how I do a forest litter basing.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3.1 Addendum

Our friend Mr. Bugman, NAVARRO (whose blog is in my blog list #2, check it out), reminded me of using a tooth brush to texture putty.  Something I do not do to often, and since my move I'm still looking for all my tools, but I still have the old soft bristled brush I use for removing paint.  So onto the second movement tray, similar method as the previous, but with adding an additional texture with the brush this time around the rock areas.

 One thing that is always difficult with spreading glue and sticking down the flock is control, often you get a small amount of glue somewhere you do not want it or when applying the flock and you press it in slightly it spreads in the wrong locations.

So I added the fake rocks and then commenced adding texture around the rocks in two ways.  One with the brush and the other with pressing a rock into the regular putty surface.   With the brush you can poke and sweep with it.

This is how it comes out, will add a bit more variety with the surface when I start adding the flock.  The flock I will be using is a HO Scale railroad ballast.  That will be in Part 4.

So there we are, another method that one can use.  Part 4 will be flocking and forest litter basing.

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 3 Apoxie Sculpt

The next installment of my movement tray tutorial.  In part 2 we constructed the basic tray and general shape.  Now we are going to bulk it out using Aves Apoxie sculpt.  Apoxie Sculpt is a two part modeling putty that takes many hours to cure, but cures very solid and hard.  Here I have mixed the two parts together and formed a long rope like piece.

As we also saw in the previous posts, I'm using a slate rock look on my Warriors of Chaos miniatures and movement trayes.  In the right hand corner of the picture below you see the fake slate rocks.  The rocks are, you guessed it, hardened Apoxie Sculpt that has been bust apart with a hammer.

The next picture I apply the rope to the tray.

Then I simply flatten out the rope, to get to the look below.  Nice and irregular, just the way I want it to look. 

Next up, I add the fake rocks.  These I simply push into the apoxie and I will allow it to cure overnight.

A close up of the one corner and the fake rocks.  I also pressed a rock into the corner and then placed layers in to that by using the blade end of my sculpting tool.

So now that is done, it will cure, and then you add the sand/flock/gravel whatever you are using.  In another post I'll detail how I add that and my trick at creating forest litter.  Until next time....

Warhammer Movement Tray Tutorial ... Part 2

The following is my new way of constructing the trays, but keeping a similar look to what was done previously. Below you see that I laid out the tray dimensions using a marker and my steel carpenter's square. I'm building two at once here for my 6-wide Chaos Knights units.

Nowadays, I just use strips on the front and sides, leaving the back open for the expansion of the unit or addition of a character model.   I also build the trays slightly wider than the bases usually one or three tenths of an inch wider to help fit in that odd conversion, a bit of slop if you will. If you have messed around a bit with GW's modular trays, you'll note a bit of play in them also. Using the thick plasticard and strips you can also add magnets to them. On the pictured VC Bashin' Orcs tray in the previous post, the commissioner instructed me to use GF9 bases, so that tray has magnetic sheet in the tray to work with the GF9 bases, as does my Knights Hospitaller unit.

So now we have the below, the general layout of what the trays will look like.  The 0.2" lines are the general guidelines for the strips that will come later.  The 0.3" is the outside of the tray.  I normally make that a bit larger nowadays (out to about 0.4-0.5"), but with these I'm trying to somewhat match what I had done previously.

If you have not worked with plasticard before, all that needs be done with it to cut it to shape, is to score the cut line with your razor knife. Here I use the steel edge of my carpenter's square as the guide for my xacto blade.

Then take the plasticard and bend it all that scored line.  

The card will snap along that scored line.

Do this a couple times, now I have the two tray bottoms.

Next up, is the strips.  Similar procedure as the above.  Score the strip, bend and snap it along the scored cut line.

Here you see a bunch of the pieces.  One thing to do that make things go much quicker is to glue the sides on the tray.  Then lay the front strip on the tray, mark it to the right size and cut it, no need to even measure it out.   

Then glue the front strip into place, and you get what we have below.  Wow...very square, uninspiring, and just plain boring when placed next the end goal.  We have to fix that.

First thing is get rid of that square shape, there is enough square corners in Warhammer, we don't need to add more to that.  What I'm looking for is a softer shape.  So below I took my clippers and clipped the corners.

Next up I will round off the corners, which you can do that with a file or sander.  Here I have cheated and used my power tool, a dremel.

The above is still kind of boring, but you may have noted some of the pictures had the Aves Apoxie Sculp pictured, we'll soon fix all of that boredom.

But first...I'm still attempting to mimic what I have done in the past, so I have to do a bit more work.  Nice irregular, and semi-random edges.

So there you have it...the basic tray construction.  Next up...I will breakout the Apoxie Sculp.

Introduction to My Method of Making Movement Trays for Warhammer

Well here we have it, a long awaited and promised tutorial on how I make my movement trays. The materials that I use have not really changed that much over the years since I began playing Warhammer, but the way I build them has evolved over the years. This is just one way to make these. There are many other methods, and it is not the cheapest method. If you are looking for cheap, then you probably want to look elsewhere at say GW's modular tray kit or Rendra. This method is my favored method for building trays that can display a very high end detailed army.

 I like using making my own because it allows me to do a number of things in addition to personalizing my army. 

I like my movement trays to serve two purposes:

1.   Accentuate the basing scheme and/or theme of the army.  For example, my Chicago GT, Khorne Demon army was about blood and an over the top demonic like pits of hell thing.  The basing needed to emphasize that  for the bloodletters and other models.  So I even extended that further to the movement trays.  Painting internals of the tray to match the bloody pattern.

Another example, the VC Bashin' Orcs, the theme is beating up skeletons and zombies.  I try to add to the detail of the army by doing this.

2.   Have width to protect the miniatures (It seems there is always a game in a tourney, whether intentionally or unintentionally where your opponent slams his all metal unit into yours. When you spend lots of time on conversion and paint work, you do not want this to happen, especially to your crazy front rank conversions.)

In this particular tutorial, I'm building the movement trays for my Warriors of Chaos army. This is an army that I started several years ago. So now that I'm expanding this army, I am going to build the trays very similar to what I did in the past, ie. the one pictured below.

The main materials:

1.5 mm or 2 mm plasti-card or sheet styrene (Evergreen and Plastruct are just two popular hobby suppliers of this material)

3.2 x 4.8 mm plastic styrene strips.

your favorite glue for plastic

Aves Apoxiesculp

The tools:

Ruler/triangles, steel ruler / Straight-edge, carpenter's square

Marker

Cutting tools

Here you see a picture of one of my existing Warriors of Chaos movement trays. This was built for my Chaos Hounds or a 5-wide Cavalry unit.

The next picture is the underside of the tray. Here you can see the randomness with the Apoxie sculp exposed in areas adjacent to the plastic. When I built this tray, I actually first built the tray and then drilled some wire into the plastic styrene strips on the edges of the tray. The wires are what hold the apoxie sculp in place, similar to the reinforcing steel in concrete. That's a very time consuming and somewhat tedious way to construct the tray.

In the next post, I will begin walking through my new way of constructing the trays, but keeping a similar look as we build movement trays for my two Chaos Knights units.