Modeling: The Garden of Morr
This weekend, I sat down and assembled the Garden of Morr. The kit is pretty simple, containing a lot of single-piece components, but I did make a few modifications, mostly with the basing.
The first step was to build the mausoleums. In my opinion, the gargoyles included in the set didn't really add anything, so I left them off. They'll probably find their way into a future terrain project. There was some minor putty work on the tower to cover the join between the two halves of the top. I also added a small bell from the old Skaven command sprue.
The mausoleum bases have a squared edge, and some wildly inconsistent ground texture.
To remedy this, I beveled the edges with my hobby knife, and roughed up the stones a bit.
The largest base had some of its detail running right to the edge, making it difficult to bevel the ground. I added a layer of styrene card underneath, to extend the sandy areas.
The ballast was super glued to the base, taking care not to obscure the embedded skulls and bones.
Here are the finished bases. The mausoleums are kept separate for painting, but will be glued on at the final stage. The large base will be left separate, so it and its mausoleum can be placed together, or as two separate elements.
The uncovered crypt presented an opportunity for some articulation. By adding a brass pin, the coffin lid can be rotated to an opened or closed position without it being a loose part that would inevitably slide off onto the table.
Surprisingly, the wrought iron fences didn't require much mold line cleaning. The main issue was with the marks left by the ejector pins. This was easily fixed by scraping the surface with a rounded scalpel blade.
The walls received the same treatment as the other bases– sanding all the ground areas. I had given away the cross over the main gate, so the missing block needed to be filled in with putty and topped with a spike from one of the Chaos sprues.
To articulate the gate itself, I drilled through the hinges, and set them over "L" shaped pins in the wall. The original recesses for the hinges were filled with modeling putty.
The Garden or Morr (or as I like to call it– The Undead Barracks) is ready for priming. Watch for the painting tutorial to follow!
'Til next time!
Great work! Love those little structures. so much character.
ReplyDeleteSomething struck me, looking at your bases, someone could easily double their terrain. You could make some rubble walls out of sprue for the pre-fab bases and some hand-made bases for the mausoleums.
If you wanted to keep the mausoleum kits as is, it might also be a good idea to add small magnets to the bases and bottoms of the structures to keep them stable.
My plan was to keep the mausoleums separate, so the three crypt bases could be laid out as graves with three separate mausoleums, or covered. But on two of them, the baces have recessed slots for the buildings to fit into. It doesn't look very natural without them.
DeleteThe third one has a nice flat slab with no recess. There was a thin guide rail that I sliced off, so they can easily work as two separate pieces.
I also just added a bunch of skulls and a skeletal icon to the crypt. I'll show that in the painting tutorial.
DeleteVery nice, adding hinges to the gates, lovely. I'm looking forward to the painting.
ReplyDeleteStyrene card? Whassis?
Polystyrene, or plastic card (plasti-card). Plastruct is one of the primary manufacturers of it, and they sell everything from flat sheets of varying thickness, to brick, metal deck plating, and roof shingled textured card.
DeleteYour local hobby or model train shop might carry it, or here's their site: http://www.plastruct.com/
Plasticard, now one understands. Great, thanks Rob.
DeleteTried to prime these today, and my primer crapped out. Time for a supply run, I guess.
ReplyDelete