Fun fur modular gaming board

[kashirigi]

Seeing as I just bought Gruntz, a worthy project would be to make some new terrain to use it on. I live in a small space, so versatility and small footprints are key.

I've decided to make some terrain out of fake fur. The procedure is relatively simple:
1. Cut fur into squares (you can skip this step if you're not making a modular board, of course)
2. Sculpt fur with a pair of scissors
3. Paint.

Here are a few pictures of the work as it is progressing.
1.The first test piece



2. The fur trimmed to shape




3. Fully painted






The end product will cover a reasonably large table and be geomorphic, so that I will be able to produce a wide variety of layouts with little effort. Styrofoam hills can go on the top, and they've also got the fur treatment.

The biggest downside to this method of terrain making is the enormous mess from the cutting of the fur. It's like having a pet that exploded.

[gazarga]

Very nice have seen teddy bear fur used before on fields and such but never seen it used for a whole covering. Thanks for posting.

Paul.

[Raziel]

WoW , that looks trully amazing.
What about the price? Where did you get that fur?

[kashirigi]

I got the fur at a fabric store; it's $40 a metre. That sounds hugely expensive for fabric, but it's something like 1.5 m wide, so I needed a metre to cover my entire table.

It's painted with cheaptastic craft paints. There was a sale at Michaels, and they were 41¢ a bottle, which makes them about the same price as bottled water.

The trees, etc, I had before but are super cheap because they are home-made. The buildings are paper, and you can get them for free at Dream Pod 9. There are also paper buildings in the Heavy Gear section that are more science fiction like. Heavy Gear is 10mm scale (and I designed the buildings for that scale), but they look reasonably good with 15mm miniatures without rescaling. If you're nitpicky, you can rescale by 150%.

The most expensive part will probably be my power bill from all the vacuuming of the hair I trimmed off the fabric.

In my personal opinion, I find that the smallest buildings you can get away with are most useful on the table anyway. Ground scale and figure scale aren't usually the same anyway.

[inrepose]

It looks amazing. I think I would have short fur for some areas though and I was just thinking that you could use a beard trimmer to cut it down to size for short grass, then leave it long for fields, hedges and bushes etc.

[kashirigi]

Unfortunately, I didn't have a trimmer until yesterday. I didn't take a 15mm mini into the fabric store, so the fur I selected is way too long (even for 25/30mm). If you cut it too short, it can't overlap with the other tiles and leaves a seam. If you're planning on trying this, bring a figure in to the store so you can see how it looks first.

I was planning to trim down my already painted tiles with the new shears this weekend. Ideally, I won't even have to repaint, but even if I do, the painting is the easy part.

I will post pictures of my completed board once all the tiles are done. I'm hoping that won't be too far in the future, but you probably know how these things are. . .

[peabody]

Speaking from experience, you definitely want a BEARD trimmer when working with fake fur. Not a hair trimmer.
Get a cheap rechargeable and you are off to a good start.

[kashirigi]

The tiles for my board are finished. I'm still lacking some 15mm buildings, etc (most of my stuff is 25 or 6mm) but I have enough for a reasonably good game.

I've posted pictures on my super temporary gallery

I actually made enough tiles to cover twice as much area as shown in the pictures. It gives good variety to the layouts, and some standard styrofoam hills add elevation where required.

[pancake]

Fantastic work love it

[Raziel]

breathtaking. And I just bought battlemat , definitively something to try in the future. Was there any tutorial how to make one? or you did it on your own?

[kashirigi]

There's not much to making it, really. Basically you cut it down with scissors to the shape you want then paint it. The trick is not to put too much paint on, because it clumps up if you do (which can be desirable for some areas).

Both the beard and pet trimmer that I got ended up being useless for fur, so I just used scissors. If I had shelled out the bucks for a super powered trimmer, it probably would have been easier.

As for tutorials, I basically followed this handy series of pictures.

The main trick to the whole thing is to clean up constantly and have a vacuum handy, otherwise your place will look like a petshop hit by an artillery shell.

[comstar]

Sept 13, 2011 12:35:18 GMT -5 kashirigi said:

The main trick to the whole thing is to clean up constantly and have a vacuum handy, otherwise your place will look like a petshop hit by an artillery shell.

nice one I was drinking tea when I read that now have a damp PC

Congrats it looks great

Cheers Matt

[kealios]

Im SO impressed. The Tutorial is so real, I convinced my wife that the one blaw-and-white-ish closeup of the German Command car was "real".