29 July 2022

Season of Scenery: Ruined Temple 1

Dewi lords it over his lair hidden deep in the wilds of the... er... kitchen. 

I'd decided on a temple base while painting the dragon, and I looked around for some tutorials on how to make one without it going all pear-shaped. Fortunately I found a good tutorial on the Iron Gryphon Studio YouTube channel and based my temple on it.

I kicked off by making a base out of half-inch thick foamboard. I beveled the edges and then measured out where I wanted the temple to go, leaving room at the front for steps.

Here's the secret weapon: XPS foam, the stuff used for insulation. Despite it being a staple material for making scenery, this is the first time I'm using it. I cut out eight 2x2-inch squares to act as cornerstones.

The temple floor was going to be made from the foamboard, but it's covered with thin card (this is the good stuff from Michael's, not the usual crap from the dollar store) which I thought would be a pain to work with. So I used more XPS foam.

I marked one-inch spaces on the board, then used a ballpoint pen to mark out the flagstones as I wanted them to be deep enough to survive the painting process. I also carved in some cracks. The more astute among you might notice that the grid lines aren't straight, but let's just ignore that and move on.

Here's Dewi being fitted for his base. I cut some more blocks to use as low walls, and then assembled them without glue just to see if there was enough room for a bloody big red dragon. So far, so good, so all the blocks were hot-glued in place.

Once they were secure I got a ball of aluminium foil and used it to impress some texture into the foam to give it that stony look.

OK, I admit, I forgot to take a couple of photos. The steps at the front are made from 5mm foamboard and I used my fingernails to dig out some damage to the blocks. I painted large areas with matte Mod Podge and dumped a load of dust over it so there'd be some texture. I would have used sand but it appears to have vanished from the spare room.

After giving the Mod Podge a couple of hours to thoroughly dry, I blasted the whole thing with spray PVA (it's to the right of the Diet Sprite can) to seal it all together and give a bit of a better surface for the paint. 

And now the finishing touches. I bought the 3D-printed columns on Amazon a few months back. You get two "stumps", two full-size columns and a ruined one. I broke the end off the full-size one and because it's hollow I filled the gap with aluminium foil. The stumps were glued onto the square blocks at each corner, and I placed the ruined one to look like it's fallen off its plinth.

I used scrap bits of XPS foam to make small pieces of rubble and dotted them around the edges and the fallen column. I need to find the sand (seriously, where the hell is it? It's not like it's wandered off) to fill in a few small gaps around the fallen column and a couple of other spots. Apart from that it's ready to be painted and detailed, so stay tuned for part two!

16 comments:

  1. A fabulous start, this is going to be awesome.

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    1. Thanks for setting the bar so high, Michael LOL! I too am hoping it'll be awesome, I'm really happy with it so far.

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  2. Always envious of people who can knock these pieces of scenery up from scratch. Great start. As Michael says "this is going to be awesome."

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    1. Thanks, Simon! Making stuff like this isn't too difficult, it just needs planning and patience. And a tutorial you can rip off LOL!

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  3. Excellent construction Matt, the layout and composition look perfect. As for the sand, did you check behind the desk ? LOL

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    1. Cheers, Dave! The sand is not behind the desk, so I'm assuming that rogue gremlin has taken it for some nefarious purpose :-)

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  4. John@justneedsvarnishSaturday, July 30, 2022

    This is looking quite impressive, Matt! :-) I think not quite straight lines are most appropriate! I do have a question though - are you just going to place Dewi on the base or are you intending fixing him in place? My concern is that if you fix him, will the insulation be strong enough to keep him there over time? I'm sure you've already thought of this, so feel free to ignore me!

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    1. Thanks, John! As for Dewi, I don't want to glue him to the base so I'm going to try magnets. Hopefully it'll work, and I'm waiting for them to show up in the mail.

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    2. John@justneedsvarnishSunday, July 31, 2022

      Sounds sensible! That way you can just lift him off when he needs to go and cause chaos elsewhere!

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    3. Yep! I really don't want to glue him to the base so magnets are the way to go!

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  5. Love this, brilliant stuff, I thought the columns were the ones they use for wedding cakes, they used to do plaster ones, and I always thought of doing something like this with some of them, but you cant seem to get them now, besides the prices for even the plastic ones are ridiculous these days!

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Thanks, Roger! I did think about wedding cake columns but had no idea where to get them, so I went with these 3D printed ones. They were $15, which to be fair isn't too bad for what you get, and they look great.

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  6. Looking great so far Matt! XPS is fun to play with. I was making some stuff with it last year (which I should probably post someday!), and it was pretty cool. I didn't relish painting it all, but it was fun cutting and carving. The first photo gives a great indication of how well this project of yours is going to turn out! :)

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    1. Cheers, Faust! I actually enjoy the painting and flocking more than the construction, mainly because I can barely measure and cut a straight line to save my life LOL!

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  7. It looks like Dewi is going to have a nice playpen there! :) I wanted to call it a pram but I'm not sure if that word applies to playpens or not just strollers. Regardless, I'm really impressed by the scale of this project and as a lover of all things Roman, those columns look really sharp too. I'm excited to see more as this is shaping up to be an awesome project!

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    1. Thanks, Jeff! Pram is just for what Americans call strollers, so you were right not to call it that LOL! The columns were a great buy and look really good.

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