Showing posts with label Buildings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buildings. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Villa Giovanzana







Welcome to the Villa Giovanzana! This is home to one of Ravenswood's wealthy noblemen, who's family vineyards are well known throughout the Reikland.

The Villa evolved from two projects; a hill with Gazebo attached was combined with the beginning of a timberframe house. This was also my first experiment using single sided corrugated cardboard to create a pantile roof effect. As I recently purchased a 25' roll of the stuff, you will be seeing a lot more pantile roofs (not to mention my recent forays in to Rennaisance Venice via Assassin's Creed).

I you are interested in seeing more pics, head on over to my facebook page: faceboook.com/valleyofisk

Incidentally this piece is also for sale through my webstore: valleyofisk.com

Tell all your friends!!! :)

~Niko

Thursday, January 26, 2012

War Torn Ruins





Welcome back to the Valley of Isk Project Blog!! After a great deal of thought and some testing of the blog on my web store, I have decided to KEEP this blog after all, as blogger has some great features that are missing in Wordpress.

It has been a loooooooong time since my last post. During this time away there has been lots of stuff going on, and stuff always has a way of distracting us from posting to our blogs. I have a new web store up, a facebook page and lots of stuff in the works!

Hopefully I can get a post up here per week or so. Also keep an eye on my Valley of Isk Facebook page and the Vallley of Isk website for more cool projects.

Up today are a few pics of the War Torn Ruins I have been working on. These started out their lives as quick and dirty ruins for a few games of Mordheim and later evolved in to something a bit more elaborate. I will be adding a lot more pictures, including "work in progress" pics to the Valley of Isk facebook page.

During the course of working on them I developed several new techniques, including the use of a new material for making shingles. The shingles were cut from a thin sheet of wood which gives them a lot more depth than heavy card and makes them easier to custom size; you can ealisy snap a wood shingle in half to fill smaller spaces when necessary.

I also perfected the use of a hot tool plugged in to a dimmer switch for controlling the heat setting, and used it to create the stonework at the base of these pieces. This method is pretty quick and creates deeper grooves between the stones than using the ball point pen on foam method.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Spanish Caribbean Set







I completed the Spanish Caribbean set on commission in March, 2010. They are assembled from resin kits made by Brigade Games

The Hacienda is part of a set of buildings for Spanish Caribbean miniatures gaming and would be great for games such as Gloire and Legends of the High Seas.

The scale of these are close to 25mm, and would be a bit small along side 28mm scale miniatures, but still passable. The quality of the kits are good, but I would be very very careful around the railings and posts on the Hacienda terrace. I opted to have the roof tops removable for the second floors and terrace. To do this for the terrace I installed two support posts on the wall (painted white in the photos) and used a strip of balsa on the underside of the roof as a guide rail. The roof tops are a bit thin so I reinforced them with foam core to keep them from breaking during heated battles.

The bases are MDF. Glues used are epoxy, hot glue and super glue. I filled any gaps with a vinyl spackle.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Slums of Bogenhafen WIP (Mordheim)



Here are a few Morheim style ruined buildings I am working on to add to the Bogenhafen Layout.

I have started a few new techniques with my buildings worth noting:

1. Roof Shingles are now made from a thin wood veneer. I cut them in to strips, stack the strips and use a mini-mitre saw to produce them. This gives the shingles a meatier look, plus I can snap them on the fly if I need to fill gaps.

2. Tight Bases: I am now cutting the bases of each building to the exact contour of the footprint (or as close as possible). I noticed in a recent game that we had trouble positioning a model on a corner due to the base sticking out about 1 cm, so I am going to eliminate the excess base material.

3. Banisters / Railings: I have developed a fast technique for railings and banisters. The bottom is foam core, with toothpicks poked in to the foam edge, followed by 2 or three thin strips at the top.

The slums of Bogenhafen are the aftermath of a brutal siege by the Axebite orc tribe. Fierce combat spilled through the North wall of the city and greenskins occupied the neighborhoods on the north side of the river Bogen for nearly three weeks before reinforcements from Altdorf finally arrived to drive the orcs back to their lair in the Grey Mountains.

Efforts to rebuild these devastated areas have been slowed by the expansion of the docklands, leaving the majority of Bogenhafen’s peasantry homeless or living in squalid conditions of ruined homes. There have been numerous requests for relief aid sent to Emperor Karl Franz, but so far Altdorf has been slow to respond.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Orc Boss-Hut (WIP)



"IT BETTER BE DA BIGGEST FING IN DA CAMP!!!"

This is the first stage of the Lair of Urktash Axebite, the biggest baddest Black Orc Warboss ever to roam the Grey Mountains!!

Every morning when Urktash wakes up he stands at the door of his hut and bellows a challenge to any orc that thinks he has what it takes to be boss. This inevitably results in a bit of a mess but is great entertainment for the rest of the tribe...

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

Sunday, June 7, 2009

The Bing


"The Bing" was created on commission by Nikolai Ruskin in June, 2009 as a terrain piece for miniatures gaming
http://nikolairuskin.com/miniatures_pages/the_bing.htm

The design is an interior for use in a "bar brawl" type miniatures game using 28mm scale miniatures. The Real "Bada Bing" is a strip bar from the popular HBO series "The Sopranos", and became a big source of inspiration for this project about half way through building it. What began as a run down bar / pub suddenly evolved in to a Jersey strip joint while I was tinkering around with the layout for the stage. There is a staff only area for the dancers and an office for the mobsters that will be pictured here soon- check back again shortly.


MORE PICS of "The Bing" COMING SOON; Check back again