Amera Ruined Temple for Saga part 2

Painting finished

Continuing to use the airbrush I highlighted the tiles by painting spots of VGC Khaki and VMC Iraqi Sand (and then later adding more Iraqi Sand) in the centre of the tile.  Finally using a mix of almost pure Iraqi Sand I highlighted the edges of the steps and the edges of the raised rear area.

Column rubble added

Next I added some sand around each of the column bases to represent rubble from the column falling down.  This was glued on with PVA glue.  To distinguish this from the stone work of the temple I painted the sand rubble with a base coat of VGC Earth.  This was dry brushed up with VMC Iraqi Sand in a number of iterations by varying the ratio of Earth and Iraqi Sand (75/25%, 50/50%, 25/75%).

I also wanted some rubble (from the broken columns, etc) so I got some of the plaster of paris rubble I had made earlier for my Roman villa and found pieces with a flat side so they could be glued down easily.  These rubble piece were painted the same colour as the main temple.

For those about to flock, we salute you.

Around the outside of the temple I painted the ground a grass green.  This was then covered in PVA glue and various green/olive/brown/static grass scatter was applied.  Grass and flower tufts were then applied.  On the temple itself I glued on small patches of scatter and grass tufts to show weed growth.  Finally the rubble painted previously was glued on top of the grass area and on parts of the temple.

Top view of the finished piece

So did I achieve my goal of taking a cheap piece of terrain and detailing it to a higher level?  Yes I think so.  However there are still areas where the cheapness of the original shows through.  The tops of the broken columns are a bit too rounded.  The back and side walls are too uniform.  I think steps all the way around would have looked better.  However I do now want to purchase one of the larger ruined keeps/tower pieces that Amera make as I still see value in the time saved by having the basic structure already done rather than making the entire piece from scratch.  If I had all the time in the world I would buy some of the Hirst molds and make things brick by brick but that just isn't the case currently.

Front view

Amera Ruined Temple for Saga part 1

Raw plastic ready to go

The online store The Combat Company opened a physical store just down the road from me recently.  At the grand opening I picked up a piece of the Amera plastic terrain, the Ruined temple (part no. F218).  These terrain pieces are plastic and seem to be vacuum formed.  At $7.50 it was reasonably detailed in the most part.  However if just painted it would have looked like a piece of plastic.  Too many smooth areas and too many flat surfaces which would break the scale illusion.  So I saw it more as a start of a terrain project that would need some detailing before painting.  I also wanted to try some of the larger Amera pieces but first wanted to see if I could make this piece look the way I wanted.  I had seen other pieces done and they always tend to look a bit too much like cheap painted plastic as drybrushing over flat plastic never looks good.  You always see paint streaks.

Since the floor area in the middle of the ruin was unsupported I glued a piece of polystyrene foam under it.  That way it won't bend when heavy metal figures are placed on top.  To add rigidity I then glued the ruins onto a piece of masonite cut to the size of the base with PVA glue and left it to dry overnight.

Lots of texture, but ugly for now

In an effort to add extra texture I used a model kit technique of covering the plastic in plastic cement and then pushing in an old brush into the soft plastic to stipple it.  This worked but the effect was minimal.  I then tried using the liquid green stuff (my pot was going hard so I needed to use it up) but again not much result.  In the end I used texture paste and stippled that over the entire piece.  Now I had real texture.

Reading some model kit magazines I had come across the black preshading technique.  This technique involves painting a thin black line in all the recessed areas as an under layer of paint.  Then the area is painted as normal but the black under layer of paint shades the cracks/etc without any obvious painting (unlike the normal way of painting a surface and then painting a shading layer over the top of the original layer of paint).

Preshading and base coat

Using my airbrush I spent 20 minutes tracing all the pavement and brick cracks on the temple ruins.  After that I applied a base colour of VGC Khaki.  The preshading worked really well.  In the flesh you notice that the pavement cracks are darker but you can't tell how really (except for the parts where I made the black line too thick).