How to Make: Castle Battlements! ~ Minas Tirith Walls Guide and Templates!

castle towers and complex battlements as we keep building minis tirith from the lord of the rings welcome to zorbasalt gaming my name's locker linton keane and welcome to the third installment of our ministerius terrain series in this tutorial we'll be looking at some more complex features for our outer wall as we add a defensive bull walk a bastion of stone that juts forth from the outer wall and spices up our battlements this series of guides and tutorials is part of our covert 19 community project here in the australian middle earth community we've got players all over australia and around the world working on different parts of ministerus towers gates buildings of course all working towards building a full-scale ministerius gaming board for the middle earth strategy battle game and then once isolation fades and wanes we can come together in a huge celebration event to besiege ministerith so let's begin looking at our more advanced battlements so the first part of our new battlement that we're going to look at is the primary component of the outer ring wall this is going to be made in the exact same way as the first ring wall we made in the first miniserious terrain guide where we combined two sheets of 50 millimeter foam and press them together to make a thicker structure this wall is obviously going to be 300 millimeters high like that first part but it's only going to be 245 millimeters wide to accommodate the change in width of our battlement formation as we add the additional battlement features so once we've cut out two sheets at 300 by 245 mil we're gonna glue those together with a high strength pva and also pin them in place with some bamboo skewers to give some physical bonding with our primary shape out of the way it's time to work on the additional form that juts out from the wall to create that extra section of battlement we're going to be using the first new template that's going to be released alongside this video which is just a nice simple polygon with those cutaway corners which helps hint at the octagonal nature of the many towers we see throughout the designs of minas tirith as always i'm going to grab a glue stick and glue this template down to a piece of cardboard before cutting it out nice and neatly so we've got a durable template that will last us long into the future with the many many towers that we will be making as we build this huge city next i'll just grab a sheet of my 50 millimeter thick foam and cut out a whole bunch of these shapes by lining up the template and gently drawing around it to mark out my polygon i'm going to use a really really sharp blade that's always an important tip when you're working with extruded polystyrene we need a nice sharp blade so that you don't get any tearing or pulling of the polystyrene fibers you get a really clean cut which is going to be perfect to carve into at a later stage now we want our final wall to be 300 millimeters of high and this additional fortified section is no different but i'm only going to make five of these sections at 50 mil thick which takes us to 25 mil and for the final section what we're going to do is use that template but continue the points of the cutaway corners to make an elongated triangle at the front of the rectangular prism and that piece is going to go at the very bottom of our tower then what we're going to do is just come in with a small scalpel and gently taper that point so that it blends with the cutaway section of the octagonal prism on the top five components and this creates that lovely gentle uh kind of accented prowl that we see on a lot of ministerius designs particularly these wall features where they've got lots of flat surfaces and octagonal tower work which then blend and curve to a point uh really reminiscent of the kind of ships and that numenorean design from the early second age in middle earth now we're just going to join these together using that classic combination of some toothpicks and high strength weld bond to give us a really strong bond along all the components as you're gluing those six pieces make sure they stay nice and flush by lining them up against the main wall surface and the ground so that you've got everything really square and once it's all glued together if there's any huge differences between the different pieces and they don't kind of meet up perfectly on that front face just take your knife in and adjust the profile by gently shaving off some foam here and there so that it's relatively consistent although a little bit of difference doesn't matter because of course we're going to turn this all into stone work now while we wait for that outward bastion to dry we're going to return to our primary section of ring wall and work on all the stone work and texturing just like we covered in the first part of this tutorial series the only difference here is that this piece of outer ring wall isn't as wide but that width difference is exactly the shape of one brick so your bricks are still going to easily space along the wall when you're depressing and texturing all of your phone bricks what we want to do is leave the center of the outward facing wall not depressed so that we can join our outward bastion and have a nice flush join so depress and texture on the outwards on the outer regions of that primary facing wall to your heart's content but make sure that you leave it nice and flat and flush which you'll see in a sec when we join that outward bastion to the main surface of the wall with the primary wall textured it's of course time to start texturing that outward bastion and you'll notice if you have a look at all of the reference images and stills from the movies and the miniature itself these extra components of wall that are attached these towers these bastions anything that's attached to that main outer ring wall is actually built with a different style of brickwork that's much smaller the outer ring wall is those really thick heavy set blocks which we have at about two and a half centimeters high but each one of these blocks is just over a centimeter in our working scale so that's nice and easy for us to do because it's the same spacing as the brickwork we do on the top of the wall so we're gonna grab our nice sharp blade and essentially just draw a whole bunch of lines where we divide every 50 millimeter thick sheet of foam into four bricks so that's roughly 1.25 centimeters for each layer of brickwork as always we'll mark those out with our scalpel and then once that's all done grab a pencil and bulk out all of those lines to give them some nice depth to the crenellations then we're going to grab our the tip of our sharp scalpel and just mark in all of our brick work you can pretty much make your bricks any size that you like i sort of averagely spaced them about two and a half centimeters wide and just go by the eye and try and keep the pattern as repeated and as uniform as possible the numenoreans were very capable builders so we don't want everything sort of looking wonky so if you decide to break one face up into two bricks it'll go two brick and two brick and dubrick and repeat that form obviously spacing them out on that lovely brick overlap which we all know as uh seasoned stone masons from the uh from the first piece of wall that we built now that we've marked all the brick work into the outward facing sides of the bastion we're going to have a look at the top i'm just going to use my knife to continue the brick work from the top level uh jutting it in on a nice angle as we kind of curve around that octagonal shape and i'm going to create a sort of thin run of brickwork following around that pattern as if we're completing that top brick on the top level and then i'm just going to create some horizontal brickwork which matches the spacing of the normal primary ring wall to texture and detail these smaller bricks we just use the exact same principles that we learnt in the first tutorial series where we separate all of the bricks by running a pencil through the grooves bring in some scrunched up alfoil to print and kind of emboss a whole bunch of rocky texture and then we'll come in with a flat surfaced element i use the end of my knife blade packet which is just a nice wide rectangular shape i will depress a whole bunch of those blocks randomly with these smaller bricks obviously they are quite small so sometimes you don't need to depress the entire brick to create a change of relief you can just come in with the tip of your scalpel and sort of adjust the surface in some of the corners and just create a little bit of separation we don't want every brick to have the exact same profile it's all about those bricks being laid on top of each other really subtle different angles and that gets a really nice kind of textured finish to the overall wall once you've done all your depressions and got a lovely different relief in the brickwork make sure that you do come and add those little fine details by grabbing a smaller scalpel and chipping away creating some cracks some different crenellations and nooks and crannies as the brickwork has aged it's had maybe some seizures a few little impact hits and things have just worn away over time and all these little details that we carve into the surfaces may take a little bit of time but they really shine once we get a bit of paint on this foam so with the two components of our main structure fully carved it's time to join them together we're gonna do that once again using some toothpicks and some weld bond pva to get a lovely strong bond between these two components but it's important that we line these up correctly and now what we're going to do is refer to our new set of battlement templates which are available down in the description below this obviously this section of wall has some very different battlements so we're going to need a separate set of templates and there are three templates in that template pack two smaller ones for the sides of the main wall and then one template which is the battlement that wraps all the way around the top of this upper bastion so we'll grab those two side templates and place them down on the model and that will help us to line up this outward bastion in the center of that primary wall and we make sure that we get it in the right spot so that everything is going to line up perfectly when we come to attaching our battlements you can even use those templates once you've glued it in to just check that you've got that spacing right in the middle now these templates have been made in the exact same way just gluing them onto a bit of cardboard and cutting them out so they're nice and strong and will last long into the future and that really helps us when we're marking out our foam as well and now it's time to slice up all of the pieces of foam that we're gonna need for our battlements so we'll make our battlements in the same way as we did in part one of this series where we grab a sheet of 50 millimeter thick foam and cut a nice long strip of it 90 millimeters high and then what we're gonna do is cut that sheet into four halves now obviously it's much easier to do this with a hot wire cutter but i'm doing it here on camera with a knife blade so that you can see it is possible to get a nice thin strip of this foam but you got to have a really sharp blade so essentially i cut that nine centimeter high block turn it on its side and then cut that 50 millimeter thickness in half and then cut those halves in half again again really sharp blade score all the way around the side and then saw back and forth into yet a couple of clean pieces we're going to start by working on the battlement that wraps around the outer bastion and then finish off the battlements at the front with the two side pieces i'm gonna place my template on the strip of foam that i've created and draw around it and then cut it out nice and delicately with some different size scalpels i'll use my big scalpel that we've seen a lot for all of the big straight cuts but i'm gonna come in with a smaller bladed scalpel for going around all of the curved lines like the archways and the battlement crenellations themselves just to give me a little bit more control obviously this battlement is a straight piece of foam at the moment and it will eventually wrap around the octagonal bastion but first we're going to do a little bit of detailing now so it's nice and simple while it's still a flat piece and that is going to begin with cutting the horizontal lines for our brickwork we're going to draw three lines into the foam the first one is about five millimeters above the top of the archway and then evenly space the next two lines up towards the top of the battlement so that you've got basically two layers of that normal rectangular brickwork beneath the battlements then once those brickworks are carved we're going to create the ramped profile of the outer battlement so those gaps between each of the battlement crenellations actually slope downwards towards the outer section of the wall so that the archers can see down a little bit lower and hit some targets closer to the wall so i'm just gonna extend that front battlement about five mil down into the foam and then cut that groove back up on an angle and round it off so that it slopes nicely from the inner to the outer section of the battlement to finish off this front piece we'll mark in all of the vertical lines on the brickwork so that we've got the full brickwork pattern on the outside of the battlement and then if we flip this piece over we're just going to draw the horizontal lines in for the inner brickwork because we're not going to know how that brickwork pattern will finish until we've cut the angles to wrap it around the octagonal structure so we'll have to add those in later but it's better to get the ones on the front done nice and easily while the piece is flat now the next step is to bring in our angles and wrap this battlement around the top of the tower so what we're going to do is make a cut along each of the pillars in that central region cutting through those complete crenellations at the top so we're going to be making four cuts which will create five pieces of that battlement so once you've cut down all of those lines you can see if we just throw them loosely onto our bastion there that they will wrap around nicely and they're roughly about the same size but obviously they're not joining at the moment so we need to put an angle in to make those meat i'm just going to quickly give these pieces a texture on the outer and inner surface with my foam roller just so that a little bit of this work is done and then we'll come in and finish that off at a later stage so once you're happy with the texture on the various surfaces it's time to start cutting the angles that are going to allow the battlement to wrap around the defensive outer bull walk and what we're going to do starting with these pieces in the middle not touching the two pieces on those far sides we're going to start cutting a small angled profile on every single piece so that those mesh at roughly about 135 degrees so we'll grab our sharp blade and we'll score in about three to four millimeters on an angle cutting away on the inner side of these battlement pieces so that the outer surface is completely preserved and we'll do that on both sides and then when you bring those two pieces together you can see the angle that it's created and shave it away and getting it nice and close and as flush as possible so it joins really nicely and just make sure you're getting the right amount of surface material removed so that the angle is either obtuse or acute enough that it wraps perfectly around the battlement once you've created all of those sloped cuts that enable the battlement to wrap around there's one more cut that we need to make on either side of the battlemen which enables this octagonal battlement feature to join and mesh with the normal battlements that are on the primary face of the outer wall and now it's time to join those battlement features to our wall i'm just going to be using a whole lot of weld bond here not going to worry about any toothpicks because once this is all glued up and properly joined there's enough strength and all the various angles and faces that it locks together quite nicely just make sure you get enough glue along all of the components so between the battlement pieces joining those together as well as joining the battlements to the wall itself and don't be hugely alarmed if there's sort of a few gaps and the pieces don't align perfectly because we're gonna come back in and fix that all up with some putty and filler a little bit later just to make this process a whole lot more forgiving so there we can see all those battlement pieces wrapping around that outer bastion which looks awesome and now it's time to work on the battlement pieces on the outer face of the main wall we're gonna grab those two smaller templates obviously you could just use one template and flip it over but i put both templates in there so it was nice and clear that you need that mirror image on each side of that defended crenellation and then we're gonna put those onto another piece of nine centimeter high foam and cut out nice and carefully again use that smaller scalpel for all of the curve features and get yourself a lovely little battlement we're going to do the full texture work like we did with all of our battlements coming in with the scalpel and the pencil and our scrunched up phone ball and detail that really nicely and then we're going to come in and create that 45 degree angled cut so that it meshes nicely with our battlement wrapping around the defended bastion we are going to then glue those in place i'm also going to use uh some toothpicks on these guys just one on either side to make sure that you know it's easy to kind of lock it in so you slide it into the corner and then push it flat onto the main surface of the wall driving the toothpick into the foam and then it's got like an extra kind of physical bonding piece uh that's going to lock it in really nicely and keep that strong because you don't want these battlements popping off in the middle of a game so leave that until it's fully dried and rock solid and now we're going to come in and kind of neaten the whole thing up because you'll notice that as it's being glued together there's a few little kind of gaps or misaligned surfaces between the different battlements and in particular between the battlements and the actual wall there might be a bit of a gap so we're going to come in with some multi-purpose filler you could kind of use anything here this is a water-based compound you could use i guess sculptor mold in really small detail or any kind of modeling putty and come in and we're gonna fill all of those gaps so this is just a water putty that you mix up with the powder and water until you get a kind of nice solid consistency that's gritty enough to work with and the great thing about it is it has a bit of grit and texture in it too so even if we're kind of uh smoothing it into lines it's not gonna look like a really obvious smooth filler between our embossed textured foam surface so i'm gonna push and and sculpt this into all of those grooves and gaps anywhere that i want to be smooth and filled and i'll i'll use the tip of my scalpel to jam a bit of it in there finish it off with my finger really push it around use the tip of the scalpel to to re-texture any surfaces or line it back up with the grooves and kind of apply this pretty freely so that you get it all in the places that you want and then come back in a cleanup pass and pull it out of all the areas that you don't want if it's gone into any grout lines just pull it out with the scalpel and if you've obscured any large flat surfaces i just like to put a bit of water on the end of my finger and kind of rub it off that whole surface and then come in with a tissue or paper towel and pull away that kind of thinned out putty so that you're not blocking up any of the lovely detail that you've imparted with your foam texturing the battlements are now looking pretty good but you guys will notice one design feature which is quite obviously missing on the newest section of that outer bull walk and that is of course the lovely taper of the battlements moving down to the wall surface on those main battlements we've got that lovely soft curve that flows down and we're going to do the same thing here but it was really important to make sure these were fully glued up before we tried to mess about with carving all of this and we've got some filler on hand to fix any issues so we're going to use the same process as the normal battle ones where we grab the long scalpel and cut upwards halfway through the surface to remove a big chunk of foam and then we're going to gently use the smaller scalpel to curve that down and create a flow from the higher flat surface of the battlemen down to the main face of the wall creating that that lovely kind of uh sinewy form that where the battlements flow down and merge into the rock now as you do this because of the weird angles of these uh wrapping around battle and sometimes it breaks or it doesn't quite line up properly so what you can do is just grab some of that filler that we've been using and pile that in and re-sculpt any of that curve or shape that you accidentally pull away or you can't quite get to be smooth with the scalpel blade and that also helps to really kind of join that battlement section in because often these bits might be sitting elevated above the battlements and not kind of perfectly mesh with that rock face as well so it's an opportunity to really clean up this whole area cut that line in and create that terraced section taper those terraces off with your blade and fix with putty where possible you should have a really clean looking tower so all that's left now is to throw on our back section of battle once which is done in the exact same way that we explored in our first tutorial it's just a little bit shorter being one crenellation less in length and then we give this model a big old paint job now i've detailed a whole lot of different options for painting this stonework in my painting stone video which i released the week before last uh so you can go for any kind of scheme you want but my advice would be to go for the lovely bright white of minas tirith which is detailed in there as well and then we have a really fantastic defensive feature which makes the battlements a whole lot more interesting so i think that this defensive feature is really important for the build not just in terms of the visual element because it breaks up the big long flat stretches of outer ring wall but it's also great for gameplay creates some extra space up at the top of the wall which changes the dynamic of combat it helps protect against siege towers so they can't just land anywhere on the wall and also gives archers a fantastic vantage point for shooting down at enemy attackers so i'm really happy with how it's turned out and i can't wait to see a whole lot more of them and a whole lot more defensive features because look at this bad boy this is where we're going next we've looked at the little extra battlement now we're going into full defensive tower mode so this big bastion this massive tower houses siege machines it creates a whole lot more floor plan and that's what we're going to be looking at in next week's tutorial and it will be coming out very soon because as you can see it's finished i've just got to edit the video for it so definitely stay tuned for that if you guys are enjoying watching this whole build series or if you're building along make sure you let us know down in the comments and post any photos of work that you're doing are you building the walls are you following all the other templates we've released as again they're down in the description make sure you throw photos up for us on our community facebook page and if you are enjoying this terrain series and anything we're doing here on the channel please consider supporting to my patreon my patreons are the only reason that i can do this so a huge thank you to them and any support would be hugely appreciated but man i'm excited to keep seeing this coming together we've got people from all over the world building stuff i've got a big shout out to give to marcel from the german tabletop community he's kind of rallying the german troops to get a whole lot of minister with buildings built so he can ship them over to us here in australia to contribute to our community build so if you guys are interested in building or running your own community builds or contributing to our one please let me know on the facebook group and we'll sort it all out but yeah thank you so much for watching guys i'll see you next week with a big juicy tower and then we've got buildings and siege towers and siege weapons it's gonna be big it's gonna be big i'll see you guys real soon cheers

Channel: Zorpazorp

Views: 51,737

Keywords: minas tirith, realistic stonework, foam terrain, carving foam walls, foam brickwork, painting realistic stone, real stone, making a castle, foam castle, polystyrene tutorial, gondor, games workshop, lord of the rings, sbg, zorpazorp gaming, zorpazorp, warhammer, lord of the rings warhammer, covid19, community build, isolation hobby, bored at home, terrain, guide, how to make, how to paint, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, how to make a dungeon, stone wall, castle wall, battlements

Id: N4RpOEB8fzU

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020