Let's Make Modular Wargaming Trench Terrain

hey folks Mel the traitor back in the studio and back with a bit of a let's make special for you quite recently we completed our let's make battlefield basic series of tutorials covering all the essentials for your battlefields on world war ii games yeah your bunkers yeah your fire pit a anti infantry anti-tank defenses and a whole load in between I'll throw a link up if you'd like to check that out but because we complete the series I decided I would challenge myself to bring all those tutorials together take the level of detailing up to the next step and do a bit of an ender level boss and that turned out to be an awesome six foot trench line all modular it got the trenches the fire pits the fire stairs fire paws bunkers SAP's ladders of bridge in it and absolutely all sorts of other stuff now that project was done over 5v logs yeah with over three hours of footage and if you're interested in those you can check them out in the project playlist I'll throw a link up to that as well but this is the condensed version I took those three hours and I condensed them down to the core information I took out all the arms the arse and I took out all the the rambling bits and I gave just I left just the important stuff you need to build the trenches and that's what this tutorial is this is all those 5v locks compressed into one I think it's an hour of 40 minute video yeah to take you through the entire process on how I built those trenches so if you're interested in learning jump on in one quick thing before we do please understand yeah I did have to compress it down so there's a couple of shortcuts apologies for that if you'd like to see the full conversation the V logs are in the project playlist but in the meantime let's get crapped on with doing some building night come on let me show you how I built my trenches so the first stage of making a modular trench lines is obviously the bases now typically with the let's mix we've been using a PVC expanded PVC foam board in this case I've switched back to my old favorite MDF now MDF is a lot more sturdier than PVC over the pieces which makes it perfect for this sort of work now obviously if you're working with MDF remember you're going to need power tools you know you're gonna need watch with sharp blades and you're gonna need Sun so watch those fingers a mascot when your son because MDF dust it's not good for you guys now a couple of quick tricks or at least one good quick trick these are my end pieces yeah these are gonna be the end of the war of the trench lines I need to do the middle bits but how do you get two foot much other pieces okay my curtain ain't that great so I capitalize on the cutting service of being kid now when I get my board from being Qi baima's eight foot by four foot and I even cut down into two foot by four foot strips okay it just makes it easier for me to transport them around and use them in the studio and two foot or four foot it's about the maximum length I'm gonna use now in this case I'm benefiting in by it being too full because what I've done is that you can see I've got my four foot by two foot piece here yeah and I've drawn my lines for my trench in the middle yeah out of the board leaving me with two perfectly cut to four ends yeah just like that now I know these lines are absolutely perfect because the Machine cooked I know these this is absolutely perfect because it's machine cut its capitalizing on pre cuts which is always a good idea when you do modular stuff you try and cut the line straight yourself you might get it it might go off a little bit but in my cause your problems this way no problems where they're all fitting together absolutely beautifully now that's how I'm doing the bases my bases are two foot wide by 15 inches yeah quite deep and I'll explain why as we go on but the next stage is I need to actually start carving out my phone for this and for that I got this stuff yeah okay this is expanded polystyrene no no that another B&Q purchased yeah white light yeah it's there high-quality stuff now it's actually a hell of a lot denser yet than the normal white expanded polystyrene so for trench lines which people might lean on you know we don't know what tanks are going on it that sort of stuff and I'm building it I want something a little bit sturdier but I don't want to use hdf yeah the height not hdf they're high-density foam it's a bit of a waste if you're not carving details into it okay that's what your HD foam is for for your sculpting work so since it's all gonna be covered expanding foam it is my next job yeah he's not going to cut this it's a lot of bits like that Yeah right let's crack on so my first bit of cutting is doing and I cut out all my big sheets into the rough shapes yeah that I need to do this now this has been quite simple yeah just getting a rough idea and then I've used a hot knife to cut through this you can work with this stuff with blades and with sandpaper and that source of it is doable but if you're gonna attempt a project like this what's also a definite plus you know what I mean now as I said I'm doing a rough cut okay but it's all about capitalizing on these edges you'll keep hearing me say that so if I come on here you'll notice that I've got the ends of the board here and they're lovely lovely smooth cuts yeah and with a really nice corner piece there but for spin it round okay as you can see we've got the more jaggedy bit yeah and it's extending a little bit because I cut it with a little bit off so I can trim it down my next job is I'm gonna get a standard wire cutter and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use the board this 2 foot board and this two foot board hold them in place line up at the other side and that will give me a nice template that I could just take my wire all the way down yeah I'm getting really nice clean cut being it perfectly too full that's the plan anyway it sorts worked in the past so you should do this time now there are times when you're doing these sort of things where you edge you put side edges in I'm not doing this on this project but if you are doing that then you need to factor in the width of the edge one side the other side into the cutting of you polystyrene yeah pretty typical yet six mil on each edge for a bit of 6ml MDF for e PVC so you need to take 12 mil off so that's the job moving on we need we've got a shapes sort of shaped right size we need to make trenches and start cutting them out and so to start off what we're going to start with the corner pieces okay now these are my corner pieces okay they are trench Enders so I'll be able to put these either side of a two foot piece a four foot piece or a six foot piece and what this'll mean is if I want my trench is not to go from table edge table edge but sort of go halfway along or something like that or if I want it to be a bit of a bastion I can endcap it okay now so I've got this piece it's fifty inches along yeah and one foot yeah and it's the the table edge length so it matches these pieces here and provides an end cap okay but of course we need to make sure that our trenches are modular but when we line everything up it all fits in it all lines up and to do that I've got one of these now this is a bit of cardboard okay just a bit of corrugated cardboard but it's measured 15 inches across there okay this point is nine inches which means this is this is three inches high in total which means this is a one in three slope models will stand on this slope then you can see I've got my trench cut out and then it goes to the end of the board so if I come along yeah I thought that they're just like that just like yeah what it means is I can come along and I can easily mark out where I need to put my trenches with a blade yeah and now if I bring this up you can see just about there yeah the trench lines okay and that's what I'm going to use to make sure across all of these pieces they're uniform so when I'll line them up my trench is line up as well now this is the first template okay and what I'm going to do is just to show you rough idea of how it's going to work I'm gonna do this one yeah I'll bring this back and then I'll show you how I'm going to transfer this template idea onto the larger pieces okay so working on them may two foot long trench sections and I'm gluing the boards together now if you come up you can see my cut marks in there that I've done on these two moves forwards now once again that's using this template yeah I've got a couple of pins in it so I can just place it on pin it mark out where they're good I mean obviously I'm turn it on there you know I've just got these two sheets to cut out now the important thing is when you do modular trenches is that even though I've done this big cardboard template over here so layout where I want the trench lines the only thing that has to be perfect is the edges where they meet up everything in the middle is could be higgledy-piggledy okay it doesn't really matter so all I need to do is well I'm doing my precise cutting okay with my hot why could I just need to make sure that that little bit there so do the top bit first good and then come in and do the bottom bit and what I have is my cuts in perfectly so if I grab that one yeah I put those there they line up perfectly so everything in the middle I can have a wiggle about with yeah so my next job is to cut the sort of the ends so we can get wrong with we little bout in the middle right hardrock on [Music] so we've cut out the main trenches as you can see here you can see these nice tea cuts now something I do want to point out straight from the off yeah you'll notice that as I've done these trench walls they're actually sloped so if we bring these up you can see there's a slope to the wall there's a couple of reasons for that I've done trenches in the password on the vertical walls and what I found is one yeah because with your model bases yeah you often have arms etc but extend beyond the base if you do vertical walls as you drop them in you don't get enough room for the actual bases because their arms are sticking out so by making them slightly sloped it's better for placing the models on top of that if you go for vertical slopes what you get the situation of is as you move in your models you have to go in with your hands in solver a pincer motion to get it in if you widen the top and bevel them out making a slightly v-shaped yeah your hands fit much better for moving the models around and finally yeah from experience that I've found out that if you slightly slope the surfaces of your your trench it's easier to get things to a deer to them so I our actual watcher I trench walls when we do our wood bits and that sort of stuff if the slightly slip out it's a lot easier for me to glue those onto that size and also to guaran with a paintbrush yeah down especially down at the bottom because it's wider okay so a quick tip on that one is if you do in trench works don't do them completely vertical open them up a little yeah it's it's actually the reverse of what trenches were actually like a lot of the trenches have it we're sort of sloped inwards towards the top yeah so you could sort of duck behind the trench and cover from artillery fire but in gameplay terms we need sort of function okay so we sort of adapt it we open up the top just to make it easier to make an easier play with now with this one but I've already started cutting okay they are separate sheets which makes it a lot easier to cook now these have been done with my hot wire cutter freehand and they're looking pretty good now what we've got here is we've got the trench line we've got a bit of a communications trench and then this is going to be a bunker that's raised up so you can look over the slope yeah moving over to this one what we've got is we're going to have some sort of emplacement here okay now this is going to be a two-tier emplacement which is why I need to do it in two stages essentially but once again we've got a communication change and a path into it okay so my next job is get this out and I just need to cut these out cut these out and I'll bring them back once they're done right to the glueing stage and there's a coupla tips on this one of the problems that you have when you're doing watch with large trench works is that your Scout pieces tend to be long and not that thin and anyone who's made terrain before will know that is that is the the sweet spot yeah the perfect set of conditions for war pink so we're going to fight the war okay I feel like a gray night now to do that what I've done is I've done lots of little spots okay and let me explain this to you okay first off PVA is air drying so if I do a big coat all the way over this you have to glue it down what will happen is that the edge will glue okay but then everything inside will stay wet because the edge will become airtight and no air will be able to get into the middle by putting lots of little spots down where it allows me to do is is stick it down but still where air get through so all of this dries so these spots will actually give better detian then if I went over the entire piece and gave it a good solid coat now the other factor is warping is caused by PVA creep yeah so if you have a long piece of PVA with a long piece of MDF with PVA all the way across it as it dries each little bit of that PVA slowly shrink and across the entirety of it yeah it reduces down causing the board to warp up in this case yeah because there's no continuous lines if these little barbs are PVA creep little it'll be absorbed by the foam it won't translate into warping on the actual board so if you want to five warping you fancy being a gray night use spots not lines right all my pieces are glued and solid now and we've reached the stage where all that functional cuts are done and it's time to move on to a sort of a slopes yeah and stop get a bit arty with it now to do this and to keep it modular we're back with the template I've used this template and what I've done is I've applied it to the side and then with a knife I've just come along and marked it out what I'm left with is do you see yeah you can see that lion car yeah yeah running from there up there yeah and across now that line is standardized which means if I use this template on this side and on this bit yeah if I cut to that line that I automatically know that when I put them together they're gonna meet now it's time to actually mark them all out cut the line cut the lines what I'm going to be doing is I'm gonna be using a hot wire cutter yeah and I'm gonna be cool on and I'm gonna be cutting out sections bit by bit just sore get it down and I'm gonna leave probably about five mil above that line where do my major hot wire cutting that's because I can come in with sandpaper afterwards and start to shape it and take it down to that line if I cut immediately to that line yes it will be correct but it gives me no wiggle room to play with yeah in the shaping of of the actual of the hill okay so that's my battle plan mark these up okay do my cuts I'll come back when the dome [Music] so I've got the basic shape and done and if we come down to the desk here you can see it in all its glory what you can't even see in all its glory because it's what long but you can see that I've got the shape to it now now I've done my warning three slope off my template and I've done a rough cut okay but what that means is I know troops will stand on it yeah they may slide down it the minute because it's a little bit smooth but once there's a texture on there it will be absolutely fine but the minute what's happening is because I've cut into these my template lines I have the situation where it goes up a little and then it's pretty much uniform I it's nice long straight flat curves or to a sharp edge I don't want that all I want to do is I want to make it a little bit more undulating a little bit more real okay now to do that all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come in with my cursor I'm gonna come in with my blade I'm gonna come with sandpaper and I'm gonna shake these up a bit okay as long as I stay away from these lines at the edge they will always be modular so this is my safety area about a centimeter in anything between a centimeter on one side and a centimeter on the other side I can do whatever I want with [Music] so the basic sanding and shaping is done and it's looking rather nice now if you look at it you'll notice that I've changed it up quite significantly we've dropped to the trench height down a little we've created a fourth surface across the ridge of the trench this is so that when we get our models in the charge of the bank which we know they can stand on yeah when they get to the top they're sort of standing ahead and flat rather than on on a slope pointing up with a load of people shooting off from there it's a little aesthetic yeah but it works you know I mean all the things that I've done is I've made sure that there's various areas that I've pushed into and I sloped in different ways okay and what I mean is the bank goes off a bit down a bit and what I didn't want was just a completely flat one level surface because it's not realistic okay and so it's played out rather well I've gone along that smooth all my edges made all this undulating yeah and I've come on here and I've sanded this piece in so if I bring this off yeah you will notice yeah look out scraggy now when you Sun polystyrene whenever it gets thin it will break and that's just polystyrene you've just got except that's what it does okay but it's not a problem because what I already expected that to happen and I knew I'd be going in with a bit of filler and just coming along here and just smoothing it over and solving the problem which is the same on all the little areas where it's gone a little bit bobbly we're gonna put filler on it you'll be fine okay but this would be the stage where I start to put filler on okay and I start filling in my gaps and that sort of stuff I can't do that yeah the reason being is because I wanted to incorporate a bunker yeah and so if you see this piece over here yeah this piece has got a square for the bunker on it I can't do my gap fill in until the bunkers built so that's my next job now with regards to how I'm going to build the bunker dead-simple wearing this is the final of the letter makes I'm gonna do the same foam bunker tutorial method that I did for the tutorial so I'll throw a link up to it and if you didn't that you can go follow it there box I'm gonna put that in there now before I get cracked on with that one of the other things I've done is I've also done my final sort of shape in the sand in now this means coming along with your edge piece yeah I'm making sure everything lines up everything fits snugly one of the problems when you do modular pieces is what you don't want is at some point on a drawing line yeah there be a little bump which forces you pieces apart and so what I do is I get a t-square okay and I know that this MDF cut here is perfectly fine that's perfectly straight it's just whether these are sticking out a bit so what you going to do put it on yeah and slowly move it forward yes as you move it forward yeah if at any point the t-square moves away from the post weight from the MDF you've got a bump at that point a little bit of sandpaper coming smooth it out recheck it okay and away you go now there are tools there are hot wire cutting tools and stuff like that but scroll tables but the vast majority of you guys won't have those so this is how I did it before I got the scroll table and to be truthful as you can see it's actually how I prefer doing it now okay one of my concerns where the scope the scroll table is once you get to this stage if you make a mistake it's really hard to fix so having a little bit more control works well for me so my next job is I need to put in a bunker I need to put in a couple of five steps so I'll be back when they're done see in a second so guys that's the bunker in and it's done exactly as I did it in the let's make video and if you take a look it's looking rather nice let me bring that off for you okay quite nice isn't it it's been around yet now there's still gaps to be filled in that sort of stuff which is where we're getting to now [Music] so that's those gaps filled if I bring it up yeah you can see how I've just put slivers all the way around that bunker and just trim them off there's a little bit of PVA in there so where it dries it goes all set and if I bring that up you can see how I've made that disappear as well but that's not the only little sort of gaps and things you need to touch up when you're doing this or earthworks in the trenches yeah there's also the issue of drebber at the start when I said yeah as you watch we'll put them together and as you stand it all these little bits will break off now this isn't perfect and if you try and texture over this this will show through at the same time these edges here yeah quite often eking at little bits breaking off as you're shaping them and doing all that sort of stuff so even though I'm going to continue after this video with making more detail on the main board I need to sharpen up those edges and for those it's filler time so if I bring this one across yeah you can see nice and clearly yeah how all I've done is I've just got a bit of filler and I've just smooth all the way along there I applied it into all the dips don't worry about getting it 100% right because if there's anything like shows through it's just a corn polish indicator for where you push you put your bushes later guys yeah so don't worry about that book get those all the way through there and then at the same time yeah what I've done is I've given the edges a quick skim just to toughen them up now we know we're going to be texting this up anyway afterwards so he's gonna get tougher book it's a bit like adding extra reinforcement now this was done weird our filler yeah just a matter of getting out smudging it down and then get wet in your hand and smoothing it out yeah now I can't do anything more on this until this is all firmed up but I've gotta do these but that pretty much wraps up okay the actual trench work so come on cut these pics [Music] so guys detailing off the trench and adding all the interesting bits that make trenches so awesome in wargaming but before we actually tackle the trench is this something else I want to do now if you come down here and have a look at this you'll notice I've got some impressions in here one of the things I want to do is you can't really have trenches without having some craters on them yeah from artillery strikes yes shell holes shell scrapes as we call them in the British Army yeah so to do that what I'm doing is I'm using a heat gun now this is sort of one when you do this on terrain it breaks up the large areas it also gives a bit of cover and a little bit more stability to the models because you can angle the craters slightly so if you come down here you can see on these I've started to put them in and basically what I'm doing is I'm using a heat gun to get a basic impression a dip into the piece and then I could go in with some sand paper and I can go in with some dad's modeling putty and create the rim or before I can do that I need to make the dips so to do the dips yeah come in close with your heat gun yeah switch it on pull it away it's about dipping it yes so you maintain the control and as you can see I've got a lovely little dip there now you're not going to get perfectly circular holes when you do this you can use cardboard cut a hole out of it and then blow the air through that hole and it kind of works boy it's always been a bit of a pain for me and I just like just going for it okay so once again get yeah yeah you heat gun pick where you want your shell scrape your trench off give it a blast yeah you get your whole next job is sanding it up now I've got a little bit of sun paper here and write my hole when you use heat gun quite often it will dip down round the edges and written leave a little nipple raised in the middle yeah a little bit of sandpaper and just take that out it will get a bit scrunchy the reason being is because when you melt it it gets hardened okay as there's the plastic melts of the polystyrene and then when you're coming with the sandpaper obviously you're breaking it up and you get all a bit wobbly remember to watch out for the fumes guys but I bring that off yeah there's the one where it first starts off and you can see that sort of little bump there now if we move across to there you can see that I've got the dip in and all that remains now is a little bit more sanded and then just shape that up okay so that's my next job what I want to do is very quickly pull the holes on then watch call it then a little bit of a sand and then we'll come back I'll show you the DES model employee [Music] so working on the actual craters but I took a moment how to actually work on the banca and if you take a look you can see that the bunker is now all textured up now this was done just simply by a quick Sun once it all glued and dried at once I took the pins out and then just a little bit of filler a little bit of water smear it all around blend everything in and it's come out looking just like concrete which is perfect and then obviously I've moved on to the craters as you could see so if we look at the craters you can see that we've got our indents where we went in with the hot god then I sanded it yeah and we've been working on a sort of rings now the earrings work in a couple of different ways okay they do a few different things one they define the actual crater and make it look like a crater but also because the lip comes up here this bit is flat this bit is flat and that bit is cover so I'm adding a little bit more dynamic gameplay into an abyss stability and a bit of functionality well it's making it look awesome so when it comes to actually doing your rims I need to take you through that flyby over that pour this one here okay so I've got my craters yeah I've sanded them I've got my rough shape book what I need to do is create the rim around them and for that I'm using - modeling putty and what I've done is I've rolled out myself a sausage yeah and one quick trick when you're putting that onto anything wet it does is really awful for connecting with so sort of sticking to dry stuff it just keeps falling off but if you wet it first and when you apply it down which is what we're doing now it will stick now the technique for applying this down is dead simple what we're going to do is going to pinch it on first and I'm trying to get just a rough circle I'm more interested in actually getting it to a deer to it than the actual shape at this moment okay so that's not pinching down the next one is I'm going to smudge it out Edwards now this isn't so much about blending in with the peace or anything like that is more once again getting a better a dierence with the actual polystyrene like that come on there we go yeah no I've got it stuck down yeah I get to play a bit and what I'm doing here is basically all I'm interested in doing is forming the inside circle so I'm just scooped in it with my fingers this is a bit tricky and it comes with practice to be truthful guys a little bit practice and you'll be doing it fine absolutely fine yeah now as you can see it very roughly round next job smooth it out so I'm just going to blend it outwards just to take that lift off it so it's not so sharp yeah I'm not really worried about what the outside shape of it is like and how sort of realistic is yeah because I'm going to be going over this with filler and texture anyway so I can blend the outside in for the outside yes when I do the Phillip or I'm mainly interested in is this inside circle yeah and I never do that that's pretty good no doubt I'll be touching it all cuz you know I like living the things but I bring that up yeah there you are around we're coming with a filler we'll be able to blend these edges in a bit more and they'll look a little bit more realistic book we've made our earth embankment and that's the main thing so I've got one more of these to finish off now on there and then they're all done and we'll move on to doing the watch flip the bobwhite that's what we do next right cracker [Music] so my dad's craters are dry now and we're working on the stakes for the barbed wire well I was typically held in place with wooden stakes or metal stakes so it didn't roll all over the place so we're trying to replicate that and to do that I'm using cocktail sticks okay and I'm doing two rows of them now at the minute it looks rather spiky and pointy that's because I'm gonna leave these two completely dry and down I'm gonna fit I'm gonna texture the surface before I come in with a pair of clippers and cut them down all to an equal height it's a lot easier to make your steaks the same height if you do it after they're all glued in rather than pre cutting and trying to push them into the polystyrene - all the same height okay so for a minute first cut afterwards so how are we putting them in if I bring this one up yeah what you can see I may have to come bring this a little bit closer is yeah you can see these blue dots here this is marker pen and what I've done is I've simply gone across the entire piece and marked out where my stakes are gonna go this is so that I can watch I get a feel of how the barbed wire flows across all the pieces because it's a modular piece so it needs to match up at the edges okay next off a couple of blobs of PVA on them and then finally I've dropped in my watch coat my cocktail sticks I'm dropping in the cocktail sticks it is a simple as picking spot pushing it down yeah pulling it back up again to get PVA on the steak and then putting it back down again that's all there is to it so I'm gonna do the last of these few on here that's done and then we're gonna move on to fire steps [Music] so working on the fire steps for the trenches and if you're not aware of what fire step is a five-step is essentially a ledge okay and as you can see I've added this sort of one inch of ledge on and the idea being that when your troops are in the trench itself they are protected yeah from incoming fire yeah this horizontal thing you know the the bombs coming down here tough luck yeah did you know that trenches Russia sloped like that so you could dug behind him to hide from artillery and stuff like that little chick for you but don't do that for your model yeah it'll be a right pain in the backside to make trust me yeah slope you're soaking like that for your model okay but anyway the idea behind the fire step was that you can walk around here perfectly safely yeah having you brew your cigarettes and that sort of stuff and when the enemy was charging towards you you could step up to your fire step yeah and shoot them from cover I know where you shot them you step back down again and that's the idea behind a fire step in it the difference is foes would be like oh you're down you can't be shot out or you're in cover yeah and you can't shoot out I'll probably figure out some mechanics so you had to go with the games to represent one or the other you know what I mean which position you're in but that's game mechanics isn't it but you're interested in how much you do the five step are you all right come on down okay so if I bring this one up you can see yeah what I've essentially got is a one inch strip all the way across the front of the trench and I've duplicated this on this piece over here on this piece over here and we've just got this last one over here to do which I can use to show you how I'm doing it right so that's a problem with big pieces need to keep moving them around now very simply yeah I have cut a one-inch baton from my off cuts okay one inch long well one inch wide one inch high because it's the the height of the post irie yeah and then on this side what I've done is I've ever did okay now the bevel is because these are sloped so if I put it completely flat they would stand away from the wall at the top of so by beveling it I can get in snug now twice you put it in and shape it round cuz obviously this is straight this is curved no Mel didn't make a mistake Mel's got a fix okay it's dead simple yeah you're gonna break it yeah and all I'm doing is just come along and I'm not breaking it completely I'm just snapping it bulb on me right now but what that allowed me to do is come in here and place it straight up against that yeah and if I bring that round you can see by breaking it yeah I'm going to go round the corner now next job yeah bit glue glue on there that's for the bottom and then if we go for here glue it along here yeah specifically this top edge of the bevel okay because that's what's going to sit against the wall the bottom might sit away from it yeah so go across the top of your bevel yeah and simply come in pick where you're gonna put it yeah you might break it a bit more - Oh broke it there yeah just like that now I'm gonna put it there push it in there now we've got a bit of a crater there so we can have a bit of a clap don't worry I'll sort that yeah I'm gonna push him in their next job trim off the ends so blade watch fingers I'll do a quick job here because I can do a sharper job off camera that's quite a good job and then if it's been redone round I'll clean that off camera as well but I bring that round like that so you can see yeah as you can see I've got my fire step in there yeah and it is as simple as that I don't need to worry about these cracks and this saw stuff because this is all gonna get covered over yeah we're gonna have a very sort of sheet metal in and wooden planks and stuff like that it's just the substructure yeah but I need to get it in and they need to get set now that is the last of the five steps to go in yeah all the rest of them are done so my next job I need to start working on the top of the trenches okay because they wouldn't just be a lip and then flat quite often you'd have sandbags you that they've built up you know fire ports and vision ports and sniper ports and all sorts of ports and then balsa ports in the officers mess a what oh brother bloody Rupert's right I'm gonna crack on now they well I'm gonna quickly pin this so it doesn't move yet so it stays nice and stable for me yeah and then watch will it will come back once I started decorating the top of the trenches and making it a little bit more interesting yeah [Music] so I'm working on the earth ramp ah that's sort of part of the defensive part of the trenches the idea being that when I looked at sort of images of trenches what you got was you got the trench wall with the fire step and then it sort of sloped out and then goes up a bit and down a bit so basically when the soldiers are in the trenches in this on the fire step they can stand they can rest on the earth embankment and then the rifles can just go over like a little earth lip and a little earth earth ramp on top of that I spotted that there are quite a few watch-coat sort of places where they built the earth or put a plank across it load of sandbags to make like a shooting pool and so what I've done is I've done this yeah and you can see my shooting ports there with the planks on top they've still got to be dressed with sandbags yeah but that's a stage later yeah but in the minute I'm just getting the basic substructure in for them so you can see though basically I put all the watch click the dust modelling put you down and up basically these are just lollipop sticks with the ends cut off and if I bring this one off yeah just show you how I've done it on here you know it's bit easier to hold it is exactly the same technique as I used on the craters wet it first roll it place it down smooth it out yeah in the case of these are blobbed it up shape them roughly yeah let them stick down and then I added the watch with the plank now the last thing I need to do is I need to go along with a little bit of PVA and just rub a little bit of PVA either side of there the reason being is as does dries it's not a glue it's a clay okay and so it won't actually stick to the actual wooden planks they'll become loose again yeah especially because it shrinks a little does does yeah because as the moisture disappears from the - clay it shrinks down it's volume reduces and that means all these watch your little planks are going to come loose so I'm just going to get a little blob PVA either side put that over and as it shrinks that will hold it all in place so that's the next job [Music] now work continues on shaping up the trenches and if we come down to our pieces what I can do is I bring this up and I'll show you yeah I've been working on shaping the trench lines ready for us to sort of put in all i detail and all that sort of stuff because before it was pretty standardized so what if i doing Bocek oh well dead simple first off the ground with we're sanding that we're sanding the five step we're coming into this ridge here which was quite sharp we're sanding that down to make it a little bit more undulated a little bit more real because it wouldn't have been a sharp angled step of earth it would have got broken down as they were leaned in putting their guns over and that sort of stuff same time we're shaping up the back pieces and all of this is being done just quite simply a little bit of sandpaper it is just a matter of coming along and give it a little shape above all what I'm trying to do is just break up all those straight lines those straight flat bits at the bottom of the trench this is one of the reasons why we built a polystyrene 3 layers high and only cut the trenches 2 layers down so we'd have a layer to play with in shape it just helps it make it all look more real so I'm going to finish these pieces I'll show you some pictures [Music] so guys we've skipped ahead in the build and this right so why have we skipped ahead well that simple yeah more people email here didn't realize that the memory card in that kamerad filled up okay and so when I was sort of explaining what I was doing and that sort of stuff I thought was recording the good night close-up footage okay now luckily okay it was only a simple thing that I was sort of explaining so I can easily bring you up to speed and explain it anyway okay so if we come down to the bench yes so looking a bit different whose thick very white don't panic it's actually just a minor stage so let me bring you up to speed so if we look at the P actual pieces one of the things that we've done at the end of the the sort of last bit of footage I have had on this video which we've gone in a in with our Sun paper and we shaped a fire step we've undulated artery yeah I shaping all this and get reading getting rid of that rigid line that we had looked far too unnatural yeah and it looks a lot more natural now if I grab this piece and bring it up yeah you can see where by going in and chafing it and putting these little dents in here it just makes it look so much more realistic guys okay now I've got the five step the whole way along it yeah and I was debating whether to take chunks of that out but yeah I want to keep this as functional as possible and if you don't want such a longer fly step then just don't call this long you know what I mean yeah there's nothing for me to really gain by cutting them out at this stage so I'm not gonna worry about it now the other thing that I did was I cut all my cocktail sticks down to the right size and the other thing was with regards to the eungeum undulation if you look in places like here you can see these blobs of dads it wasn't just about shaping it down after it sanded all the pieces down and got the dips in I wanted a few Rises and so what I did was dead simple little balls the dads push them a little bit flat wet the polystyrene place the dodgeballs on top of and then just smooth them out with a wet hand what was left with with these bumps and these are just little ones all over the places now they may not seem like much but just a little bit of wind relation on a trade makes it so much different than if it was just a flat surface yeah it all adds to that sort of realism okay that we're trying to go for and then there here's me saying well you know five steps in function all that sort of stuff but you know I wanted to break up that flat surface now after the dance was put on or I did was went in with some filler I rebuilt up all the edges of the craters so they weren't so pronounced and I think I've got a little bit of work still to do on that one and a couple others that's looking a little bit sharp and the other thing was with a wet hand lots of war I just rubbed filler all over it now this isn't about Textron it okay we've still got to texture it this is about the firm in it up yeah if you rough filler over polystyrene it firms it up really well okay and the other benefit of Robbie and filler all over polystyrene is that you can then use hot glue and super glue and glue things to the polystyrene because once it's got a coat of filler on yeah it won't retreat back away from the policy with the heat or with the superglue okay so that's really important because the next stage that I'm going to be working on after I've done a couple little touch-ups on these craters is we're going to start D detailing up the actual trench walls so yeah here's some pics of where it is right now and I'll bring it back once we've got stuck into the trench walls zenus that guys [Music] so I'm working on detailing up the trench walls and for the first part of this I'm going with corrugated cardboard now this is simple craft cardboard that you can buy that's flat on one side and corrugated on the other side and it comes in these a full sheet and it's just a simple manner of cutting them down to the right size yeah applying PVA glue and pinning them in I did mention previously that on me I was gonna use hot glue but I actually sat down and thought well I'm gonna have to pin the top in the bottom anyway hot glue is just an additional step so I'll skip that and just stick with the PVA yeah I love pba don't ya but if I bring it up you can see that we've got all the various panels cut and they're all different sizes cuz I like to break up uniformity it makes it look a little bit more interesting in a little bit more real and if I spin this round you can see this fire pit here now in the fire pit I've changed the orientation of the corrugated bits yeah this is because it's a lot easier to actually go round curves and I'm gonna replicate this on the rest of this side as well now and that's for the corrugated card I do intend to do boarding and that sort of stuff but we'll look at that in the next section in the meantime I'll get cracked on with getting this corrugated card on [Music] right I'm down here working on the trenches come on down alright then so what we got well as you can see yeah I'm starting to put my mic my corrugated cardboard zolly and it's looking really nice I'm starting to put my stakes in now started off with the simple ones at the front I'm going for cocktail sticks on this yeah because I don't want to take up too much room on the fire step with large of support beans that sort of stuff so cocktail sticks work really well because they actually fit into the grooves of the corrugated cardboard now the way I'm doing this is dead simple I've just done these in one quick row but yeah I'm coming along I am putting a blob of PVA roughly where I want the stake I'm putting on at the top of the cardboard just like that yeah I'm gonna getting my cocktail stick okay placing it in push it down giving it a little twist so the PVA goes all the way around and I'm pushing it in okay I know what that means is it yeah I've got a nice blob at the bottom so I'll make sure it sticks and I've got PVA all the way up which means it will stick securely and when it's dries I can come along in the Clippers and just clip them down now obviously this is for the front step when it comes to the back step I'm actually using the balsa wood okay so if you come down here again I'll show you these yeah now these are my balsa wood beans and all I've done is I've just basically got five mill balsa wood strips give them a quick brush with a wire brush to get a bit of texture on and what's gonna happen is these are gonna come in and we put on all the larger points now the benefit of using bolster is obviously you can cheat you can shave it and you can you know do all the wonderful things you can normally do with it but while some wood is soft enough that I could put pins through it so for putting PVA down and I can literally pin it to the trench wall until the PVA grips [Music] right so the fire step now for the fire step what I'm using is I'm using balsa wood and what got is I've got a sheet of balsa wood here okay and all done is with my wire brush I've scored it to get a bit of texture to it so it looks a little bit more like wood after that I'll cut it into strips and then after that I've career into little planks and all I'm doing it's going along and I'm just pushing these in now each of these planks is 3/4 of an inch long okay which is sort of the minimum you need to do a watch for it for a one-inch base to stand on it steadily okay now I need to get this finish because I can't do the record rest of the texturing until the fire steps in and everything else is glued down completely [Music] right as you can see yeah there's a bit of blue there now what we've done is I've gone in with my long blade I've removed the five-step sanding it down yeah just to get a sort of level then I've gone in and I've put a full-length piece of our corrugated card in and a couple of wooden stakes we used exactly the same techniques as we did on the trench war okay so there's nothing really to show you other than perhaps a little bit of watch clip a little bit of bring that up yeah so you can see you see I put the corrugated cardboard on the sides as well just to cover up the sides now I've not just only done that which one this one okay what else have I got to do well straight off you can see a walking great hole in that base and it's quite pronounced okay this is for the muddy puddles now I don't expect the puddle to be this deep I'm gonna go in and I need to re layer it with some - modelling put yeah I'm gonna put some texturing on it afterwards - anyway yeah so I needed it quite deep so I dug it out with some simple watch with some simple sixty grit paper now on top of that you can see we've got another one of our sections here and these are going to be for the ladders for going over the top yeah but over here yeah you'll see we've got a slightly larger section now in this case I've come in I cut it out and then I've gone in with my blade and I've essentially cut straight lines I've been used the tip of a ruler and dug it out that's gonna be a SAP now if you don't know what a SAP here is a SAP is an underground tunnel that leads to a forward point now it could be an observation point it could be a dummy bunker or something like that but basically they were quite common in the trenches so it sort of occurred to me that well it's quite possible you know not only to sort of like go to the observation point be the stat but if the enemy discovers the observation point they could come in via the sap so there are alternative entries onto the board you know so my troops have broken through here so I've got one on here and one on one of the curved bits over here and the idea being is depending on how the laydown modulae either they'll be the end of the board or there'll be one on the edge when one roughly Center yes so there's a bit of play functionality-wise their final thing is sorry for the sniffles yeah you can see I've just cut out a little wedge from either side of there and that's where I sort of platform's gonna grow go across our bridge okay so my next job is I need to prepare what trip my saps yeah so I'll come back ones have got my SAP stuff [Music] right that's most of the construction elements of the changes I wanted to do done if you come on down let me show you so obviously yeah we've done our ports for our lighters which are they're using exactly the same techniques if I bring it across yeah you can see our SAP there and it is hollow or it goes in about an inch yeah and I'll be able to cover that up and that sort of stuff but that's the entrance to our underground tunnel now on top of that our request went out for a bridge so if I can get it on the camera right there you go there's your bridge now all of these things have been pouring for they need blending in with the rest of the scenery the bridge the SAPS the flooring as well and that means that's modeling putty that's my plan but I can't use that until my PVA is dry cuz what I don't want to do is go in with a bit of water and downs to start messing around start moving things okay so I'm gonna leave that to dry and then when it's dry we'll dance it up and then we're on to the text tree so feeling a bit better back in the studio and everything is dry now so if you'd like to join me at the desk yeah as you can see all our bits are on and I'm only going to show you this one because it's duplicated on the others so we'll just go through this one right oh so we've got our truck bridge here that's gone down your firm yeah we've got a lot of spots and we've got our saps now you will notice that if I bring them off yeah that we've got a few owls here we've got a hole here we've got a gap here these need to be filled okay but it's not just them we've also got gaps along here with our bridges we're going to have gaps along here okay in the sort of where the corrugated iron goes up but the the polystyrene dips down behind it and so we need to fill those now I'm not going to use filler because what we feel is getting low and - I need to do something I need something a bit bulkier filler can be a bit sloppy these sort of jobs yeah so my product of choice is the old days again [Music] so all the dashes in and the gaps are filled and if you come down yeah you can see on here that I filled in all these gaps yeah I filled in our big trench that's still wet now to be truthful really should wait until it's dry before continue but I know I'm going to be fine from experience so I'm just gonna crack on yeah on top of that we've blended in the bridge blended in all these gaps yeah I missed that one I have to do that once right ah I'll do that now there we go all fix it took a second right my next job is I need to start doing the planking now I have been thinking I don't want to plank it all the way up all the way along it'll be a long job and it doesn't really need it okay what we do need though is where we've got these impressions that we put in we do need to put plank in there because that's where we're going to prop up water so well got over here is my standard strips of balsa wood I've gone over them with a wire brush to get some texture on them and then I've cut them out and we've basically got all of those now I'm going to use these to lay across yet the trench line I am going to go the same sort of orientation as I've gone with the fire step it would be easy to do them length ways to be perfectly honest but what I want to do and try and achieve with this yeah they really need to go perpendicular to the trench wall and on top of that that's how they were done in the trenches yeah I think I've seen photos and that's how they were done now it's not just a matter of gluing some boards down I want to start texturing it up as well and so with that in mind yeah it's recipe time we're gonna make some terrain group gloop so what I've got here is I've got some filler it's a spare tube I just need to use it I might as well use it on this I've got some grit very fine shops and PVA and some paint and I'm just gonna mix these together yeah to make a bit of a slurry that I can use to put down in the corners and around places and all that sort of stuff so it's so much in here it's not much in there is there we should be okay but if I have any problems I've got some our Tech's down there I wanted to mess around with so I can use that as well so let's get this in that so that's all that filler in it's a little bit dried out but we should be fine yeah that's for a bit of PVA in there take the lid off good squirt PVA just helps it all bond together now we need to thin it down a bit yeah and so we're onto the paint yeah and the trick is to fill it down enough but when you add the grit it thickens up but still stays stays a slurry so grab the paint one two two should be enough and then what I've got to start to do is I've got to mix all this in and see if I can get a smooth paste out of it so I'll see you in a sec guys right a slurry is pretty much well there you go yeah it's a little bit bitty but that would be perfectly fine now the next job is grit now you don't need that much grit in it to be perfectly honest yeah I normally find enough to to sort of coat the top isn't enough to do what you need to do for this sort of volume yeah when it comes to the grit always work on the bases off add a little see how it goes see if you need to add more yeah it's a lot easier to add more grit than it is to take it away it's a fact you bloody can't take it away right let's put a bit more in and I think that would be about it and so there we are and that's our consistency yeah if I bring the spoon up you can see the texture on it yeah if I show you in there perfect absolutely perfect now the next job that we need to do is get prep to actually lay it down so give me a second all cleaned up and applying now so I've got my sorry slurry yeah I've got a plastic spatula and I've got a hogs hairbrush and with this this is what I'm doing okay I'm pasting my slurry on and it is going down I don't just basically manipulating it I'm pushing it into the corners I'm also putting it over the actual what look at the craters yeah it's important when you do this that after you brush that you do go in and give it a bit of a sniffle otherwise you're going to have stroke mods which will be dead obvious [Music] [Applause] [Music] for the Sun bugs I'm going to be using Daz as usual yeah I've got some tape on my desk I've got two lines there that are 5 millimeters apart I've got two lines there that are 8 millimeters apart and they're divided up into 15 millimeter sections and so what we're going to do is roll this out until it's 5 mil once we've got a 5 mil we place it on our 8 mil and then just press it down until it fills those 8 mil spots and then we divide it up at the 50 mil divides and finally we're left with that which all we do is just tap in the edges to make it a nice round Sun back well a little bit more Sun back like right only got 300 or so of these to do crack on so going through the long process of sandbagging it up and if you take a look it's looking rather nice yeah now you can see straightaway what I'm doing with the sandbags here is I'm starting off with a simple row that goes all the way along yeah if I spin it round to this side yeah you can see where I started to sort of offset the sandbags like they've fallen off it it helps break it up and make it look a little bit more and more realistic now if I move it across a little bit further you can see where we've got these piles of sandbags yeah now those piles are for the vision ports yeah it may be a little bit excessive on the sandbags not quite sure yet but I quite like the look of it and I've duplicated it on both sides yes if I bring that down it's alright I'm trying not knocking me sandbags while I do it yeah I've got them on both sides so they're like some baggy mounds yet with the planks and that the sandbags across the top now I've done all of this yeah all I need to do is I need to come in and I just need to do this back row here and a couple of little odds and sods on it and then at that point all the sandbagging will be done okay which is almost pretty much finishes this project off now to lay the sound backs down it's dead simple all I'm doing is I'm putting a blob of PVA down and then I'm putting the sandbags on top so along the long line I did a long line of PVA and just repetitively placed them down then after that I'm going in and just putting a little various blobs down and popping them on so yeah if I was to give you a quick example yeah it is just a simple matter of coming in yeah putting a bit of PVA down getting a couple of sandbags yeah it's always best to sort of align them sort of off each other yeah so don't make them too regular yes they would have been regular when they were built but they would have been shelled they would have got moved and all that sort of stuff yeah and to be truthful but the soldiers aren't going to climb out of the trenches to reorganize the sandbags at the top of the firing line we're going to do the best they can from cover and leave the rest so to have gone down and then if I want to place on top I need to put a bit of PVA on top to drop another sandbag on yeah so once all these are done okay the only thing I'll need to do then is to start putting the ladders on now there's a few places that need ladders to get about and for that what we've got is dead simple to barbecue skewers yeah and then what we've done is we've split coffee stirrers in half and use those for the slats and all we're going to do is trim it to the right length and glue them in place once everything is in place yeah Paul do that is with the last of our textured mud just blend some of the edges in so everything doesn't look like it's sitting on top of the mud rather that you know it's sitting in the mud so I've got a little bit of that left we'll use that just to blend a couple edges don't need to do it all just a little yeah and that should wrap it up [Music] so I've got all those little jobs done and we're getting almost ready to start painting now come on down now I'll show you what I've actually done now if you can see on this main piece yeah I put in a row of sandbags in there so we took off all the bits Reid put down the clay yeah and ivory textured it and lay it in some sandbags now on top of that you'll notice if I bring this off yeah that the sandbags are looking decidedly more dirty this is because after it actually they'd all dried and set in place I went back with my mud mix basically lathered it around the edges of the sandbags and smeared it over and rub my hand over it just to do it him up and blend them in before that they were they were looking like they were sitting on top of the ground and now they look far more like they're part of it you know what I mean in it it just looked better no it wasn't good the sandbags and reef it's in that bit I also started to back up a little bit so things like it barrels and all sorts of little bits all over the places binoculars on it I still got to put a helmet on a stick on it yeah but we're getting there [Music] now we've reached to the stage where we are almost ready to paint I know I know yeah all I need to do now is very quickly I just want to have a look at quick look at these sides and give them a quick run over with a little bit of sandpaper just to smooth out any sort of bits that stick out a little that's stopping them from coming together really neat yeah so quick run over the edges with some paper and then once that's done I get ready start prepping with a painting now this will start yeah by using a simple black emulsion latex plate paint in the US I'm just going to paint round the sides okay and just blacken those up ready for us to tackle the earth I always do that first for some reason I always end up needing it up at the end but I like putting the base coat down first before I actually paint the top surface don't know why it's just me but that's where I need to do so crack on [Music] time to start painting it up now when we've done that traditional that makes we've done them with this sort of where is it it's a a Java brené Brown yeah from Wilco statements range okay and we've used this color for all the lens makes for the battlefield basics a little bit of a standard color but it is in no way realistic now part of the idea behind these battlefield bosses at the end of the series is that I step it up and I show you where you can take the letter makes if you put a little bit more effort in and so that's what we're gonna do we're gonna make the ground a little bit more realistic so I've got two colors here I've got a brown and I've got a great now you may say Brown for the ground great for the bunker no great to go in the brown to make it look more realistic this is called D saturation [Music] so my base coat has gone down and it is a lovely dark brown okay it's a desaturated brown on top of that I've also done the bunker now before I can actually do more on the earth tones yeah because I've got to do the man-made details this is because they would have had a set collar and then they would have got moody dot okay so before I can tackle the earth I've got to do things like the trench walls or the ward and the bunker now for the bunker I'm going to use my standard sort of stippling technique with grace and a little bit of yellow in there if you haven't seen that there's a video in the urban techniques playlist with regards to the wood I'm gonna go for a brown yeah but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna throw a little bit of grey in there desaturate it down a bit get a little bit more realistic and then we're gonna let the washes do the work for the actual watch or the actual metallic bits on the bunker yeah the actual corrugated iron all the reference photos I've seen this is pretty much galvanized yeah I was basically grey you know what I mean so rather than go for metallic yeah I'm going for a grey I'm going to stiff it up and let the washes do the work on that so that's the next drop before I can get the rest of the earth tones down so long to air painting a head right let's crack on you'll see it through pictures [Music] okay so here we have our piece well we've got all the pieces but I can show you what I've done on this piece so straight off yet we've gone in and I went in with my light gray yeah and I did all the corrugated iron yeah which has given it a really nice sort of dirty galvanized look I didn't want it metallic moving on from that I then went in and I came in with a really desaturated Brown yeah brown mixed with a grey and I used that the sort of my wood tones yeah along all the wooden platforms the bridge is down here next job come back in with the base colour and just start blending in the edges yeah so just along all the little join lines where there was lots of oil worth where there's lots of earth falling down okay and I got all those done and then the next stage after all they were done okay and it was looking rather nice was to start the stand bags now obviously you can see the sandbags and the hold them up they're looking pretty bright don't worry about this yeah I've got a highlight and then we're going to wash them all down when we apply the washes but I want a good mustard base coat to my son bags I quite like that color yeah not sure if it's the most realistic colour to be perfectly honest sometimes whenever mustard mustard when I used to fill them but it does work as a good base once you sort of highlight and wash it down they do look really nice okay and that's where we are right now now all that's left for me to do right now is I want to tackle stippling up this bunker now but stiffen at the bunker I'm going to use my watch with my realistic concrete technique now that's just dead simple that's using grace with a tiny touch of yellow yellow moves the grate a bit yellow is a little bit like adding Brown to it it moves the grate off that monotone sort of pattern yeah and it moves it into something a little bit more realistic and all I'm gonna do is do my base gray put a little bit yellow into it yeah stop stifling it up and then slowly add a little bit more lighter gray what that will do is it will bring it up and it will make because of the stippling it will make it look lovely so I'll probably going to show you that through photographs once again okay and then once that's done these will be dry enough to give them a dry brush so I'll throw some photos up for that and it'll be time to tackle the earth [Music] okay now there is we are pretty much ready okay to start flocking it I've set for one last thing which is the wash so if you come down yeah what I've got here is I've got a very very very very dark brown okay now that very very very dark brown is my standard Brown that all of this has been done in okay with the different tones and just some black so I've just darkened it okay now I'm gonna use this as my wash just to blend in break up a few last elements so we're going to do the sandbags we're going to do these trench walls here we're going to do the trench floor okay and then I'm gonna do the actual watch of a bunker and I'm gonna be a little bit more specific throw a bit extra dark tones a bit of streaking on that I've covered that in a previous video I'll ship throw a link up on the actual techniques yeah but that's what we're gonna do we're going to combine that weathering to make that specific building pop yeah but generally the wash is to tone down the brightness of the sandbox because they'd be dirty they wouldn't be this clean and also to darken down the trench itself because that's the muddy damp wet area [Music] so guys that's all the washing done and if you come down to the table you can see on my trench system where the washing has gone in obviously I've done a little bit on the bunker and that sort of stuff but the main washing has been done in the actual trench itself but very quickly grab this bit you can see how dark I've got it in there on top of that I've done along those lines the blending lines there and the blending lines on this side and a bit of spot washing on the actual watch bullet on the sandbags to dirty them up and what this has done is its given that impression of dampness okay and depth to the trench now as I said before we technically because they're on a hillside they wouldn't be that damp but you guys asked for it so there we are same time yeah I've gone over all my wood work in that wash and that's all about blending and breaking things up lots of I first went in with a light brown wash and then I went in with a dark one specifically and recesses and on the floors and in the edges the reason for that is the lots of different tones break it all up and make it look more realistic so if you come along you can see how I've used the dark wash along here into this crevice into this crevice along here into this crevice there there underneath the actual sandbag sort of viewports where I think it would be damp I haven't done though watch what the the craters yet they they're yet to do but what I have done as you can see is I've come in and I've glued down the start of the barbed wire now I am gonna glue that that down more when I'm going with the PVA and do the flocking and that sort of stuff but I didn't want to be fiddling around with the barbed wire whilst the girl was wet whilst I was waiting to get flock on it so I just a couple of spots just to get the barbed wire in place yeah then I apply the PVA and I am going to add more barbed wire onto this once the PVA is on but I needed to put these two strands on yeah so that's all my washing done okay that's all my barbed wire done and we are actually at the stage of flocking it okay so I need to get self or flocking I think the best thing that I could do is I'll show you some pics I'll come back when we're ready to block it [Music] right got myself set up and we are ready for flocking okay but before we get into flocking there's a little bit of a challenge that we need to talk about now obviously there's flocking and there's flocking modular pieces much like with building it and painting it and doing all those sort of things we need to consider the modularity okay and what I mean by that is what we need to do is if we're using different shades of flock to represent different or grass types we need to make sure that when we put these pieces together in different orders yeah the flock lines up and there's a simple way of doing that okay now if you come down what you can see is I've got my two end pieces here now this is important because technically one represents a left hand and I on the larger pieces or less will line up to this and this will line up for the right hand side so technically if I do this one piece and I keep these together yeah I can make sure that my different grass grass blends so I've got my dark mid and a little bit of light own my different glass grasp of glass Gras grass blends strongly today grass bends will go down on this piece and they I'll be able to match but they're in the right place so when I come to do the larger pieces I'll be able to separate these two n bits put them either side of the piece separate by a centimeter okay so the nice you touch it but I'll be able to see what sort of grass stones I need up the slope now when it comes to actually grass in this up we're gonna go for I'm thinking it sort of light a bit dark tones on here mid tone around here a little bit light tone I want this mainly as mud now when we get to the back I don't really want to grass these up I want to give the impression of grass on the right-hand edge so essentially what we've got is we've got the trench works on the mud either side of it but there is grass up there okay so I'm gonna do much the same technique with that I'll just keep that a little bit darker because you know the mud and the wet and that now - I should do it I've got my flock and then what I've got is I've got a mixture of PVA now this is just bog standard PVA with water mixed down to a consistency roughly 50/50 just to get it sort of nice and liquidy I put a little bit of flow aid in there to keep it flowing yeah and we're gonna brush it down now when we put it down we're gonna go from roughly here all the way up to about there now as we do before we do the flocking I've got little bits of barbed wire all round here to fit in between these gaps I'll push those in as soon as the glue is on and then we'll move to the flocking okay so that's the battle-plan let's see how it turns out right let's crack off [Music] so that's our Kong foliage Perron and if you look at the piece yeah you can see I put it in various little clumps just to break it up along with the static grass and this sort of plane this is really blake breaking up now but we've reached the stage where we need to do the final touches because we've done the gross clump foliage either patch the static grass and the clump foliage yeah but we need to start adding some little bits like this ground foliage okay now this is just a fine chopped foam this is going to get sprinkled on but there's you can't really do it do we get to the sealing stage the reason being is you find little bits okay you can't blew those down individually yeah just being nightmare so what you need to do is sort of soak the piece in your in your sealing solution yeah and then drop these on and let them soak in and fix okay now yeah for my sealing solution I'm using this yeah now this is watered down PVA it's one-third PVA two-thirds water with a little bit of Windsor Newton flow aid in there okay and it is just going to be a simple matter of me coming along to my piece which is down here I've got it on a bit of plastic yeah obviously there's gonna be a lot of drips it's raised up on some phone yeah so that it doesn't get stuck to the plastic or worry whatever it's on yeah Annie is a simple matter of starting the blasting process I'm gonna give the whole thing good soak now a lot of people pre-wet these things there's no real need to be truthful if you've got a decent amount flow aid yeah you can just give them a soap concentrate at the top and let it word down yeah any excess pools that I'm going to get in the craters I can soak those up with a bit paper yeah so I'm gonna crack on get this soap then I'll show you the the sort of foam flocking so all soaked I've gotten a phone flock and all I'm gonna do is just come along and give it a little bit of sprinkle in between various bits yeah like I say this will soak up while the moisture is still on it this will soak it all up yeah and fix really nice yeah in between the lines you can all we see the color gradients changing on this beautiful yeah so sprinkle some along here ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba yeah well get some dark this is a bit of a contrast yeah dark on there yeah and you can see it soaking up through the actual all the clump foliage yeah I'm making it nice and solid if you are worried about some of your clump foliage not really sticking down you can give them another blast now finally I've got my little bits off yeah simple might just simple scatter and I can start blending in edges yeah anyway where I think that I've missed up or I've messed a little I am going just quite right I can go in and just fix those yeah any patches where the PVA didn't stick before and I've been left with empty patches I can fix those as well yeah but I can just blend these edges in yeah oh there's something and that is all there is to it just needs it very quickly yeah because we don't want to pull the PVA in there do we and soak that up well it seemed to call it bleeding off it right next job I've gotta leave this to drip dry yeah and then what's cool it obviously once it's all dry we'll be able to do the staining okay and sort make it look a little bit more realistic yeah so see you shortly [Music] so that's all our PV a seething done annie is all nice and dry and we are on the last leg so if we come down yeah as you can see everything is rock-solid everything stuck on yeah it's looking a lot nicer now the colors are blended and muted down but it's still not quite there you see what the problem we've got is we've got this sort of line and even though I broke it off with a sprinkling it's still a little bit strong so what done is I've got my airbrushing you can use a damp brush with this yeah you can do it yeah airbrush is just a bit easier and inside I've just got some watered-down Brown my standard Brown and all I'm gonna do is just come along yeah and just spray along these lines yeah what that'll do yeah is that's gonna help these lines blend in with this mud line now on top of this I've gotta go round all my all my craters okay and then once they're done I'm gonna come back in with a black okay so well with a black slightly touch with my brown yeah yeah just so it's not on that black I'm gonna come in and do my actual the Centers of my craters okay so that's my next task yeah blend these edges do the center those and then we're ready to put the water of the resin war effects in and finish this project so okay stop in [Music] it's the actual piece now as you can see yeah I've got almost staining in now not just that it's been a day yeah and my watch put Michael on foliage is all firm Mike you know ring everything is yeah absolutely solid and fine and it's all sealed up but the glass the ground foliage we've still got the actual trench works what I mean by that is this is still watch for dust modelling putty with just paint over it this is balsa wood with just paint over it you know I mean this is cardboard with just paint over it needs protecting now I could use watered-down PVA for that but the problem with that is it can pool a bit in the recesses and on something like that it's a little bit more difficult to get out with your paper towel secondly with grass yeah you don't get a sort of glassy effect with the PVA with what - like with hard textures such as sandbags bunkers stuff like that VV a can give it a bit of a quasi texture yeah so my choice is matte varnish okay now my matte varnish of choice is this which is pro s Pro XL yeah Pro matte varnish it's about a nine pound it can it's a car varnish and it's brilliant dries in about an hour yeah it can be used in all sorts of different moistures really tough finish on it yeah very matte so my plan is I'm gonna take these at my studio to the the spraying area I'm gonna give them a quick spray of this and by that I'm just going to do the sides yeah and then I'm gonna do the actual trench work Channel yeah there's no point we release plate spraying it on the flock yeah one it's already sealed into this is a surface varnish ie yeah it will coat the surface of something and make it hard flock is kind of spongy and lots of different textures so it won't soak into that the PVA has already done that which is why we need to use PVA for that okay guys so I've got some explaining to do and then we will be back with the final Dragon Balls so that's the map varnishing doing Annie has finished lovely but I haven't just matte varnish die back I went back in with my airbrush and just sprayed a little bit more dilute Brown around those craters and around those areas just a muddy it up a little bit more yeah and the results are rather nice so that's what we're looking at now this has all been varnished this is nice and tough and all playable same here this is all fur and as you can see we've muddied it up lovely so I've got a lovely transition from the green field all the way up to the muddy trenches now we have varnish and this would typically be the end of the process and now we'll be a happy chap but we are not finished yet you see we have to put the resin in now for the war effects because you wanted water and puddles and you know water under the duck boards and that sort of stuff so we got to do that now I've had to leave it to the very last stage because obviously I've sprayed these with matte varnish if I put the resin in before the war effects spraying them over with a matte varnish would have basically matted them out and ruin the water effects so they've had to go in after the matte varnish and if we come down what I'm using is I'm using a glass cast from easy composites it's a two to one epoxy resin hot epoxy resin yeah and I'll be mixing in just a little bit of brown in there okay now these are my core brown colors that I've been using all the way through so it will match the ground Col and it will look right okay and the idea is that we're going to pour it or just call it in between those boards and there's a couple of places which we know we can put some puddles in okay but I haven't got that much of it left so my priority is do the dock boards and then depending on what how much volume of resin I've got left then we'll move on and we'll look at doing perhaps some puddles and stuff like that I should be able to book can't be on a percent sure now my next job is to mix up the resin now I've talked about resins and all this sort of stuff there in the water playlist yeah you can go have a look at instructions on those or things I'm not going to baby step you through it well basically I'm going to weigh them up okay one part watch got hardener two parts resin I give a mix okay for poram out the Cabal mixing them in into a fresh cup it's called double copping yeah it's a good way of making sure you get a really good mix once the double mix is done I'm gonna throw the watch whoa a little bit of paint in there get my color in there and get it in here as quickly as possible that's because I've got about 15 minutes before he starts stupid you know get in a bit more viscous okay and it'll be difficult to pour and that sort of stuff so I need to be on my toes on this so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start mat my steering and all that sort of stuff and just get stuck in and when we come back well puddles now trenches so I'll get cracked on [Music] we've got gloss resin everywhere it was too wet so what I did was came in with that really thin down base color yeah I pretty much used all the bit thin down laid it over then came along with a damp cloth and just cleaned it off and the end results are looking something like that okay which a beautiful we've got that lovely blend between deep pores the saw wet ground and that's all so folks that's how I put together that awesome six foot modular trench line those are all the tips and tricks obviously if you'd like a little bit more information because you're going to tackle this project remember that those five B locks on the entire process are in the project's playlist and if you don't fancy tackling something this grand we have got all those individual tutorials in the let's make playlists yeah I'll throw it links up to those at the end of the video but in the meantime yeah I hope you've enjoyed this and here's some pics of the finished piece [Music] if you're new to the channel you can subscribe down there and if you're not new well give the video a like if you've got any questions leave them in the comments for me and as always if you do appreciate this content please consider pledging $1 a month on patreon keep the lights on the cameras rollin and me producing these awesome videos for you and in the meantime till next time crack onto rain axe

Channel: TheTerrainTutor

Views: 241,785

Keywords: Terrain, Scenery, wargames terrain, trenchline terrain tutorial, model scenery trenches, model terrain trenches, wargaming trenches, 28mm trenches, 40k terrain trenches, 28mm trenchline, bolt action trenches, bolt action trenchline, trenches terrain tutorial, modular trenchline, modular trenches, wargaming terrain, terrain trenches, defences terrain tutorial, bunker terrain tutorial, battlefiled basis series, lets make

Id: 94RWvfSKSoM

Length: 100min 42sec (6042 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2018