This is Tropical Grim Dark

this is 52 Miniatures my name is Alex and this video is sponsored by Squarespace welcome to my grim and dark Tropical Paradise where the dairies are cold but the guns are hot a place for hives scum carnivals and sunsets with your latest Fling by the toxic waste dump a project that has taken many a turn but I'm finally getting these not quite finished MDF builds done and so we'll be talking about what it's like to be working with and assembling MDF kits uh why you shouldn't be rattle can priming in the rain why weathering is the most important thing you can do to terrain and how to do it as well as why you shouldn't be afraid of following your own ideas even if they include pineapple rations and tropical camouflaged glass guns [Music] all the MDF kits I'm working on are from brutal cities in 2021 I became aware of this small company from the fabled Grim and Dusty Australia brutal cities a oneman show run by Ryan whose background as an architect really translates into his designs as well as the fact that Ryan is an avid gamer also contributes to the playability brought into the designs we could say I felt fell in love not with Ryan I mean a lovely fellow don't get me wrong but I was talking about the buildings I worked some by Skype transmittable black magic on him and one day a bunch of kits arrived on my doorstep for me to use in tabletop games because hiding your army behind houses is the only way to get past turn one in Warhammer 40K assembling MDF kits is kind of like building three-dimensional puzzles I'd recommend using wood glue SL white glue SLC Carpenters glue as this creates an utterly strong bond removing excess glue with a damp brush and a cloth leaves really nice joints super glue can be used as well I guess it cures faster but I never felt the need for that speed in the real world of hobbying an hour in the evenings once your kids are asleep or your better half has passed out on the couch after an overdose on chocolate ice cream well in that time you're probably not going to assemble a build and paint things in the same evening and so the curing time of white glue is not an issue for most MDF can be modified but it's a bit of work I cut out some battle damage using a strong snap blade knife a small hobby saw would probably have been preferable if you don't mind the dust because MDF is made up of tiny wood fibers you can be left with a quite fibrous cut I found I could burn those fibers away with a lighter warning warning despite my visual irresponsible actions MDF tends to contain resin and form Malahide used as binders you should not inhale potential saw or sanding dust or the fumes of burning MDF also for the love of God Emperors don't put important things like your house on fire I put my little burnt bits outside overnight just in case and thus any freak explosions would only kill potential lurking werewolves and then 3 years passed see I had this grand plan of converting every single building turning them into hybrids that could be used for as many games as possible both sci-fi and fantasy plans to add 3D printed bits plastic bits scratch building stuff decorating the Interiors essentially making every building into a diarama project I derailed because of the scope of the project and nothing got done not even basic assembly planning to climb Mount Doom and Chuck a ring in sounds like a great plan but then you realize you've got to get the pumpkins harvested and have a pint with Sam and that really nice girl works behind the bar and besides the tall gray bearded fellow was really vague anyway with what had to be done and so the years pass and the road to the big red eye in the sky gets longer and longer by every passing season but then a pack of dwarves come along kicked down my door ate all my food sang bad songs about stones and then said it's time to get it done just drop the pretentious plan get the buildings assembled and painted so you can use them having all that MDF lying around unused is like laughing in the face of the younger you that built Warhammer terrain out of cornflake packages because he couldn't afford any proper kits drop the dream and dream up another one and tropical Grim dark town was I can smell the naal palm and pineapple already I had previously still in pretentious times created brick textured sheets that I could print out on my fdm printer I worked in 3D program blender placing thin rectangle after thin rectangle working through different iterations of brick sizes and sheet thicknesses until I had something that seemed okay in scale as well as thin enough to cut with scissors I could at least stick to this original plan of adding bricks to make things look just a little less Uber sci-fi so I assembled all my buildings and glued on brick texture sheets where suitable with the brick sheets in place I covered them with tile grout to make things look a little less like perfect little 3D printed rectangles covering MDF structures with texture is a great way to make them look less like well MDF kits this could be just texture pastes as stacco or Texture made with rolling pins on clay or putty plastic grebles anything to break the monotonous flat surfaces I did put a bit more effort into converting the one building just to live the old dream for a little found a 3D printed tile roof I printed at some point and converted a piece of this building into a gate housee for sort and then because I was in a Dwarven forced role it was time to Prime only winter had come the thing is spraying with rattle cans in freezing temperatures is doable as long as you keep the can's warm and whatever you're painting is warm before application and as long as it's a dry cold and usually freezing weather is dry and so although not very tropically inspired I prepared a bit of a factory workflow for the next day with close access to heated cans and buildings and then because of twists of faith I must have upset the hobby Gods by not having finished this project sooner the weather changed into rain every now and again breaking into fog and Mist to suddenly bounce back to rain the absolute worst rattle can weather ever invented it was indeed like the tropics but without the Heat or dairies I made the worst decision based on a Now or Never principle comforting myself with Cuban cigarillos and I started spraying what happens when you spray with a rattle can in this kind of weather is that the small paint particles catch the moisture in the air essentially hitting your target as a mixture of paint and water the result is a granular mess that breaks your heart don't do it so the next day I sanded down the rough paint hoping that maybe another layer would flow out better and sprayed everything again rewarded with the same results as the day before my only solution was to flood the buildings with so much paint that all the small semi-wet particles flowed together into one homogeneous Mass this created an even flat surface but will curse me later on as you will see imagine an industrial style town the Sun scorches by day burning skin and bleaching buildings yet not direct sunlight it's blocked by a haze of fumes from burning cold and trash a pressuring lid of still heat with a promise of Thunder Ash flickers down from the sky like dystopian confetti melting where it lands during the long nights a warm wind blows debris across the streets lights flicker the smell of spiced meat hot circuits ripe fruit and warm bodies with a hint of sweet Decay and ripe sewers years of corruption has turned this proud symbol of a promised totalitarian controlled Freedom into a breeding ground of unsavory practices know is the best place to find the stealthiest Thief the most imaginative Bounty Hunter the ruthless Thug the most secret Contraband Hideway until someone else pays more than you did to find out where all the good stuff is hidden the sloppiest accountant the most skilled admittedly most probably permanently infectious company for the night room charged by the hour and the best coffee you've ever tasted this is tropical Grim dark town it's also a bit of a rebellion against all the DAR gray buildings that plague this Hobby in a monologue rant that is not meant as an insult to anyone I just get a little bored with the fact that so many fantasy buildings automatically get painted gray because it's stone with brown wood roofs or sometimes blue roofs with brown wooden doors and sci-fi buildings get painted gray because it's concrete with metal details because in a Sci-Fi World they've indeed invented steel when we could be putting so much more color into things I know it's difficult we subconsciously get indoctrinated just by that initial image preview on the website when ordering or on Instagram feeds and this goes for Miniatures as well to run with an idea that clashes with this subconscious information is hard might sound like an old fool but I kind of miss the days of blister packs no images just the miniature and your own imagination and so slowly I try to break away from this color blindness projects like this become an experiment the only thing I regret is not adding some pink to this mix and so here we are finally with these rattle can prime buildings and it's time to get stuck into some details and some weathering but I just wanted to talk a little bit about my original plan for these about customizing these just because I thought it might give you some ideas for what you could do now this house over down here have you ever heard about Squarespace yeah sure the sponsor of this video but I was just let me tell you some more okay Squarespace is an all-in-one platform for creating websites an intuitive platform that I've been using for some time lucky for me me there's no need for expertise you can choose between carefully curated layouts or start a completely personalized website with the new guided design system Squarespace blueprint a tailored website to suit your needs up in no time optimized for all devices and with optimized S soe tools so you show up more often to more people for me Squarespace has been a great tool starting with a nice template that I can adjust for my specific needs I've created a website with introductions to my work with galleries of my Miniatures and such it also hosts my online store customizing the shop with print on demand t-shirts as well as my own artworks and downloads has worked out well and with a back end that makes my side of things simple when dealing with deliveries and fulfillment the checkout and payment options for customers Works seamlessly accepting credit cards PayPal and Apple pay but also pay later options like afterpay and clear pay if you're looking for somewhere to display your art sell merch if you have a painting service or sell stls start up a website for your own game store or Club check out Squarespace go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com 52 Miniatures to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain okay thank you Alex and thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this video now back to the buildings so I originally planned that this was going to work for both fantasy and sci-fi you may be the judge of if that works or not but my idea was to um customize things so this building over here was supposed to be sort of like a temple I imagined on the inside having like an altar uh maybe some you know whatever you have in a temple pillars and whatnot on top maybe some statues you know like 3D printed statues or stuff like that just changing it slightly so that it would look a bit more sort of medieval uh this obviously kind of the same uh it could be some kind of inquisition's Hideout both fantasy and and uh whatnot but maybe some banners that would be draping down sort of like you would have on a medieval castle wall or something like that would have sold the idea for something more medieval this was going to be some kind of a shop with maybe sort of a bit of a tent canvas is roof sticking out uh as well as some sort of water barrels and stuff like that on the ceiling um this is the one that I customized the most sorry actually this is a sort of power station that I figured I could turn into something more a like Wizard's Tower um and so essentially for all of these buildings I wanted to kind of lean into more of this uh but here we are with with what we've got and some of this customization can come later on if I feel like it uh but now we're just going to get them done before weathering there's a few details that need to be picked out the project overall is in full let's just get this done mode my priming was very much just one color per building with a brick as an exception more attention to variation could have happened and was indeed the plan like spraying dual colored buildings or some Stripes of color here and there that didn't happen but you know I hadn't planned on spending a night on sanding and another night on reing so with a brush I pick out some of the easiest details like doors and windows and this is when a terrible thing became apparent my flooding with rattle can paint essentially created a hard plastic surface that was utterly hydrophobic it's so smooth that paint won't stick this will curse me for the remainder of this project and had there not been so many buildings I would probably have mat varnished before moving forward to give the paint something to grip onto my solution now is to use thick paint like Army painters fanatic paints that seem to stick rather well as long as I didn't water them down as well as roughen up the surfaces with some sandpaper I also spiced up the brick walls a little with the odd brown brick here and there to remove some of the monotony I'm now going to go through a series of ways to weather and characterize these buildings techniques that can be used on many different miniature projects they can be interchangeable dismissed or used in different ways but I've tried to create a workflow that would exhibit as many different examples of techniques and products to show how we can change a simple one colored flat surface into something far more interesting weathering is in my opinion the most important addition to projects like this and the simplest way to make them look good I also think weathering looks best when built up by a series of different techniques enhancing each other so feel free to pick out as many favorites as you like and remember to maybe base coat brighter than you think if you're going to do a of staining and weathering the cumulative effect of heavy weathering can darken things down quite a bit first off is chipping with a piece of sponge this is sponge-like padding from some random packaging but one can try kitchen sponges or whatever is available around the house by dipping it in paint removing excess on a piece of tissue to then press it down lightly on the model you get the look of chipped or damaged paint I apply the sponge mainly on the edges of what I want sh it's naturally where the wear and tear would occur but also contributes to define the edges like Edge highlighting would do I use grayscale colors to represent the stone or concrete texture that would exist under a painted surface and veryy dark or light depending on the base color of the building on a dark base color a brighter chipping is more visible and vice versa my exception for this was the largest structure I like the bright Vibe and I don't want to darken the edges down too much chipping can be done neater and more elaborate on a smaller project I would have painted on shading and highlights in the chipping with the brush but this chipped look immediately takes us into a worn industrial Vibe and it's such an efficient way of adding character works brilliantly on vehicles and more delicately on Miniatures as well the bricks were kind of bugging me the shade of orange was a bit off so I decided to add a brown wash over them not so much after the wash effect more as a use of a transparent paint to tint everything towards Brown if you want to stain and weather things using washes are pretty good because of their transparent nature you don't have to think of washers as something that can be only used as a wash because that is what the bottle says getting some water down Brown rust color or separ wash on a tissue or sponge to rub around to create streaks and dirt stains is pretty cool next is dry brushing dry brushing is a simple matter of adding paint to a brush rubbing most of the paint off on a tissue or something to then rub it around on the model the paint left in the brush only sticks to protruding edges I used it to bring out the edges of the bricks a little but chose a pale yellow color something that will look a little more like dust settled on the bricks rather than highlighted bricks this in itself is nothing special what is special is that if you have a large soft round dry brush like this you can use it to smoothly add paint onto flat surfaces with a little practice finding the right amount of paint in the brush I prefer keeping the brush slightly damp and not rubbing the paint off on a tissue because the tissue removes too much moisture instead I use the glove on my hand and you can get a really soft edged and thin application of paint it looks like something that has been airbrushed and can be used for the same type of soft gradient effect I added Sun bleached highlights to some of the panels on the buildings but this could as well have been a way to add shading if you do have access to an airbrush then it's a blessing for projects like this I'd even go so far as to say that if you plan on working with a lot of terrain getting an entrylevel airbrush is going to be a great investment Myriad of things can be done with the airbrush but I'll keep it simple and just show how effective a tool it is to create some shading now I had trouble with my hydrophobic surface again it was a hard time getting my paint to stick and not just puddle up my first favorite transparent gray paint did not work so after some messing around I settled for this weathering paint from modeler's World a rather transparent airbrush paint that seemed to stick a little better I also liked the slightly purple tint I shoot this on thinly where I would like Shadows or some some kind of weather related staining like along the edges of panels and at the bottom of every building all of a sudden there's a depth happening and the one colored walls come alive again more airbrush work like highlighting or darkening with more different colors is definitely possible I chose this one shading step As One Step Enough for this massive project remember you can try to achieve the same effect with the previously mentioned dry brush technique a large part for me of weathering is streaks and stains Moss rust dirt my favorite way of applying this is by using oil paint it's also possible to just use regular acrylic paint as shown in my recent Lighthouse build video but I wanted to show a third alternative that in comparison to oil paint is water-based and does not require solvents and also in my opinion Works faster than trying to do the same effect with just regular paints weathering pencils these pencils contain some kind of water-based grease or wax paint when dipped in water the hard pencil softens and you can paint on streaks and stains because of the nature of the paint it does not dry immediately you can go in with a moist brush and shape what you've just painted and to a degree even erase what you don't like I was again having some issues with my hydrophobic surface but I soon found a workflow that was not too much of a hassle a apart from adding a dark gray as dirt stains and sometimes enhancing the airbrushed shading now is when I started to add more colors green for that tropical goodness and rust for what that tropical goodness does to your constructions these weathering pencils worked out great again adding another dimension to the actual flat and one colored walls and it's fast but then there was a lot of streaks to do and a lot of houses I've not mentioned the scale of this project but I don't know if I can recommend doing this many buildings at the same time just this one step with the weathering pencils took me about 7 hours some of my patrons can confirm as they've kept me company in the 52 Miniatures Discord servers live chat as I was working on this now if you let's say get three or 4 hours of hobby time in every week that's two weeks just doing some streaks don't let the YouTuber Mirage of excessive projects appear realistic due to entertainment-based editing sway you into something unmanageable I'd warmly recommend buying say one miniature house assemble and paint it and base any further plans on how that worked out for you next weathering example is using oil paints oil paints are great because they don't affect the underlying acrylic layer that means you can add oil paint and remove oil paint easily with the help of white SP Spirit without staining what you've done so far using them to do the streaks I did with the weathering pencils for example would have been a no-brainer the downsides are the fumes from White spirits and the extended drying times as I've already done the streaks I want to show you my favorite weathering trick it's called dot filtering essentially based on the fact that dirt and stains are often not just one color what could stain a house or a vehicle well is things like suit dirt mud pollen rust dust chemicals all different colors and so to create a perhaps more natural dirt layer we're going to do a filter of streaks in many different colors I've picked a white a gray a brown as well as a yellow and indigo a dark magenta and a green I dot out the different Paints in an even spread take a wide soft brush moist in white spirit and streak out the dots with vertical brush motions until I'm left with a very thin filter in some places the streaks are more visible in some places the colors is mixed to more of a gray in some places it's just a warming or a cooling of the surface this is a delicate step compared to the previous heavy weathering and is not utterly impressive on camera but in person holding one of these buildings there is something about the effect that creates a realistic feel that I've never been able to create in any other way this technique can be refined like what paints to use more white makes things look Dusty for example or focusing on warmer colors or cooler colors a softer brush creates less visible streaks the size or frequency of the dots alter things as well the more you brush up and down the more the paints mix and become less saturated a lot of experimentation can be had doing this dot filtering was a bit trans inducing I spent one full season of Fallout and just because of some algorithmic assumption almost a full season of Clarkson's farm with the respirator on watching oil paint go up and down while at it I made sure to add a bit of extra green oil paint on the previous green streaks as well as some rust colored oil paint on the rust streaks just to push them forward a bit more I want to give an honorable mention to dry pigment powders the are normally a very favored tool just kind of brush some on here and there for a more powdery looking dirt that is very hard to replicate with a wet medium for buildings like this I especially like brighter paints a great way to create dust effects again very tricky to accomplish with any other medium but once more I had problems getting my pigments to stick due to the smooth surface so I didn't add as much as I would have liked just based on the rather limited effect I was getting compared to the time I was spending applying this stuff some spells of dust here and there where I felt it would give a nice effect I now call this project done a varnish will be a thing to look forward to but I want to give the oil paint's time to dry the dot filtering dries rather fast a day or so but the extra oil paint I added to the streaks will need longer to cure in my rather cool basement shootouts rescue missions and Contraband shenanigans can now commence reduce this project to the work put into individual buildings and this has been very Swift yet visually effective a single base coat chipping and staining looks good fast I don't think I could have found a better balance on the scale of visual excitement and time spent and together on the table there is a real exciting thing happening yet doing things this way and a lot of detail has been left behind if I find the time I might go back here and there maybe add some 3D printed details some Rubble debris gravel and dirt but for now I have a table's worth of very game ready to rain hopefully the hobby gods are now somewhat pleased and will give me better luck with the priming weather next time I'm real happy with these buildings done to any standard honestly as they've been staring at me with despair for three years Ryan brutal cities is a genius and I'm glad to finally be able to play games with his designs I hope you've enjoyed this lengthy essay perhaps even an epic tale from the hobby realm videos like these are only possible because of the good folk that support me through patreon so thank you dear patrons if you want to see more of this on a YouTube near you please support my work by joining the patreon also please don't forget to like And subscribe and thank you for watching bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: 52 Miniatures

Views: 22,766

Keywords: mdf, mdf terrain, how to paint mdf, brutal cities, weathering, how to weather mdf terrain, grim dark, tabletop wargaming terrain, mdf kits

Id: wNgM9HO3rO0

Length: 29min 48sec (1788 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024