Thursday, August 20, 2009

TABLETOP GAMING: "Mountain Waterfall"

Here's one of my favorite tabletop constructions in action...this is actual "gameplay" at the RECRUITS Convention from 2007. My friend Jaye was running this game...I believe it was titled "Treasure of Isla de la Morte" (a pirate themed adventure). Notice the friendly beast in the pool at the top of the mountain (from my previous post)!

As usual, I started with a sketch...and as usual, bit off more than I could chew. I simplified the mountain a bit, but kept a lot of the original idea intact.

Below, you see the basic foam construction, then the finished painted version. The scale is about 2'x2' square.

The waterfall effect was created by cuttng a strip of acetate, then added hot glue "water" to it. The heat from the glue melted the acetate a bit, and gave it some extra ripples. I painted the different colors of the water, to give the illusion of depth, then coated everything with high gloss acrylic varnish.

Here's a nice new image from Jaye of a more recent game with my mountain...great use of the jungle background props! Oh yes...I made the river sections, too (another post of that to come later).

And for those of you who have never been to a gaming convention...here's a composite wide shot I took at the RECRUITS con from '07 in Lee's Summit, MO.

2 comments:

Mike Adair said...

Warren, you are amazing, man!
I thought the water was actually real at first - like you made a fountain. I now bow to your hot glue mastery.

Warren said...

Thanks, Mike! And I have some nifty hot glue burn scars that I acquire with each new project. No pain, no gain!