Terrain Ideas and Sketches
Hey folks, just another quickie while I'm having a tea break, I wanted to just post this little rambling thought. It's a simple one that most probably do anyway, but hey... I've got a couple of minutes to kill ;)
Before plunging into your boxes full ofJunk treasure for building your terrain, just sit yourself down with a nice cuppa and throw down some sketches.
You don't have to be world class artist, fast and loose is the order of the day. I just grab a ball-point pen and some printer paper and have at it. All your looking to do is warm up your brain, your final terrain pieces may not even look like anything you sketch. But one idea leads to another and you may come up with a far more interesting idea than you started with.
As an example I'm posting up the quick sketches I did while preparing to do the commission I'm working on:
As you can see, rough, but with some potentially useful ideas. A theme can help if you keep it in mind.
I've already mentioned it before, but the commissioned terrain I'm making for both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k are going to be along the lines of mountainous/wilderness pieces. So I was going for farming/logging themed for fantasy, and rundown industrial area for 40k.
Whenever you've got a couple of minutes spare just grab a pen and paper and let loose, keep filing them away together to browse through someday in the future when you need some terrain ideas.
I'll probably end up doing more as I'm working on this commission.
Right, my cup's empty. Back to work. Take care everybody.
Jonah
Before plunging into your boxes full of
You don't have to be world class artist, fast and loose is the order of the day. I just grab a ball-point pen and some printer paper and have at it. All your looking to do is warm up your brain, your final terrain pieces may not even look like anything you sketch. But one idea leads to another and you may come up with a far more interesting idea than you started with.
As an example I'm posting up the quick sketches I did while preparing to do the commission I'm working on:
Some ideas for woods and the details thereof, as well as possible ways to denote some of the "special" forests in Warhammer 8th that I may use at a future date.
A quick selection of walls, barriers and scatter terrain for Warhammer.
More of the Same for 40k.
Various buildings and larger pieces for Warhammer.
And yet again, more of the same for 40k.
As you can see, rough, but with some potentially useful ideas. A theme can help if you keep it in mind.
I've already mentioned it before, but the commissioned terrain I'm making for both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k are going to be along the lines of mountainous/wilderness pieces. So I was going for farming/logging themed for fantasy, and rundown industrial area for 40k.
Whenever you've got a couple of minutes spare just grab a pen and paper and let loose, keep filing them away together to browse through someday in the future when you need some terrain ideas.
I'll probably end up doing more as I'm working on this commission.
Right, my cup's empty. Back to work. Take care everybody.
Jonah
Yeah, sketching is great for saving ideas for later or even evolving them into something better. :) I can't imagine making terrain without this, and even my conversions are mostly sketched out on paper first.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great habit to cultivate. I encourage people to do it all the time. The one response I usually get from most of them though is "I'm not really that good at drawing". But I keep telling them, that it's not a point of being a great artist, it just helps to exercise the imagination :)
DeleteI never sketch any ideas and almost always regret not doing so. These are really cool ideas here, you can immediately tell they "work" compared to what one would achieve by getting straight to the production phase (which I just did 2 days ago).
ReplyDeleteGood one !
Sorry I never even saw a notification for your comment. Only spotted it because I was mass deleting emails in my inbox a moment ago.
DeleteWow this is an old post!
But I may be pulling these sketches back out soon. I really need to update my terrain collection. Had to throw a load that got damaged beyond repair during the move.