Outbeak City: How to Build a 28mm Zombie Gaming Table - Part 3

Part 3 of the construction of my All Things Zombie Gaming Table.

Start at the beginning to read the whole article.

With the raised sidewalks fixed onto the battened boards is was time to go about detailing the board.

The whole philisophy behind this gaming table was detail. The idea was that every inch of the table was treated like an individual figure base, so I felt it was important to avoid shortcuts wherever possible and 'do it for real'. With that in mind I went about cutting out individual paving stones and curbs to ensure the sidewalks would take dry-brushing and ink washes.

"It's Begun!" It was about now I realised how much time this might actually take. 

The curbstones were cut 2/8'' wide and 1'' long. On the corners I switched to 1/2 '' lengths to aid with the curve.

I painted about 10-12'' of PVA at a time as I lay the tiles.
You can just about see the cuts made in the underside of the sidewalk pieces to help define the drainage. I was working away from home for a couple of months whilst I was doing this, so most of the build was done when I came home at weekends but I was able to cut out the tiles during weeknights.

Undercuts, to represent storm drains.
The sidewalks themselves consist of three rows of 6/8'' by 4.5/8''.

Like most gamers, I am a hoarder or all things that 'might be useful one day' so I had a fair amount of card sitting ready to be used. However, to ensure that there was some 'real-world' variation in the paving, to represent replaced slabs, ground heave or gentle localised subsidence, I wanted variation.

For the most part the curbstones were cereal packets and the paving was mostly the type of card that comes in a box of 5 reams of A4 paper (one at the top, one at the bottom) with of different thicknesses card randomly mixed in.

Drain cover, added with checker-plate plasti-card.
On the corners I simply alternated long and short edges to follow the line into the curve and trimmed the edges of the tiles as I went. That gave me a flat edge to work from again.

The tiles were all laid in a basic bricklaying 'running bond' style, offset by half a tile. I deliberately left a small gap between every tile, so that they were not laid exactly flush and a coat of textured paint wouldn't obscure the edges of the tiles.

I added a few random 'broken' slabs, by simply cutting them in half of in thirds at appropriate looking angles.

Finished curb and sidewalk.
To be continued...

All Things Zombie




17 comments:

  1. Adam, I do admire your philosophy of adding as much detail as possible. You're a man after my own heart as I always try to go the extra mile when it comes to card modelling.

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  2. its gonna take forever to finish,but its gonna look fantastic, keep it up

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  3. you could score some of the card, to look like cracks

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    1. I have done that before, great for large areas and for doing things fast, it just didn't quite have the right amount of depth I wanted in this instance.

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  4. Very ambitious project, but it looks like it will more then pay off in the end.

    Christopher

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  5. Amazing...I need to start over with my city and stea some of your ideas!!!

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  6. This is coming along beautifully. The sidewalk has so much great detail. I can't wait to see one of the buildings.

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  7. It might take a while , the results however will be worth it keep it up Ad

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  8. Looking good, will definetly be worth the all the effort in the end.

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  9. Fantastic - this is going to be so good when it is finished.

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  10. Stunning. Simply stunning, I can't imagine the sheer weight of works that await you, but I can sense that this will be something breathtaking.

    Can't wait to see it finished!

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  11. Some great ideas there my friend, I can see why this turned out so nice, Details details details !!!

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  12. It is really good in the flesh ... or should that be card?

    However long it took to make Zombie Ad, you should be damnably proud of the finished results!

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  13. Thanks guys, it really is a labourt of love, but I just thought - I'm only gonna do this once. Whilst the main table is finished I'm still working on the detailing - hence the drawn out posts on the progress.

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  14. Dude this is so awesome.
    Solid execution

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  15. Thank you Oli, it's a bit of a labour of love, but I think the end result will be well worth it.

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