Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Making Explosion Markers



I love a good spectacle, and nothing catches the eye like an over-the-top Michael Bay style fireball. I needed a few good explosions for the game I'm tinkering with, so took a shot at creating a few explosion markers of my own. The clump foliage method seemed to produce pretty wicked results, which I attempted to replicate for my own wargame tables.

I used an mdf base, drilled some holes and glued kabob skewers into them.


I added foil, sand and wall filler to the base to build up a crater from which the fireball would be erupting.



Using a liberal amount of hot glue and various shades of fall clump foliage, I affixed the foam to the skewers, filling out the central base area with additional polyfill stuffing. I drenched the completed explosions in Woodland Scenics scenic cement to fuse everything together (I tried watered down white glue, but didn't feel they results were as robust as the scenic cement).


I used craft paint to ease the transition between colors, then hit the whole thing with black spray from above. A bit of gray drybrushing and basing, and they were done.




The whole process wasn't too difficult and these markers have already proven useful in our playtesting. Give it a try, they're not too tricky!

10 comments:

  1. Very well done! I like this technique and been meaning to do it myself. Mr Bay would approve! 😀

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    1. Thanks Stew! Give it a try, it's not too difficult!

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  2. Very effective results! Great job.

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  3. Wow! Those look great! Inspiring me to try my own hand at these...another project for the queue.

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  4. lookit all those poor beakies!!!! They should be in a museum of honor, not a dangerous battlefield!

    Do you think it would look more dynamic if the orange/reds were left brighter at the base? You get the dust look now but less of the fireball effect.

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  5. You are absolutely knocking it out of the park John! Between the sloop tutorial and now this, you're filling up my bookmarks lol!

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    1. Haha thanks Ivor! Glad you are finding these useful :)

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