Monday, July 27, 2009

Terrain: Plaster - Hirst Arts

So when it comes to making terrain to play with out of plaster, Hirst Arts is the first and last website you should go to. Bruce Hirst is the primary artist selling plaster molds for terrain making, most places selling plaster molds or plaster terrain are doing what they can to copy from him. Go direct to his videos page and you can see exactly how it is done along with some other extra helpful stuff. His videos cover how to use plaster molds, how to use resin in them, how to paint, painting lava, and best of all how to make water features.

The basics are you buy a mold, poor wet plaster into it and let dry, then you have super detailed building blocks for making a sturdy building of whatever you like.

In addition to the buildings you can make with blocks from his mold (My buildings are pictured to the right), he also has a wealth of information on how to do other terrain effects and general hobby advice. Whether you are looking for sculpting techniques,
creative tabletop monsters, creating realistic water fountains,
making colored windows, dead trees, tips for painting futuristic models and a lot of other tips and tricks then Bruce Hirst's site is the one to visit. I have to give an extra special notice though to his river sections, they're just amazing and create the most realistic water you could ever want to play on.

For the Anima Tactics players I have to recommend all the Gothic molds Hirst has for evoking the setting really well. Shard or other sci-fi game players could do really well with the Schematic Mold which I have my building pictures of above and to the right. Though I'm eager to see a Neo-Soviet player make good use of the Pipe Molds and create an impressive Soviet chemical factory.





























Have I convinced you to have a look at his website yet?

This just about concludes the series I had intended on tabltop terrain. If you got anything else I should add, a different series idea, or whatever please leave a comment.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've got to raise an objection to one of your claims on the Plaster post. Hirst Arts was not the first to do plaster wargaming terrain. I agree, he probably is one of the best, but definitely not the first. I will have to do some searches, but there are at least two other companies that sell plaster molds for making terrain and they were around for much longer.

Here is one of them, Linka World, they've been around since 1979. Now they were originally meant for model terrain layouts, but I know of many people that use them in miniature gaming.

http://www.linkaworld.com/

Sallust said...

What? WHAT? Why I never...

Okay, you caught me. Thanks for keeping me honest. Plus, thanks for the link.