Desert dwellings

Here's a better post about the desert dwellings of Consilience of the wargames factory forum.First of all I want to thank our american wargamer for the use of his pictures and more details about the built of the desert dwellings. This done, I can start to tell more about the houses themselves!

The terrain set was built to fit with some science-fiction infantry. But the project was finally started when Consilience picked up a couple of sets of Pig Iron Kolony Ferals. He decided he needed to start a new type of terrain. After considering everything he decided to built a desert wasteland village with rough and uncivilised dwellings. These dwellings are entirely made of kiln-fired ceramics!

Now what if you don't have kiln-fired ceramics?

Paper covered with papier-maché to create structure and then hollow out the inside after it hardens.

There are also various air-dry clays available from art supply stores.

Plaster of Paris over paper would work but might be difficult to clean out the inside if you want it hollow. Similarly there are things like hydrostone which cures even harder.

Concrete patch might be an option if you are building for a game store as they get a lot of hard use.

From the other direction, wood filler made of latex or some other plastic is flexible and more forgiving than the rigid products on the market.

How to make these dwellings?

Soon after, while sitting in the ceramic studio looking for artistic inspiration, Consilience realised that he could try a completely new material for wargames terrain - ceramic! (EUREKA)

He crumpled up some paper for the the basic structural support and taped down the edges to keep it the shape he wanted.

Second he rolled out a slab of clay about 7 mm thick though (thicker or thinner was possible with almost the same result!)

Agter that he Draped the clay over the paper and pressed it down firmly to the working base, He made the doors and windows and added surface details.

Think of all the tools you could use for adding texture and interesting effects to the clay:

- Spoons of various sizes

- forks

- piping and tubes

- miniature feet (for the footprints deuh :p)

- etc

The next stage was kiln firing (hup, in the oven)

The result: some basic structures for his desert dwelling (now only some texturing with sand and a quick paintjob and they are ready to serve)

Pictures

Dwelling 1

A shot with an 28mm figures for scale purposes.

A shot of the exterior wall which is nicely textured!

Dwelling 2: the beast's head

Here's a shot of the beast's head the name was easy to find because of the distinctive shape of the dwelling. There's also a small wall and hut included on this picture.

Dwelling 3: the elephant's trunk

Here are some pictures of the third dwelling called the elephant's trunk.The gun emplacement above the entrance on the backside.

The front of the elephant's trunk with nice texturing!