"Ideas for a Glacier Wall?" Topic

I think my table will only be complete if I add about a 40 inch glacier wall to have on one of the edges. For that, I am thinking of starting with a 1/4 inch MDF base. The glacier would likely be "blue board" (actually pink) layered to achieve the proper height.

I am sure that some of you out there have done or seen this done somewhere (either among the scifi or fantasy groups – maybe?).

Any suggestions on how to carve it?
Any suggestions on how to paint realistic-looking ice?

Thanks.

CC
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By "40 inch" I mean 40 inches in length, with variable width. I am still not sure how high to make it.

CC

This works for some of the figure bases or for the base edge of the glacier . . .
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However, I would think that a glacier would have a different texture and have more of a bluish tint. Am I wrong?

CC

Okey dokey…I have made six gaming tables for the local game shop and one of them happened to be an Ice board with a deep chasm running down the middle.

I layered three sheets of blue foam, drew out the chasm and cut it away. to make the edges, I whent to town on it with a drywall saw… This, if you dont know, is VERY messy… I di it outside to make clean up easier.

Anyway, you will want to cut at various angles. you will want to achieve something like this

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When you are happy with the results, take some scraps and glue them along the bottom. Glaciers are constantly eroding and usually have debris along the front of them.

Onto painting…I started with a base of Ice blue paint I got mixed at the local hardware depot. I then added white to the mix and drybrushed all the way to pure white ONLY on the tips!

Now…from the pic, you can see dirt and sometimes even rocks or boulders. I added sones and sand and painted them a really dark brown.

I hope this helps you out CC. Remember, use a drywall saw. It works very well!

The Cap

I think a good place to start is with the foam packing inserts that come with most new appliances, electronics, etc. They have odd shapes, variable heights, etc. Suggest you buy a 60+ inch TV, and voila, enough foam for a monster glacier. Oh yeah, you might have some fun with the tv, too.

Most galciers I've seen are dirty grey speckled with rocks gravel and occational patches of granular snow. Not very pretty. I think the epic dementions of a continental icesheet are hard to imagine. That said, I think about the cover art for "The Mammoth Hunters", picturing a fuzzy wall of dirty white with cold blue shadows in the cracks. For rough and severly erroded hills, I've build up the pink or blue styro in multiple layers using hot-melt glue to the desired height. Then when everything is firm, start going at the face with a blunt old screw driver, chopping down and out. Deeper gouges can be cut in with a knife. I find the activity a wonderful stress reliever. The biggest challenge is getting the resulting rough surface coated with laytex flat paint. It will take several tries to get the pink covered. Of course the blue showing a bit might look good. After this, dry-brushing brownish-greys and sticking on some scatter material will finish the look. Although I've used this technique on rock faces, I think it would apply to your project also.

Cap'n,

Do you have any pictures of the finished project? I would love to see them.

Thanks.

CC

1)Get some styrofoam for the face, and some white spraypaint.

2) Spray the bejeesus out of the styrofoam, and watch it shrivel and distort.

3) Once it's dry, slather it with thin plaster or pva to smooth the texture.

4) Paint with acrylics as desired. Though once it's covered, you could use regular aerosol paint again without further damage, if you wished…

If you ahve the range of paints to cover that scale, start with as deep a blue as you have over the whole thing, then be a bit less thorough with a medium blue, less so with a dark blue-grey and then a light blue-grey (similar to GWs Space Wolf Grey and Shadow Grey). At this point, pull out the metallic silver or silver glitter paint and put a thin and purposely sporadic application across everything. Color is not important here, the reflective bits are, but they need to be thin enough that the finished product will produce unexpected shinys when you move your viewpoint along it. Once that is dry, go back to the ever-decreasing coats, which by now will be pretty cursory across flat surfaces and concentrated on edges and forward surfaces. A light-to-medium cold grey and a light cold grey finish that process off. If the wall of ice needs to be brightened, give the whole thing a cursory run of white, the thicker (the paint, not the coverage) and less glossy, the better.

The finished product should look like a big wall of weathered ice, with hints of the deeper blues and the occasional reflection of a shiny patch.

The best ice effect I've ever seen used melted wax – might work a dream for you.

You might want to use acrylic gel over the main structure with just a slight tint of blue acrylic in it. The tricky part will be getting the color of "glacier blue" just right.
Mugwump

The fastest way to simulate snow and ice across an entire board is to paint the whole table white, then go back with a can of blue spray paint and spray it straight downwards into the deepest areas of the board. Some blue paint will "drift" sideways and mist onto higher areas. The higher the area, the less blue and the more white there will be, and you get lovely smooth gradients between the two colours. This works especially well if you want the really deep areas of the board to be ocean (and therefore you can use a proper deep blue), but it should work for ice – just use a lighter blue.

When I did my ice shelf for my german sub to emerge through i foun that just break pink foam into pieces yielded very nice results.

This is, of course, more useful if you want edges from which ice has recently broken off.

Ok. This week I am finally going to make several pieces (average height about 4") for my Neanderthals. Wish me luck!

CC

Keep us posted (with pictures…). I am planning on doing a skirmish game, playing out the classic, Giant Series of modules, "Steading of the Hill Giant," "Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl," and "Halls of the Fire Giants." I've been kicking around some ideas on how to represent the Glacial Rift, for several weeks, now. I calculated out the size of the Rift, in 25mm scale, and I think I can put enough table space together to represent the thing in its entirety, or very close: 8-9 feet in width, and 17 feet long. I plan to use a white sheet for the ground cloth, and then use styrofoam (altered as listed above), to represent the Glacier. I'm not terribly interested in realism, but if I can get it to look acceptable, I will be satisfied -- this will be a short series of skirmish games, which I hope will lead to other wintery mini's games, just so I can justify/amortize the terrain investment of time and money. Cheers!

Some of these ideas might be usable:

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CC

Saw this on another forum, a very pretty board;

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This is all I can say, Xzamuel: WOW!!!!!!

CC

These would make great ice tunnels:

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CC

Believe it or not, this is the look I'm after, minus the cartoony figures, of course:

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This one is nice too, though I want the glacier to be grinding on land instead of water:

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CC
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Nice photo of what I finally want mine to look like:

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CC

Possible different look for the surface of the glacier is the Melting look. Cut a strip of paper as wide as your glacier edge, 4 inches. Tape that to a flat surface. Next cut a strip of wax paper about 8 " wide, tape the two long edges down to a flat surface, over the 4" strip of paper, center it so you can see the 4" under the 8 inch. Use a caulking gun with silicone clear caulking (from a paint store or store with paint supplies), smear the clear silicone caulk all over the 4inch strip, use a stick to smear in the short 4" area, leave lumps along one edge, for the crumbling ice melt. Let dry for 24 hours or till firm.
Peel the semi transparent strip off of the wax paper and trim to fit the front of your glacier edge. Once in place you can use more of the silicone, just squeeze it with the caulking gun into the overhangs or fallen ice melt areas. You can even use some of it to do small pools at the base of the cliffs.

[wry]Hey CC, since that last pic is sheer enough, blow up the photo and paste it over some styro sheeting.[/wry]

Seriously, I'd just carve some thick styro sheets with maybe the tip of a cheap soldering tool (the pointy ones and not the loop-ended ones). If you want a tall one you could always stand the board on its edge and carve the surface across its width. Then maybe back fill behind it with scrap styro. Another method might be to make a stepped hollow box behind the vertical sheet using your MDF material.

Using the same tools as I did on my "Ant Farm" I might play with a piece of white styro I have that would stand on its side (of course, like my AF).

I don't know if it is what you want CC but here is one take (mine) on making an "ice wall". OK, it's about two hours later and the paint is almost dry. The cracks will take longer.

One thing to take note of here is the use of a negative/positive perspective in recycling some of the pieces that I cut out. In other words a piece that I cut out (leaving a depression)can be flipped around and glued flat (adding more depth to the piece than its 3"). BTW, I did use that expensive (but versatile) foam cutter from the Hot Wire Foam Factory.

I was lucky and had a piece of styro to experiment upon (it's my first ice wall!). It measured 3"x12"x31" and is the open cell version (I'd think closed cell pink/blue to be better to use for improved appearance).

Another idea that I've come up with is to take some pieces and after cutting them for removal, not to. By trimming further and pressing back with a bit of force you can make it appear that the piece is breaking away from the rest but hasn't fallen over quite yet. I used three colors of my beloved Krylon H2o (satin white, light and dark blue) and did my crevases first. I worked the dark colors first (for my taste here) and moved to the surface white finish. By spraying all three colors wet I'm able to blend the demarcation zones (actually they blend all by themselves).

Here is what I came up with, if it's any help. You'd either need to buy a bendable wire foam cutter or scrape by with a soldering iron (on the cheap). In either case, make sure of good ventilation.

3" thickness, with cutting mostly done (mostly).
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Here I'm retooling some of the waste and gluing it onto the flat areas.
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Here are two angles of the painted piece, with the paint drying.

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Not "the" way to do it, but maybe "a" way to do it.

W O W !!!

I really can't wait to get home and give that a try.

CC

Build your glacier wall using Dwarven Forge Master Maze Cavern Wall Pieces and then "paint" them using Christmas tree flocking.

Sets up quick, looks decent and easy to play with.
Cleans off fast, and you are not stuck with snow terrain you may never use again.

Dwarven Forge Master Maze Cavern pieces:
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Enjoy!

Those look fantastic, scifi gamer!

Thanks Alxbates. I hope it gave you chills, heh.

It definitely gave ME chills. Man, I can't wait to get home and try to duplicate that ice texture effect.

CC

All sorts of fun possibilities, past, present and fantastic.

Now I can't wait to get home and finish up my glacial terrain pieces.

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CC
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Of course, you need people in appropriate winter dress . . .

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CC

Well, maybe 15mm is the route to go for now . . .

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. . . though I know I'll eventually do it in 28mm.

Dan

Check out these ice cavern pieces in clear resin!!!

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Dan
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Honestly, they don't look quite right for a glacier. To clear for that type of ice as you aren't having the ice cube effect due to the way it freezes.

Might take forever to do, but layers of resin with occasional light drybrushing between a few of them as well as attempting to copy the frosted glass look would probably look rather good for the purpose

I kind of like this pic. I hope it opens.

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@Pyrate: If my calibrated eyeball is close, that wall is at least 40 feet tall.

Call it about 8" tall on the 28mm tabletop, minimum.

Of course, if you're building this for the tabletop, you only need a couple inches of 'wall' depth to set the scene.

Is this for that Wall in Song of Fire & Ice?

If it is, then it isn't a natural glacier. It is a man made wall of pycrete (Sawdust, dirt and Ice). Remember, the family that maintained that wall had to make certain that it stayed high, and they were always cutting new blocks of ice to stack along the top. Either that or packing down the yearly snows to make certain it didn't melt.

In the distance, it would look much whiter than up close, where it would be a combination of striated blue and grey.