Mek Lab - Rocky Hills

One of Warboss Chainsawz fine ork technicians has agreed to share with us his secrets to building great-looking rocky hills.  As a part of this process, the scraps will be turned into fine, standalone rocky bitz as well.

Without further ado, please welcome Mek Gearsnik!

"Right.  First off, don't blame me if yer kreationz don't look like mine.  It wouldna be proppa if dey did, anyhow.  Next you'll need yer own grot crew fer 'ard labour, test pilotin', crash-test-dummiez, 'nd de like.  Lastwise, letz look at yer tools and gubbinz.  Afta' all dat, mebbe you'll be ready ta build sumfin' in me lab.  Mebbe you like ta try me New 'nd Improofed Bulletproof Vest later, eh?  ...  Why ya lookin' at me like dat?"

Rocky Hills

Follow these easy step-by-step instructions to learn how to build your own great terrain pieces!  Sure to please any warrior who wants to hold the high ground!

Equipment And Materials

You will need the following consumables:

• Expanded Polystyrene Foam Sheets.  You can get this in most hardware stores in a variety of thicknesses.  I use 2", 1", and 1/2" sheets marketed as insulation.  If you ask the clerk, they sometimes have damaged sheets in the back that you get for a discount price.
• Poster Board Foam Sheets.  Color doesn't matter much.  I get whatever is on sale personally.
• White Glue (PVA).  Elmer's Glue-All or some equivalent works fine.
• Silica Sand.  You want a dry sand with pieces of various sizes.  I use reptile sand - used in the bottoms of snake cages.
• Rough Twine or Rope.  Sisal or hemp - you want lots of twisty, stringy fibers here.
• Water-based, Acrylic Paints.  I picked up all my stock from the mis-tint section of hardware and paint stores around town for a song.  If you mistakenly use an enamel-based paint, get ready to cry as it melts the foam insulation with all your sweet, sweet artwork!

The tools you'll need are:

• Long-bladed Utility Knife.  The snap-off-a-part-of-the-blade style knife is what I used.  Of course, I never snap off the blade - we'll be using the whole thing all at once.
• Small Razor Craft Knife.  We will need this for adding fine details. 
• Fine-grit Sandpaper.  A powered hand-sander is nice if you have one.
• Heavy Weights.  Books, tools, barbells - whatever. 

Construction Steps

Step 1 - Attach the foam to the base.

To make a large-scale piece of terrain, it must have a firm base, otherwise the paint may warp the bottom as it dries and it won't stay flat on the battlefield.  No one likes a wobbly hill that dumps models onto their faces!

Cut out a section of the Expanded Polystyrene Foam Sheet (of the thickness desired) that is the same size as the foam poster board that will be the base.  I usually use an entire foam poster board at once, then cut it up into smaller hills later if I need small pieces.

Once you have the two pieces cut to the same size, put a fairly thick coating of glue all over the foam poster board.  I find it easiest to use a foam brush to spread the glue into a nice even coat.  If the glue starts to harden before you are done, you aren't putting down nearly enough glue.  I use between a third to a half of a small bottle of glue on just this step per full-sized poster board.  (The glue is not too costly and you'll be glad that the base doesn't peel off your beautiful hill later.)

Next, lay the foam insulation sheet on top and press it down firmly, rubbing it from the center to the edge to try and remove any large air bubbles.  That's nice, but isn't enough.  Put those heavy weight all over the top of the foam and poster board assembly, paying special attention to the edges and corners.

Now let it sit for at least overnight, possibly for a few days.  I usually do this right before I go out of town for the weekend or something so I am not tempted to tinker with it while it hardens.  At any rate, if at any later step in this process, you cut into some wet glue - STOP!  Put some weight on the pieces if you think they are peeling away from each other and let it dry overnight!

Yes, this IS the voice of sad experience talking...

Step 2 - Cut out the basic shape.

If you haven't already figured out what the shape of this hill is going to be: now is the time.  I draw a sketch of what I'm thinking on paper first and then draw the shape on the bottom of the poster board as a guide.

Got the shape?  Good.  Now it is time to cut.

Cut the shape of the hill straight down through the foam and poster board, with the poster board on top.  This will maximize the area you get and avoid any trouble.  We'll make it look like a hill later - for now, just get that shape separated from the rest!

In this example, I cut out a narrow, bisected, oval shape.  I want a hill that can go either on the edge of the map or be used as a sheer rock wall to prevent troops from moving up and over the hill.

Step 3 - Attach additional layers.  (Optional)

As you can see in the above picture, it is possible that a single sheet of insulation will not be tall enough for the hill you want to build.  Cut out more foam insulation pieces in the shapes you will need and glue them to the base.  Sadly, this process is very much like the Step 1 - you will need to wait for quite a while for the glue to dry completely before proceeding to Step 4.

I added a 1" piece of insulation and some 2" scraps that I had lying around that will become a pile of rocks that sit on top of the hill.

Step 4 - Shape the basic hill.

The first cut you make on the hill will be through both the poster board base and into the foam insulation.  This cut is particularly important, because the foam poster board will hold a much sharper angle than the foam insulation will alone.  The foam insulation will bind and snap off instead of giving us a seamless change from battlefield tabletop to hill that we desire.

Make this first series of cuts by holding the blade at the angle you want the hill to start off with and cut until the foam insulation starts to bind the knife - then stop!  Snap off the section you have cut to remove it from the hill.  This makes it easy to see where the next cut should begin.  Repeat the process all the way around the hills sloped edges.

If it seems like I'm belaboring this point, it's because I am.  This step makes all the difference in how the final hill blends into the game table.  I was really quite happy when I figured out a method that worked!

The flat top of the hill now needs to be shaped into something that looks like it flows into the first cut area.  Make progressively thinner slices from the hill as you flatten that dramatic angle from a near 90-degree corner to something that looks smooth and 'hillish'.

(I know that's not a word.  Sue me.)

At his point, we're not trying to make the hill perfectly smooth.  We just need a more solid form of the slopes of all the hill sides.  A rough look is perfect for now.  One note to this work: If a chunk of insulation foam looks interesting, you might not want to cut it off.  It might work great as a rock, protruding from the gentle hillside.  Read more about this in Step 5, below.

Don't throw away the scraps of foam insulation you have been cutting and snapping off!  Slice off any attached poster board and set them aside for later use.  We will attempt to waste nothing in this process!  The large chunks will become stand-alone rock piles as a part of this tutorial (and the tiny bitz are great for creating small chunks of stone and rubble in urban scenery, so I'd save them too).

Step 5 - Identify and form rocky areas.

On some hills, like the one pictured, a whole side will be nothing but rock.  Other times, you will only want a few jutting rocks or piles of scree.  In any case, now is the time to identify where the rocky areas will be possible, and to rough cut them.

In my sample hill, I wanted a series of rough 'steps' formed in the rock to allow units to get onto the top of the hill faster than going the long way round.  I cut out the notches where these rocky areas should go and smoothed the edges a bit, so later it will look like the grass has grown over the rough rocky edges.

While I was carving the hillside in Step 4, I saw a chunk of foam that looked really interesting.  I decided to leave it as a protruding rock and carved the gentle hillside around it.  During this step I worked on the edges of this area to make it blend in really well.

Sometimes, you just can't figure out a way to make the hill look nice and smooth AND make a place for miniatures to stand.  In this case, you may want to add a vertical section of exposed rock so you can have two levels of roughly flat area for the minis to balance on.  It's all well and good for the hill to look great, but it is just a prop for a wargame - not the main attraction!

Unless you are really careful (and lucky) you will have some areas of the rough cut hill that are really rough.  You have two options.  You can cut these patches into rocky spots where the grass has either been worn away or just doesn't grow, in which case, you'll want to figure out how that's going to look now.  Or you can use a water-based filler or rock-putty to smooth the area over.  I'll go over how to use filler in the next step.

Step 6 - Smooth the hill shape.

Now we need to sooth our basic hill-shape down.  To do this, cut away any sharp edge.  Very thin slices of foam are what you will cut off - paper thin in some cases.  These scraps are seldom good for anything (at least I haven't thought of a way to use them) and so get thrown away.

To be quite honest I will often combine Steps 5 and 6 - doing both tasks at the same time. 

You can see in my pictures of this process that I did just that, particularly expanding the detail of the protruding rock in the center of the slope.

If you are building a hill that has no rocks at all, or just want to smooth up part of the hill slope, we need to use filler.  Sometimes filling in the gap is your only option, especially at the spot where two sheets of foam meet - very tricky to smooth that out, isn't it?

Mix up a batch of filler (or use pre-mixed if you have it) and apply it to the non-smooth parts of the hill you'd like to cover up.  This stuff must be totally dry before you sand, so get ready for another long wait.

Once the hill is ready, use sandpaper to smooth out all of the remaining little bumps and ridges from the hillside.  Leave rocky areas alone - we want them looking rough.

Step 7 - Define and abuse rocky bitz.

All well and good for us to leave some flat, vertical areas and paint them grey.  They won't look like rocks like that - more like a concrete wall stuck in a hill.  So we need to do some work here.

Look for places where adding a chunk of rock would look good.  I added several of the small cut-off bits of foam to the areas of my hill where I was going to put scree, for example.  Glue these into place and let them dry before moving on to Step 9.

To make the rocks look great, we need to carve them a bit more and deform them a lot.  I mean, really damage their surfaces in some cases and in others, a slight mar will really make the rock stand out.

The first step is to use our craft knife to carve seams into the rocks in likely-looking places.  Be as random as you'd like here.  It will look all the better for it.  Once some of the individual 'rocks' have been carved out, you may wish to slice off a bit of the rock face to create stones with a variety of depth. This really adds to the final realism of the piece.

After this, we need to slap the rocks around a bit.  You can use a vareity of tools, including your knuckles and fingernails, to mar and mark up the surface of the stones.  Even pressing on it lightly will leave miniscule cracks in the surface that will show up later when we drybrush, so not all your efforts should be vigorous.  Use the craft knife to carve cracks, notches, missing chunks of stone, and pockmarks.  Anything goes!  You will need to experiment to find out what effect you like the best.  I like to make each rock have a slightly different texture, but you may want them all to match.

Step 8 - Build standalone rock pieces.  (Optional)

This step is where we use the large scraps we cut off our hill in Step 4.  Use the white glue to stick interesting shapes together and carve them up once they are dry.  You may need to hold them in place while drying using masking tape.

I have an ever-growing collection of these and they are surprisingly versatile.  They can be stacked alone or in piles, with any side facing up, so the battlefield never looks boring.  Additionally, long pieces can be used as rock bridges or ramps to link different hills together at their summits.

Follow the steps below when it talks about painting rocks to complete them.

Step 9 - Paint base coat.

I base coat my hills a light green in order to match the base color of my green battlefield cloth (originally a light green twin-sized top sheet, if you must know).  You should paint the hill in whatever color will match your battle-table.

(Note that I cut a small cave into my rock face for the hill I built, just for fun.  Looking good!)

The rocks should always be base coated brown, however.  Be sure to get into every deep recess that you can so no light blue color from the foam insulation shows at all.  The will look like dirt in all the cracks we fail to paint grey later and it looks great.

Small areas where scree will be added are painted brown as well.  The work spent on adding detail to the rock begins to become apparent.

Wait until the base coat of paint is fully dry before moving on to the next step.

Step 10 - Add sand effects.

Now we will add sand.  The sand will look like areas of gravel and small stones when the model is complete and they drybrush really well.  This is how you create those areas of scree and small patches of stone.

Put some white glue in a container (I use the bottom of a crushed soda pop can) and 'paint' it wherever you want the sand to stick.  I have a special paintbrush that is just for this step, because this will ruin a normal brush!

Focus on coating the flat areas where such small stones would collect naturally.  You have to work fast, because the glue dries quickly when it is thin.  For large hills such as the one I'm building in this example, make more than one pass, doing a little bit at a time.

Put the glue-painted hill in the middle of a poster or other large sheet of paper and pour the sand liberally.  Shake off the excess and you can recycle it for the next time.

Once the glue has dried completely it is time for the second coat of glue.  This time, mix the glue with water - half and half.  The thinned glue will go on easier and really gets into all the cracks, so don't apply it too heavily or you'll lose some of those sweet defects you worked so hard to create in Step 7.

Step 11 - Paint grass top coat.

Once the second coat of water-thinned glue has dried you can paint the top coat of the hill.  You will cover up some of the sand added in Step 10, but that's just fine.  I paint my hills with a slightly mottled color scheme, allowing patches of the base coat to show through.  Some folks like to apply flock (shredded felt and other fibers) by the same method we added the sand in Step 10, but not me - the two colors of green mixing randomly looks fine and matches my battle table, too.

Step 12 - Paint rock top coat.

The top coat of green paint has dried and now we can add the top coat to the rocks.  I use a very dark grey - almost black color.  Apply this over all of the brown areas, but you can be a bit sloppy around the edges and crevices - the brown base coat will make a great transition from the grass to the stone in this way.

Additionally, apply a thick drybrush to all the areas of sand we glued down in Step 10.  In some places this will be hard to see or apply.  You don't have to get them all, since we'll be hitting the sand areas fairly hard during the next step.

Step 13 - Drybrush rocks.

Drybrushing is a method of lightly coating something with paint to pick out the raised details.  You can google how to do it elsewhere - that's beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Drybrush the rocks on every surface lightly with off-white paint.  The dark top coat combines with the white drybrush to create a perfect grey rock color.  Be careful to not lay it on too thick or you will hide all of the fine details which should be popping out of the model like magic!

Drybrush with a very dry brush all of the sand, whether it has been painted dark grey or not.  The gravel will pop out from the base coat and look fantastic.

In order to make the scree look contiguous, drybrush areas you want connected, even if they don't have any sand - the color alone will make it look proper.

Step 14 - Add weeds and scrub grass.

Next paint a section of the rough rope a dirty green - I actually have a small tube of sage green.  Put a small daub of white glue in likely-looking cracks and corners.  Snip off a short length of random fibers and stick them into the glue.  You may need to hold them in place for a few moments or adjust the weeds with a toothpick to get them to look like scrawny little plants.

Step 15 - Enjoy!

Your fine hill is now complete!  You will now be the envy of all who play at your gaming table!