Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Something painful straight from Innsmouth

This time it something like blast from the past.
The reason I decided to drag this corpse out the closet* is nostalgy for the unfinished project.
Once again.

I thought since I managed to finish oldie zombie dragon at the beginning of the year and chaos dragon recently maybe I could mark another project off the shameful list.

And as always there's a story standing behind the thing.
Few years back (hard to believe it was so long time ago) I spotted something uber-cool on Lead Adventures forum: it was Grimm's Innsmouth based baming board made for Tactica event. When I saw it I was just fu*king pressed into the chair, it was just awesome!
And I deeply hope it still is.

In fact seeing that piece is one of 2 reasons for me to visit Germany.
The second is seeing Nosferatu: symphony of horror black and white (!!!) gaming board built by Vikotnik for later Tactica. Another chair-pressing thing. Come and see:




I am not going to spoil everything so you can see whole thread dedicated to the Grimm's project here. Definitely worthy clicking!
So after recovering from coma after looking into Great Ancient One's eyes I knew I want such thing at my place. I also knew there's no space for full scale project and there's no one here to play such game. But I still wanted it so the only acceptable option was to build small piece of Innsmouth, big enough to tell a story yet small enough to fit the display case.

There were several options but all in all I chose fragment of Innsmouth docks.
There's always something going on in the docks, especially in Innsmouth!
I did some planning job, gathered required materials and shortly after the main construction was done. The story behind was something like: deep one priest and his minions are reclaiming Cthulhu idol statue (more than sure magical) when suddenly priest's one true foe - the detective supported by a policeman or two are stepping in!
Deadly fight to thE death is just about to start aaaaand... CUT!
This is what you should see.

I had some good time building that terrain piece, 3-4 years back it was really cool challenge. There was a plan to add some spicy bits like a skeleton wearing "concrete shoes" with arms tied in the back (now barely visible) and some others later.
That time I was experimenting a bit with artifical water. What I learnt already was this: decent water ain't cheap. Which was a problem because I needed quite a lot of the stuff to sink the dock properly.
Guided by still unknowk hellish force I went to trusty store with... chemicals for home etc.

You can open a beer and bring some popcorn because the funny part is coming.

That stupid bitch... the lady behind the counter was always quite helpful and was always selling me proper stuff when I wanted to paint some furniture, some wall or clean the pipes.
I was quite surprised she said there's transparent resin available, and it was damn cheap compared to Andrea's stuff. I thought it's probably because it's polish product, the price factor has just turned off any reasonable thinking.

I opened the jar and still remember I wanted to test it on something less valuable but according to the note the resin was getting hard after ~48 (iirc) and I didn't want to wait so long. What could actually go wrong?

I built boards around the docks using really solid plastic - it was 5mm thick, just perfect to prefect resin from leaking out. All gaps were sealed, resin was mixed and poured.

After a while I decided to move it into some safer place (I had 4 cats at home that time) but it turned out that thick plastic is just fu*king hot! Really - it was SO hot I barely dropped the piece! That moment I knew things went just wrong direction - there was styrofoam and other fragile materials used...

About days later I dismantled placcy boards and you can see below what I got: it some bits were melted, resin was cracked, didn't turn out transparent and all because it was resing for fixing car body!!! That day I put the project away, it's been just gathering dust for past years but now I think I am mentally ready to give it another chance.

I want to:
1. clean it so you can see original colors
2. cut off the base with the damn resin shit
3. re-base it: it will be 2"-3" lower but it will be easier to store and I won't need so much proper resin
4. finally paint dedicated models - since the accident I just lost any desire for painting Cthulhu themed minis

So here's the current stage, hope to share pics of the renovated piece yet this year.





Ia, ia Cthulhu fhtagn!!! 

*Bottom shelf of the display case, let's be frank about it