Terrain Extravaganza - Part Five

This week, we take a closer look at some of the icebergs that have featured so heavily in the Greenland Campaign, and discuss how they were made...

After some questions, I have included pictures of the islands/hills/icebergs from their beginning to end. An easy process once you have practised a few times, it can be time consuming, but the results look good and are also rather durable, which is very important when making terrain. 

The icebergs begin life as blue styrofoam, available in most hobby stores and such. I ordered mine from eBay, because I'm lazy

A hot wire cutter is used to cut indentations along the entire edge of the piece. Larger chunks are taken out where you want to have interesting shapes in the hills/islands

Lots and lots of small parts are carved away from the edge, some from the top half of the styrofoam and some from the bottom, but a lot from the entire height of the edge

A lot of ridges give a very specific look - for a smoother slope, just carve in bigger sweeps! Be careful with the hot wire cutter though

A few different shapes - though these do look very similar, if I was to do it again I would prefer lots of different shapes and sizes

Painting the icebergs was easy, but remember not to spray them as it will eat into the material! 

I used a basecoat of grey Undercoat from a local paint supply shop, applied with a roller over the top and a large brush for the indented areas. Some of the blue styrofoam was left peeking through to represent the ice

White was then rolled over the top and brushed with a large paint brush. It was deliberately left patchy around the edges to represent the dark ice, but should be nice and smooth on the top of the iceberg

Here we see some of the blue showing through at the bottom

ACTION SHOTS

Titan-class Troop Transports negotiate an ice floe

Ship for scale purposes - most of the icebergs are the same height as a Large ship

The Titan-class Troop Transports seem to be heading directly for the ice!

The Red Viper spots a target

Danish Cruisers on patrol in the icy North Sea

Fafnir-class Light Airships float overhead

I hope this has been somewhat helpful for those of you interested in the islands and icebergs featured on the blog! With practise, the hot wire cutter makes islands, hills and icebergs an easy prospect. A great project to have a go if you've never made your own terrain before!

Thanks for reading,

George