Making Ancient China in Miniature | Grand Cathay

There's a new army in the world of Warhammer fantasy. Cathay, the forces of ancient China. I've always loved the look of classical Chinese landscapes and architecture so I thought it would be fun to make some terrain for the tabletop in this style. You're watching Eric's Hobby Workshop. I began this project by heading down to Chinatown to see what I could find. I've always liked these little resin statues that they sell and my first thought was to maybe turn one into a giant statue with a new paint job. But when I went to pay, the owner of the store started giving me some information on what the meaning and purpose of the statues was and how to arrange them around your house. This is a bulldog. This is the male. He's stepping on a ball. It's a display ball. This is the female. She's actually stepping on the child. So when you put, you should put it like this way. These two things should not be together. And I immediately realized that making a little house in traditional style and paying homage to some of these conventions and practices would be a lot more interesting. So I headed home and I sketched a layout of a small house onto a sheet of paper. Having this sketch will allow me to measure and cut all my walls at once, which I did and labeled with some corresponding letters and numbers. With a bit of hot glue, I soon had blocked in the basic footprint of my building. Of all these features that stand out to make a traditional Chinese building look like a Chinese building, the roof might be the most important. I decided to add a little curve to the gables of my building and give it a more interesting roof line. I did a little bit of research on the reasons for why Chinese buildings often have curved gables, and I found explanations ranging from it allows greater resistance to wind, to it handling rain better, to it providing a general sense of aesthetic lightness to the look of the structure. I personally am not at all concerned with wind resistance for this little model, so for me personally, I'm just doing it because it looks cool. Once I've cut and attached some of these curved supports for the roof, I use a little bit of cereal box to cut some large overhanging roofs. These sheets have just enough flex to make the curve shape, but enough rigidity to keep everything nice and solid. Hot glue is perfect for this. It bonds instantly, fills a bit of gaps, and is easy to pull off and redo if necessary. The back corner where two roof lines interact is definitely my favorite bit, and I regret a little bit not choosing a design that featured more of these diagonal intersecting parts. Oh well. With the basis of my roof line down, I used this little crimping tool to corrugate some strips of cereal box. These are going to be the basis of my tile roof. If you don't have one of these crimpers, and you want your roof to turn out horrible, you could try using some dry lasagna noodles. If you want to get one of these crimpers instead, I'll link something similar in the description box below. Using hot glue, I overlapped these tiles on top of each other, creating a pretty good tile appearance in hardly any time at all. The secret here is to make sure each row lines up nicely with the one below. This took a little while to do, but it was quite gratifying to watch come together. All those overlapping layers will add a lot of strength and rigidity to the building structure as well. Something about this style of roof reminds me of the roofs that used to be on the Pizza Hut franchises you would find in parking lots all over North America. They don't seem to make them that way anymore. Modern Pizza Huts have the cursed flat roof of modernity. Feel free to use this example next time somebody implies that society always progresses forwards. We have to go back guys. Anyways, where my roof lines meet I have this pretty ugly seam, so I wanted to make a decorative and durable piece to cover that up. I used a little bit of epoxy sculpt putty, which is easy to work with and drives rock hard. I made a little snake of putty and glued that on there, squishing it down. In hindsight, I should have sculpted some tile details into this little bit, but I was distracted and I forgot. Part of the distinctive look of Chinese roof lines are the decorative roof ridges, which I made an attempt at at this stage as well. On fancy buildings these often feature ornamental beasts and stuff, but this is supposed to be a more simple civilian home, so I kept it simple. I did make sure to slant out each end and taper them in the middle. This looks okay for now, but I'll carve them into a more reasonable shape once the putty is dry. When you're messing around with epoxy putties, it's a good idea to put a bit of lotion or oil on your fingertips so it doesn't stick to your hands or gloves. You can see I have a little blob of Nivea on the back of my hand there. Moisturizing your skin can also of course help you look youthful as well. I'm old enough to remember when you had to rip the edges off the printer paper, but I still get ID'd at the beer store sometimes, so you can take my word for it. I started working on the front of the building on a separate piece of foam core, cutting in apertures for a door and some windows. Lattice windows are another iconic feature I wanted to include on this build. I'd originally ordered some decorative Chinese screens for dollhouses that I was going to cut into little windows, but they didn't show up on time, so I 3D printed some instead, making little window frames out of coffee stir sticks to house them. With these windows fit into place, I started cladding the whole front wall with coffee stir sticks, giving the impression of wood panels. I found it was faster to just glue the sticks on, then trim them to length after. Once the whole wall was covered, I added some framing details, giving the look of beams and columns. When it comes to gluing sticks to a wall like this, there are different glues that I like to use, depending on my mood. If you want the process to be a little bit more forgiving, use a white PVC glue or wood glue. Since it doesn't dry instantly, it'll give you some time to slide the sticks around a little bit after laying them down, so you can get them lined up properly. On the other hand, if you want it to bond instantly so you can trim it and move on, use super glue instead. You can see when I removed the supports, I ripped out a little bit of the design. I thought that would just look like a little bit of wear and tear, but I did it more than once, so maybe I'll have to put something there to hide that later on. Once I'd made a bunch of these timbered panels, I glued them onto the house. Now because the gables are curved, I didn't use the same sticks to add some detail here up under the eaves. Instead, I traced the curve with a pen onto some chipboard, and cut some curved gable details out of that. On the back of the house, I did no windows or doors. Now this may seem strange, but the reason why is because I wanted this house to have the option of having an enclosed courtyard, with a wall around for security and privacy. The windows of this house will only open into the courtyard, providing more security. I started making this wall out of pieces of half-inch insulation foam. Many of the traditional houses I found when looking over inspiration images were something called sehiyuan. These are essentially courtyard houses enclosed on four sides that feature various standard forms, including a gatehouse on the southern side. After building this wall, something didn't feel right. And indeed, after looking into it, a traditional sehiyuan, the gate would not be centered in the southern wall, but rather in the southeast corner for reasons of feng shui. Now I'm not trying to make a perfectly historically accurate house here, but I do want it to have stylistic elements inspired by real tradition and history, so I felt it was proper to move the gate over. Once I had the shape I liked, I tiled the gatehouse and the walls in the same way as the roof of the house. To protect the top of the walls, I glued on some bits of bamboo skewer. I built a small door using some bits of cereal box card. This door is designed to look like two thin doors that open in the middle. I add some knockers with a nail art bead, and to create a copy of this door, I mix together some silicone putty to make a quick mold. This stuff dries really fast, and it makes it very simple to make a quick mold. Once it's totally set, I remove the door and take it outside to cast some copies. I use a two-part casting resin called Smooth Cast 300, which I measure and mix in equal parts using a digital scale. This stuff has a very short pot time, and you can actually watch it set up right before your eyes, going from clear to milky white. It's really cool, actually. You can make copies of anything in just a few minutes. Once dry, I pop the copy out of the mold. They're still a bit squishy unless you wait for a while, but who has time for that? The mold isn't perfect, so I use that soft period to clean them up a I made four copies of the door, then slotted them into the doorways I made earlier. I used two copies for each gate, positioning them back to back so both sides had detail, and then slotted the original into the doorway of the house itself. We're getting close now, guys. I wanted to add some extra durability to the roof sections to protect them from dents and bumps, so I brushed on some waterproof wood glue. I thinned it a little bit with water, then brushed on several coats. I also added some more strips of card to the roof ridges, then on a whim I hauled them outside and carved them into a different shape, which I think looks a little bit better. I also mixed up some wood glue with some spackle filler, then applied this to the courtyard walls. This will make a durable coat with a little bit of nice plastery texture. Here's the house before painting. Hell yeah. And here's the house with the courtyard walls. Right on. Let's paint. I started by painting the courtyard walls a nice tan colour. This is linen by FolkArt Matte. This is one of those cheap craft paints you can get at places like Michaels. For an application like this, it's perfect. I paint the roof tiles black as well, this time using some brush-on black primer. For the rest of the house, I'll use a spray primer. Once the first coats are dry, I come in with a lighter tone to add some variation in tone and texture to the walls. This will help the pretty plain looking wall look nice when it's done. For the house itself, I'm going to start with a nice dark brown. I'm going to make this look like weathered wood when all is said and done. Up on the roof, I'm going to start with a rough and spotty over brushing of dark grey, then come in with a warmer brown to add some variations. This house is old and should have some nice natural greys here. If it were pure black at this age, it would just look weird. To give this wood a bit of a weathered and realistic tone, I dry brush with some grey. I start mixing grey into my brown tone and dry brush a couple times. A little bit of natural variation looks good here. For the windows and the doors, I'm going to paint these all a nice beautiful vermilion red. From what I've read in Chinese culture, a red door symbolizes luck, prosperity, and happiness. All things that I want for my little house. Very nice. To add a weathered and more lived-in appearance, I use some greyish brown to dry brush the doors and windows. This defines the edges of the shapes, making them read better, and also mimics where the paint would fade and chip first. The house receives a generous dry brush with the same colour. This will make the wood look weathered and realistic, and also tie the appearance together with the doors and windows. When I'm satisfied, I slot the windows into their openings. The fit is snug enough that I don't even need to use glue. It's starting to look really nice, but to add more realism, I glaze on some thin washes of dusty browns on the lower part of the building. This sort of staining occurs from drops of rain hitting the ground and splashing up dirt and grime onto the nearby walls. Alright, we're getting close to a nice little house here, but one little house is not going to evoke the landscapes of China. What we need are some natural features. First up, I thought it would be nice to make a bamboo forest. The iconic scenes from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon live rent-free in my head, so let's see if we can make our own forest with that kind of vibe. I'm going to start by making a bunch of little blob shapes out of styrene card that will be the basis for my forest. This will allow me to lay out the forest any way that I want, and allow minis to pass through it while still maintaining the dense look that I'm looking for. Some of the edges of this plastic card need some smoothing, so I'm going to try this new cordless rotary tool, the F2 Master from the sponsor of this video, Fantic. I've been in the market for a cordless rotary tool for a while, and so far I'm really impressed with this one. It's got this great case which comes with some handy magnetic storage for all the different tips and bits. To grind this plastic card piece down, I chose a diamond tip burr bit, which was more than up to the task and made short work of this rough edge, allowing me to get a nice bevel with hardly any effort and lots of control. It's lightweight enough to be held like a pen, and pretty quiet at only 32 decibels. I've also been using the drill attachments to help with common tasks like pinning miniatures together, and it's accurate enough for that purpose as well, saving my hands from the effort of traditional hand-powered pin drills. I don't know what to say guys, this thing rules, and you'll probably see me using it a bunch in future videos. Apparently it's waterproof too, which I haven't tested, but that's pretty cool. Anyways, Fantic is running a big Black Friday sale now, offering up to 45% off on Amazon. So if you want to get one, use the link in my description and the code ERICHWF2 for an extra 8% off to save a total of 45% off the Fantic F2 Master cordless rotary tool kit. Thanks Fantic for sponsoring this video. Now let's get back to the project. On top of that plastic card, I put a layer of foam core. This is just to give the base some thickness that'll allow me to embed my bamboo plants directly into. I was starting to brainstorm how to make bamboo plants from scratch, when I realized you can actually get a whole boatload of miniature bamboo plants on Amazon for pretty cheap. I'll put a link in the description for those. There are some modifications to these plants that we definitely want to do though to make them look a little bit more realistic. First off, when most plants grow in a dense stand competing for sunlight, they don't have much foliage lower down on them. This is where you get that long bare pole look from. To create those bare poles, I simply use some bamboo skewers, embedding them in the foam core with a bit of hot glue. I'm using bamboo to make bamboo. It's bamboo all the way down. When I have a central core of poles, I'll take one of my bamboo plants and trim off a bunch of the lower foliage. I can then glue that trimmed foliage to the top of my bamboo poles to make the top look a little bit more like a canopy. I keep adding bamboo plants with the lower limbs trimmed, leaving only a few plants with low foliage which I put towards the outside of my little grove. With this method, I get a dense and obscuring bamboo forest that still has the look of a forest of poles. These little bamboo plants have a bit of wire in them, so you can bend a few to give them a sense of weight and visual interest too. Now if you wanted to skip the middle skewers, you could probably get away with not painting these, but they'll look better when painted anyways, so let's give them a coat. I start with a deep green through the airbrush, covering everything that I can, but especially the undersides of things. I then am going to build up successively lighter shades of green, hitting just the tops of the leaves to mimic the effect of sunlight hitting them. I add a bit of basing texture paste to the ground, then add a mix of phlox and static grass to give the appearance of natural ground cover. This is going to help these things blend in with my battlefield later on. Hell yeah. Now so far we have a house and a bamboo forest, but in my mind the most iconic aspect of a traditional Chinese landscape are the towering karst mountains. Much of China is made up of soluble limestone, which over the eons weathers and erodes into these distinctive and beautiful landforms. You can see these mountains all over traditional Chinese art as well. I decided to make some. To make my mountains, I started with some insulation foam offcuts, arranged vertically. I used a pencil to trace a rough outline of the spires I wanted to make, then cut out that rough shape with my hot wire foam cutter. Once those are cut out, I glue the pieces together with a hot glue gun. There's an important detail here. I'm about to carve this rock into shape, so I don't want the glue to be too close to the edges, otherwise I'll have to cut through it later and that'll be a pain. So the first thing I do is mostly just cutting off corners to make the piece less angular and regular. Most of the time before cutting foam I make sure that I use a fresh sharp knife, but this time I didn't and what that means is that the cuts have this rough tearing look, which when you're making a weathered limestone rock is not actually really such a bad thing. I use reference images while I'm working and try to get a natural looking appearance. I also decided to cut some stairs into this one, which will make a spot for my miniatures to stand on and interact with the piece. In a few places I had to actually add some foam back on to make the stairs contiguous. Don't worry though, any gaps will be filled in the coming steps. As I near the bottom, where I didn't leave enough space for stairs, I just carved them directly into the rock, creating an overhang above. Hell yeah! When I'm satisfied with the shape I use the hot wire cutter to shave a bit off the bottom just to make sure it stands up completely flat. I made a few pieces this way, this one as you can see has more of a mountainy shape and I made a third one with three tall spires. Next I mix a combination of plaster, mod podge and beige paint. This mix is going to make a porous and slightly gap filling blend that will act as a base coat for the limestone effect that I'm going to try to create on these mountains. I start by applying this all over the mountains, making sure to get good coverage and not leaving too many brush strokes. My reference images show that the exposed stone areas and karst have a very pale color but tons and tons of discolorations and streaking. To get this effect I start by applying some homemade dark wash, which is a mix of black ink, water, black paint and varnish. I made this mix ages ago and I've added to it since in a big bottle so the proportions are impossible to create. Sorry about that. This bottle does have a squirt nozzle on it though so at one point I just started squirting it straight onto the rocks. It dries way lighter than it goes on so this is all sort of guesswork. Next I come in with a sepia toned wash of thinned down raw sienna paint and apply this in splotches around the piece. Wherever there's a large out of scale drip I feather it downward with my brush making some lovely streaks. Next I take some dark grey paint, quite thin, and start making these dark drippy areas of discoloration that appear so prominently in my reference images. Initially it looks terrible and it's really hard to know if I'm overdoing it. This is one of those trust the process moments but it's hard to trust the process when you're making the process up as you go. I focused on getting these nice vertical streaks on the cliff-like areas and before long I was starting to get the effect I wanted. Things are getting exciting now. Once everything was dry I started using some clump foliage which I bought from Woodland Scenics to add some of the vegetation that typically grows on this sort of cliff. I tried to think like a plant here and any ledge that had enough real estate to put some roots down got a little bit of vegetation laid in. This was an extremely fun process and using my hot glue gun I soon had these little spires looking really lovely. Alright let's see how that looks all together. I have to admit I'm thrilled with how everything is looking. If you want to support the channel please consider joining as a member where you can watch some exclusive battle reports. You can also support me on Patreon using the link in the description box below. Huge thank you to all of my patrons for your continued support. If you like this video please make sure you subscribe to the channel. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time on Eric's Hobby Workshop.