Arena Rex Forums

Thanks for the advice. I'm trying to do the two coats thing, and I think it is working reasonably well. The textured paint is not very textured, but it has the advantage of drying slowly and being wet for a long time, so I can work with it and shape it much easier. Basically I am painting the textured paint over the threadbare areas of the existing layer, then sprinkling sand on the paint, and sort of trying to direct it so that the end result looks somewhat even.

It's going to end up being uneven no matter what I do - but that in itself is not a problem really. It looks more realistic with the sand being rough than it would if it looked totally smooth and flat, like a freshly mown lawn. It's just a question of finding that balance between "realistically uneven" and "an ugly patchy mess". The more I can "sculpt" the sand, the easier I can make it look somewhat aesthetically pleasing.

I could try and take a picture, but I switched back and forth between using PVA glue and using poster paint as adhesive for the sand, so it looks really messy at the moment.

I have plans to play with a friend on Friday, so my great ambition was to have the arena ready by then. I am kinda busy this week though, so I think I might be able to get the sand done, and the wall is all done too, but I don't think I will be able to get it painted by then. We'll see.

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I have also been filling the gaps between the bricks in the wall with polyfilla. I don't mind the gaps aesthetically, but I know it will be a huge pain to try and get paint into all the cracks. So the polyfilla (the stuff you seal cracks with in your walls around the house) will act like a kind of mortar, that means I don't have to paint in between all the bricks. Should make the painting much easier.

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Alright, so this is what it looked like a few hours ago.

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Now all the floor is covered in sand, but the appearance of it suffers from the fact that I was getting smarter as I was going... the western half looks smoother and better than the eastern half. Since it will look super weird if half of the arena looks better than the other half, I have to rough up the western half a bit. If I can do that when I get home from work, then I have the rest of the night to actually paint it.

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Well, painting is now happening. I'm not sure I can claim that it's going well, but at least it is going. It doesn't look good to me. But hopefully it eventually will.

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I think my problem is that to actually make the tiles look good, they need a lot of attention. All the edges need to be shaded and highlighted relatively precisely. And that's a lot of work.

I think I will end up bringing this WIP arena to the game tomorrow, just because I want to, but actually finishing it all up for real will be a longer term project.

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I like the way this has turned out. Looks really good. It looks like an arena from an outlying provence.

Looking really, really good! I love how the tiles add some visual interest to the arena floor, better than just plain sand in my opinion. Can't wait to see it all finished!

Thanks you guys! I played my first games in the arena last night, and it was pretty cool. From the pictures though, I can see that the tiles need to be made darker (again) so that they stand out more against the sand. And I really like the top of the outer wall - great place to put your fatigue counters and favor counters.

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It might seem like the arena here is done because I am playing on it, but it really isn't. In the last photo of the previous post, you can see that the tiles can get completely washed out in the right light. You could argue that this is cool, but I would rather they stand out a little more. Plus they are messy, so I need to tidy them up. Here is a blurry shot of how they are darkened up a bit. (The ones in the centre, the ones at the edge are still light.)



One thing I think I did wrong is that I glued the tiles too close to each other. When I'm painting them, there is no gap to shade in, really, so it just looks like a smooth surface, whereas I wanted them to look like tiles. With a lack of real grouting, I tried to paint in a little bit of shading on the lower middle tiles in this shot. So far so good.



I think I want more columns. The four just aren't enough. It will look really nice with six or eight.

Blood pool coming up soon.

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