Back to Square Six

After another fine night of drybrushing, we're almost back to where we were before the varnish.  I'm really not at all happy with the way those shoulders no longer line up, but at this point it's probably not worth the effort to re-do these highways yet again.

Those are some shiny patchwork roads.

Texture close-up.

This was supposed to be a simple step-by-step example of what to do.  It's turned into a step-by-step-by-step example of what not to do.  Hopefully you all can learn from my mistakes.

More Local Kine Terrain

As mentioned previously, these aren't just any roads, they are local kine Hawaiian-style roads.  Red dirt, local signs, and of course, palm trees:

Stolen straight from the kids' dinosaur toy collection.  The gray stuff is kitty litter stuck on with thinned out white glue. With the same color spray paint and drybrushing as the roadway sections, those bases should blend right into the rest of the terrain.

Catch Up Time

It's been a busy weekend what with the stuffing of the face and the last desperate gasp of football before the long dark off-season that doesn't end until last August.  And yet, somehow, I still found time to start fixing last week's horrible mishap with "The Dip".  Nothing a little spray paint and drybrushing and re-lining can't fix.  These probably look familiar, but this is now the second 'base coat' on the off-road sections.

Here's a bonus warning showing spray paint on the
washer and dryer.  My wife would be really annoyed that I
didn't cover my work area better; if she ever used this thing.
HOO-ah!

Interestingly, the pavement actually looks better with the black stain on it.  More like asphalt blacktop and less like concrete.  Guess this mistake can be played off as all part of the plan, after all.

Whoops!

The state highways looked a bit cartoonish, what with the too bright colors.  The plan called for a dark stain that would seal the gravel, protect the paint, and tone down those colors.  The plan failed:

Those turned out way darker than anticipated.  Looks like they need a few more coats of paint.

Road Construction Ahead

Just two quick shots of the roads in progress.  Looks like the markout crews in the 2050s are as accurate as they are today.  That red dirt looks really, really red, but these are Hawai'i roads; red is the color of most of the rich flatland soil.  So it works.  I'll throw some bone tan on top for one more layer of color before staining the boards black.  That'll tone down the color a notch, too.

Two For The Road(side)

Slapped together some stands for the billboards.  The ads were designed and printed on a standard printer then glued to each side of a...whatever you call that thick cardstock they use for mounting artwork.  It's roughly 2mm thick and makes a great backing and decent stands for the billboards.  You can get 8x10 sheets for a buck at the local framing shop.

Those are 20mm figs for scale.

For the boards themselves, I hot glued bamboo skewers cut to size around the cardstock.  I drilled four small holes in the base to give them a little more stability.  These will look better once I paint the wood frames and gussy up the stands a bit.  Think I'll wait until I'm done with the roads first, though - I want to try and match the stands to my terrain boards to make the transition as seamless as possible.

More Billboards

A couple of billboards ought to help break up the monotony of the autoduel patch of highway.  Keeping this a local affair I whipped up a handful of local kine ads.

Things get a little complicated at this point.  Here in Hawaii, the home of your humble blogger, there's an outfit called Outdoor Circle.  These cats are dedicated to, among other things, keeping any and all billboards off the highways.  That means we're gonna have to assume that the Outdoor Circle lost some influence during the food and fuel riots.  Oh, they'll still be around, but in my little 'verse they've changed their goals to be more in line with the autoduel zeigeist:

Gotta be honest on this one, not sure what "Defend Hawaii" means.  It's a really popular local t-shirt logo, but normally you see it with an M-16 rather than a tricked out Div 5 car with front mounted machine gun and spike plates on the front.  I did a simple swap to update the defend Hawaii meme for the 2030s.

Eddie Aikau is a local hero who sacrificed his life to save others by attempting to paddle 12 miles across the open ocean on a surfboard.  They named the Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational surf contest in Waimea Bay after him.  That's the one that they only hold when waves are banging at 20-plus feet.  Nowadays, "Eddie Would Go" is a common slogan you see on bumper stickers, shirts, and whatevas - mainly to indicate that you're not afraid of a little big surf.  No surprise so see that Eddie's spirit lives on in the days of autoduelling.

Every highway needs at least one billboard advertising foodstuffs for the hungry autoduellist.  I already used Soylent Green on an arena billboard once, so I had to come up with a different future food.  What could be better than Futurama's Slurm?  The local kine Slurm - Plate Lunch style!  Plate Lunch is the local vernacular for a six dollar styrofoam box filled with a little meat, a little cole slaw, and a heckuva lotta carbs.

You can click on and use these boards on your own terrain if you want.  They are so local in flavor, that they probably won't do you a whole lot of good.  But trust me, these things are gonna crack people up at the game days in Honolulu.