Age of Sigmar Project: The Lake Town Modular Gaming Table

FRIDAY THE 11TH
There is no replacement to going outside and using the real world as a reference no matter what you are modelling, even in Sci Fi or fantasy builds, using the outside as reference gives a grounding to your pieces that carry the viewer from our world and connecting it with a made up one. Look at some of the most successful films, books and games, they tend to be the ones that have some sort of logical natural reference to them. Even films such as horror of an acid bleeding ultimate beast as in Alien to the Hobbits of the Shire share a reference to our own world. I could not say that there is anything more important than going out at least once a month in all weathers to if you want the same place. I did this with two locations one an old train bridge with rusting plates etc, I tried to take pictures from the same point at the same thing to see how light ,weather and time of year so dramatically varies the same. The second was a field where the battle of Towton moor took place and the field where the route towards Pontefract castle took place. I have often thought not just of the battle but how these poor infantry, bowman and cavalry are chased down. Towton is known as the bloodiest battle on English soil where the small beck that has been there since well before and even now floods on occasions and makes itself known, historically ran red for an age after the battle. Pontefract is some easy 11miles away and have to cross the ferry at what is now ferry bridge the river Aire runs too deep to cross here. The pictures are bleak even in the summer and the fields according to the farmer who now grows his crops on these fields they yield a bumper crop every year in comparison to those that even abut the same. Driving on the road through where the fighting expanded to once the Lancastrians broke on that wintery weather shed day. When its misty and has snowed in the still morning air, I often stop in a parking space where the main fight took place and in that swirling mist see the shadows and hear the hungry cries of the crows, rooks and mad laughter of the magpies but cannot see them nor upon what they feed.
Now I aren’t going to get that from a computer image, I cant smell the damp soil.
I would say if you get any chance and you have one near research a local battle go to where it was and really look at the lie of the land etc. Then return as often as once a month and take pictures in whatever weather is upon the day.
Sorry I really do believe that without going out and actually seeing then you will never know what rust grows like etc.
Good Hunting
Chris G