This competition ran in February-March 2007 and was run by wiz. It has been summarised here by Andy Slater.
Wondering on what theme I could choose for the next competition I looked outside... then it hit me. Snow and Ice!
There are no restrictions except that the main focus of the pieces should be: cold. When someone sees the piece it has to be obvious that it represents extreme winter weather or conditions: heavy snowfall, extreme cold, ice & icicles. Artificial cold (such as freezers, cryochambers) also counts. An iglo of doom is suitably wintery, but alas it was already entered in a previous competition.
One picture in particular came to mind when the snow and ice competition was announced: the artwork from the Dark Depths magic card. This entry is a 12" frozen lake/pond area terrain feature that looks like it has a leviathan (big fishy thing) beneath the surface. The primary effect I'm going for is that a miniature on the surface of the ice would not be able to see the fish below due to the frosted surface ice, but we (as a gigantic objective viewer) would be able to see the big picture... dramatic irony.
The base of the piece is a laser disc, with a bas relief leviathan sculpted onto thick plasti-card and painted to simulate deep water beneath a frozen icy surface. The icy surface is Plexiglas frosted by sanding, attached to the piece by a bead of hot glue around the edge of the ice, and the edge of the piece is trimmed with snow paste made with white glue, water, and snow flock.
My friends and I have a textured 4x4 board painted with a desert scheme but I've always wanted a board that was not just a textured piece of particleboard. I wanted something that had variation in the elevation, and I wanted something that matched my Space Wolves.
The board was made out of hollow core doors, pink foam, and some wood around it to protect the foam. I added snow made from glue, water, and baking soda (around 6 boxes of soda) and then covered it all with a protective varnish. The board can be transported easily and should fit into a compact car.
This project started of with your basic crater. An exposed underground pipe was fabricated by cutting a pill bottle in half, lengthwise and glueing the pieces end to end, with a slight angle in the middle. The ends were trimmed until the pipe fit in the crater.
The space behind the pipe was filled in with scrap styrofoam, then everything but the pipe was spackled. All the dirt areas were then coated with craft sand for texture, and painted dark brown. Once dry, it was given a wash of thinned black. From there it was dry brushed with the origional dark brown, followed by a lighter brown and lastly, the tips of the surface texture were caught with an almost white, to simulate the frost from the temperature drop.
The pipe was covered with serious frost, built up with layers of white glue mixed with baking soda until it was past flush with the surrounding earth. Three lengths of 28 gauge wire were then painted with the same 'almost white' paint, and inserted through the crack in the pipe into the styrofoam base. The wires were then 'wrapped' with fluffed up Halloween spider web, to create the gas plume escaping from the pipe.