HOW TO: Sandbag terrain

Hi Everyone!! Just a quick "TUT" of sorts for all of you aspiring guardsmen out there. I had to build up a piece of terrain for my local club and I decided to put a sandbag emplacement on it as the Original had a small crappy one on it. Anyway here is how I did it.

First off I got my base and planned directly on it. I got a piece of scrap plywood I had and put Foamcore on it with a hot glue gun. The foamcore is so I can actually hollow out an area for the emplacement. After that I drew out the area for the actual building to set so I can place it back later after I build up some areas. I then cut out the emplacement area and used filler to smooth out the edges.

After then I made a pattern of the hole I cut out to have a place to build up my sandbags. I do this as not to smash the foamcore while trying to texture and build the wall. Also the filler was still wet and it gave me a dry area to build on.

From there I decided to make a "jig" so my bags are all around the same size. I just cut a square out of cardboard about the size of a dime. 

From there I just roll out sculpy and make a snake. I cut off enough to be manageable and go to town.

From there I roll it out some more and then flatten it out to form a flat snake.

Then I lay my jig on the Snake and cut out the bags.....

I then take these squares and use my fingers to round them out some to soften the corners and make them more "bag-like".

After I round out a bunch of them and have a good supply I then start to build my wall. I build in a "true" fashion and interlock the bags. this adds stability to the bags wall and realism.  If your needing help with this Google Sanbag bunkers and the like and you should get some good pictures. Anyway interlocking them makes them look real and remember they are NOT PERFECT so dont be afraid to misalign them a tad bit. SOME people texture them either by pressing cloth into them OR putting cloth band aides on their fingers and pressing their fingers into them. Also a good idea is to take a sculpting blade or knife edge and score a "seam" into the edge of the bags. I did not do this in these because I was in a rush and forgot. Oh well its only a club peice and when I repair it I will do it next time!!! LOL

Here is the bunker wall I made and then baked to make it hard. I then glued it to the base and painted it. I will show pics of that in the next day or so.

And Thats it!! Thats how I built the sand bag wall!!