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Greek temples have always exerted a certain amount of fascination on me and so I was glad, that I was able to build some models of them. I liked it so much that I expanded the range of temples to a complet themed terrain line, which wasn't planned in the beginning. The large greek temple is the largest piece I ever built and I would also say the most beautiful. I particularily like the freizes, I think they just look terrific.
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| | The pediments in an early stage
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| | The temple is put together for the first time
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| | Steps have been added to the temple
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| My dear friend and fellow role player Mikko asked me if I would bother buildung a temple for him. Of course I couldn't resist the temptation and we settled to make a greek style temple. He wanted a temple with a set of columns and a statue in the center. The model should be small and easily transportable. After intensive study of existing temples and sources on the web I decided to do a small square and historically inaccurate temple.
The temple should be 6x6" large and have 4x4 coulumn running around it. We first thought about 3x3 colums nut I didnt like the drawings and went to 4x4. These columns should bear a freeze which in turn will be the base for the roof just like the real temples did. For the freezes I will use the warrior relief tiles. The pediments should have ornate figures, after some discussing the use of plastic GW figures and warmaster miniatures we settled to use 1/72 Airfix and Rewell figures. These are cheap enough to put on the model without having to make a mold first.
I had quite some trouble with the column, though. At this time there was no form with columns available except the tomb mold. But these columns did not fit to the greek architecture I envisoned. So I had to search for suitable pieces and found wooden tiles from a board game (Akropolos) from which I had to make a mold first. Nevertheless I had to make a model the columns foot and head.
After assembling the temple it had too much architectural wight in the upper regions so I added steps under the temple to balace this. I am really pleased with the result, it looks terrific! I will make a second temple for myself, this time I will follow Marcus Vitruvius' historically accurate plans.
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| | The large greek temple
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| | The basic layout of the temple
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| | The cella is finished
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| | Gluing the frieze in place
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| | The finished temple - front view
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| | Der fertige Tempel von oben
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| | The large greek temple
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| Since I promised the Small Greek Temple to Mikko I had to give my best building away. Sadly I fulfilled my promise, silently vowing to myself to make an equally good temple for myself. So I went back to the graph paper and pocket calculators. This time I had no limitations in usability and size, so I decided to make a fairly large, historically more accurate temple.
Terragenesis has a wonderful article about building a roman temple. According to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio a roman temple follows a very strict plan where all measurements depend only on the temple type and the column diameter. I wanted to make a tetrastylos temple with 4 columns in the front and 7 columns on each side. Inside the column row there should be a cella containing the cult statues and another room with doors on each side.
I specifically designed the temple to be "historically not inaccurate" as well as a terrain piece for wargaming. ("historically not inaccurate": well, I don't think I could ever make a historically accurate temple, for the roman and greek master arcitects did such a great job designing and decorating their buildings, it would take me forever it I tried to copy all that. So I settled to the term "not inaccurate") Being a terrain piece for wargaming I wanted the building to give lots of cover, to be accessible for miniatures and easily traversible. This should ensure the bulding to be able to become a center piece in any battle.
Calculating the column dimensions left me with a height of 14.5cm (the column pieces are 1.7cm diameter) and an intercolumn distance of 3.8cm. So the base length of the temple would be 35cm without steps and the width 18cm. I would add 4 steps (à 1/4") under the paving tiles to give it some arcitectural weight at the bottom, so this would add 5cm to length and width. This would be the largest builing I made so far.
So far the plan.
The biggest problem in this project - excluding that it was so large that it took months to cast all the pieces - was paint softening the glue. (It seems that I prooved that waterproof elmers glue is not waterproof at all...) I assembled 18 columns, painted them and 10 fell apart. Then I assembled them again, this time I threw them to the ground (unintetionally) and went back assembling them again. Sometimes I wonder that the colums turned out straight at all.
While building the cella wall I thought I might break the uniformity by adding a row of warrior reliefs. I painted them bronze to add contrast. The temple has two cult statues which are Star Wars sction figures I bought way after the hype for this purpose. Out of fashion action figures are a wonderful source for statues or other uses.
I have used the temple and the statues in Mortheim games and it gives a nice themed greek feeling. Other than that the temple itself is a little hard to handle and models almost never go inside it. Too bad.
Overall I must say that I like the temple very much it looks terriffic!
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| | Greek ruin
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| | Greek ruin
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| | Greek statues
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| built the greek statues when I had some figures over from the greek temple project. The statues are old Star Wars "Jedi Spirits" action figures that I picked up for $5 at out local toy store. Out of fashion action figs are a wonderful source for statues.
Those long clothes match very good with the greek themed terreain. I built them rather unmotivated, the figs were lying around and gathering dust, but the proved to be very useful being on the table on most of out Mortheim games.
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| | Colossus statue
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| The Idea for the Kolossus Statue came while watching the 17th rerun of Batman Forever (or so, the episode with Mr.Freeze) when Gotham was populated with titanic statues merging with the architecture. Even the observatory was held up by a colossal statue and so I thought, I might try something like this myself.
I bought an out of fashion Action Man - it is impressive how fast these things lose value - spraypainted it black and drybrushed it bronze (mental note: buy larger drybrush!) Too bad the figure is wearing sport shoes, but together with the sunglasses and the wrist communicator it gives an interesting mix of antique and modern. I will have to paint the sunglasses also...
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| | Round greek temple
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| | Round greek temple
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