Okay, as promised I took some pictures of the elevated bridge I've built for use on my Eberron Campaign.
The design of the bridge and the concept is rather simple. Collecting the correct textures was a little more tricky.
Here are the pictures. The miniatures are shown to provide scale. They are an Ettin (large creature) from WotC's Dungeons & Dragons metal line and an elven warrior (medium creature) from Reaper's Warlord line. I'll give basic instructions of what went into the design and build.
Cut a piece of foamcore 4" wide and 30" long. I cut the foamcore slightly larger so I could trim it after the cardstock was glued to it.
Take the floor textures from either CWU or even GR and make a 4" wide and 6" long piece. Duplicate that piece, or any pieces of the same dimensions that you wish to use for floor textures, five times. I used the stone slat textures but this could be done with wooden textures, etc. Glue those five pieces to the 30" foamboard. Voila a long bridge, or at least the beginnings of one.
BTW, I use 3M spray-on mounting glue for all these large builds. No warping and very quick bond. Be careful however, once set, this glue will not allow you to adjust, so make sure you place the cardstock exactly where you want it. Do several dry runs before applying the glue.
Now, to elevate that sucker requires a little bit of patience and more work in Photoshop.
I used the textures from CWU's gatehouse to build the arches for the bridge. To make this stuff sturdy enough for hundreds of metal miniatures to cross simultaneously (visions of Return of the King floating in my head), the cardstock definitely needs to be mounted on foamcore or some other sturdy frame.
The foamcore I used was 12" high x 30" long. You will need two pieces of that size (left and right side of bridge). If you don't need your bridge to be that tall you can compromise. Even a 4" x 30" bridge would look nice. The trick is for the foamcore to be one solid piece to provide even support. The bridge should not be less than 2" high. You will need at least that amount of space to mount the bridge supports and your railing.
The railing textures are a "cut, paste and modify" of textures provided in CWU. They are the textures right above the gatehouse, the ones with the angled cuts. I duplicated these on 8.5" x 11" cardstock and continued to cut and paste until I'd covered the whole page. Once that was done, I printed them, cut them and glued them to the bridge. One on top, one on bottom and one on the inside for railing. I decided to make them angle in one direction until the middle of the bridge and angled them in the opposite direction from the middle to the other side. I'm not going to lie that was a pain.
Once all the support and railing textures are glued in place you can cut the extra foamcore that is left below the support columns. Don't discard this. You'll need it to create reinforced support for the bridge.
The main bridge is built of 3 pieces (bridge span, left and right side supports and railings.
To attach everything together I used the thick kind of "shish kabob" (sic) skewers. Cut the tips of 6 skewers to 1.5" length. Paint them black. Skewer through the foamcore cardboard of the support column pieces, right on the middle of the bridge. Do this right between your "upper" railing and the bottom railing (one of the reasons I used angled textures for the railing). Place the bridge floor piece so that it spans the entire length of the supports. You can place the floor piece on top of the skewers but to have rigidity I skewered right into the foam.
Do this same step at the left and right corners of your floor piece. Don't do it right at the corner, give yourself about an inch of space from the corner.
When this is done on both sides you have a complete bridge. You will notice that the bridge is slightly woobly. Also you will have the skewer bottoms slightly showing through the foamcore. I took some old orcish banners and made them bigger. Glued them to some more kabob skewers. Then I draped them over the railings to cover up the "mistakes".
I used the bridge the first time even with the woobliness. Even with the woobliness, the entire bridge can hold well over 100 miniatures on 1" bases. However, I decided to make firmer supports. I don't have pictures of those right now but I will take some and post instructions to "rigidify" the bridge.
Here is a picture of the entire bridge-span from the miniatures perspective.
Hope you guys enjoy.
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This is exactly the kind of thing thats in my head.
