Alien Landscapes
One of the hardest things about designing alien scenery is imagination! If you don't have it, it can be hard to design new things. Well, these basic guides will help you with your first few terrain ideas and get you started on designing your own alien planet.

Crystal Tower
This tower looks to be a bit old and grown over, so could easy be used and explained as "ancient alien technology." Here are the materials need to make it

Styrofoam: 1 3"x6"x1' piece, 2 3"x6"x1' pieces. Comes in packages, TV's, Printers, Etc.
Hot glue: low temp preferred, high temp will work but may melt styrofoam when really hot.
Blue tumbled glass: $2 at Wal-mart. You can use flat rocks too and paint them.
Lichen: Especially the extras that fall off of trees and such. You can also use the dried grass from after you mow the lawn.
Elmer's glue or PVA glue
Spray can Matte Lacquer: Yes, this does melt styrofoam but that's the idea.
Rocks - Various
First, I get a basic layout design I want to use and I hot glue the styrofoam pieces together.

Next, Peel the sides of the styrofoam with your fingers and break off all the excess. WARNING! This makes a big mess! Little styrofoam balls will go everywhere. If you didn't have any lichen or grass, you can use this stuff later for filler.

Once you've finished and you?ve cleaned up, take the spray can lacquer (you could just use spray paint) and either spray in strips close up for a river or culvert, or hold the can back some and spray the whole thing. This will melt it some and give it a weird look. This also holds the styrofoam better and allows for better painting. It does blast marks and ivy sections good too cause it looks like ivy and/or melted wall depending on how you paint it and so forth.

It will dry in about 30 minutes. Depending on your landscape will determine the color. I use a forest theme so I use Houser Medium Green for the base color and a Forest green for my inset areas. For the ridge and flat areas, I use a True Blue.

On the one pictured, I lined the flat areas with thin wood pieces first for stability and a flat look behind the glass, but this is not required.

I let it sit overnight to dry and work on other projects, but you could work with it in about an hour.

Take your blue glass pieces and try and piece them over your flat areas so all the edges match. It's much like putting a puzzle together. Once you have them laid out, you can then hot glue them to the styrofoam. Line your cracks and edges with elmer's glue or PVA glue and use lichen, grass, or extra styrofoam balls to fill in these areas. The lichen gives it a mossy, over grown look and I like it best, but you use what you got. Use hairspray on the lichen to hold it in place, but its not really needed.

Add some rocks and extra trees or lichen for added effect. There you go! You have a creative Alien design that all your gaming friends will enjoy.