Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 28 March 2016

IT

Lo
The prototype
I've been quite busy this last week, by my standards at least, but as usual not just with one particular thing. I've been preparing several different things to add some internal detail to my Factory offices and as can be seen by the photograph it's a computer ! (OK its only a screen atm)
I have tried to do computers like the one shown previously, normally as "one-offs" for a particular model, and I only really needed one or at most two to give some interior detail to the factory office.

The first three stages,(top to bottom)
However  I did have a thought to mass-produce them like daGobbo (though not with the same degree of success) and here's the results.
Using a strip of scrap card from the factory unit I marked out the size of the screens. I won't be using this card again, it really is rubbish to cut accurately as can be seen by the many torn and ragged bits, despite using a new scalpel.
The resultant framework was glued to a piece of scrap foamboard which when dried had the back layer of card stripped from it and the foam then smoothed out with a file, giving a nicely rounded back to the screens.
Prototype and bases at the top and examples of the various supports .


The next two stages were (1) to cut a scrap of mdf (Again from the ever helpful Factory build), file the edge off to a wedge shape and glue it to the back, then (2) glue the whole thing to a small base , which I cut from a better piece of card.
Along the way I filed any rough patches on the screen fronts and generally tidied up the fronts.
The results, whilst not great were sufficiently usable for my needs (to represent computer screens). 
A quick lick of paint



Some quick dabs of various colours to represent the various icons for a typical desktop screen and a gloss varnish was enough imo to declare them finished (which really means I was sick of them)
The overall effect is OK and the build wasn't difficult - just frustrating at times) and I do have another idea to make some more of these, using a different technique and to make them smaller as these could easily double as flat-screen TVs.
Dividing wall (pretty boring huh?)
More progress on the Factory Office was the wall shown on the right, which will act to give two rooms upstairs.
Once more a bit of scrap MDF from the kit served as the dividing wall, cut an filed to fit.
A door was added by merely adding a frame and a scrap of card for the door itself (on both sides I hasten to add). The small amounted of detail that can be seen on the door was added using a craft knife - not unlike the details on the original doors, minus the use of a laser and the windows!
Two quick scratch-built desks
Lots of progress made on this new build.
A couple of "desks" were quickly knocked out of the scrap from windows using two pieces from each bit of window scrap. I'm not entirely happy with these particular ones and they may well be gazumped by more  others. One desk is destined to be glued to the diving wall (above), to give some extra needed support to it as it will we used to remove the upper floor
 to give access to the lower area.
Finally this week I've been making a lot of progress on the second Sarissa Building , their Large Factory Building. 
I'm more or less following the same processes as I followed with its smaller brother, so the internal walls will all have 'glass' windows (perspex obviously), the card inserts will all be supplemented with additional card to reach the corners, windows will have lintels and sills on the outside and frames on the inside etc.
The  major deviation I made with this build is to assemble the four main walls with their inserts first before and  before gluing them to the base they'll be painted.
Currently I've also decided not to add the chimney stack and will be using the building annex it sits on as an yet another office,

That's it for this week and as usual if you've taken the time to look then I hope that there was something here of interest. Comments, as always are welcomed and appreciated.




26 comments:

  1. Nice work, Zab. Now the survivors can watch the show, "How to Trick A Zed Into Lighting UP A Phosphorus Cigarette."

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    1. Thanks Jay, if I could print something like that small enoughe, it would make a good computer headline.

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    1. Thnks AL,I always find iit strange that even the smallest, sinokest things can please.

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  3. These look good Joe, nice one dude (thanks for the link too)

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    1. Thanks dGG, I was truly inspied by your own mass-production of these for your hospital and I do try and give credit where credit is due.

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  4. Lovely work Joe! This is exactly the kind of stuff that brings a build to life. And the kind of detail I seem to struggle with the most. Great inspiration as I have three building interiors I need to sort out myself.

    I do hope you're going to document the build of the large factory too.

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    1. I find doing interiors a bit of a trail, one of the reasons why I've mass-=roduced things for interiors in the past. I'd obviously forgotten that when I'd made individual computersin the past.
      When the large factory is complete I will be giving inights into what I've done, but so far there's been nothing really done differently/ to the smaller one.

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  5. That's better progress than most IT departments! Great added details, these will look great on the table I'm sure.

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    1. Thanks N667, I did realise that making a lot of the screens would not take that much more time and would give me a nice little stockpile. They're almost an 'ever=present' in my buildings.

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  6. Oh well done and I wish our IT could turn around that many machines and get them working in such a short space of time!

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    1. Thanls Michael, I can empathise as back in the day our IT dept. had a lot of machines constantly out of commisiion, but luckily these only have to look the part.

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  7. I really admire your attention to the small, additional details you're adding to the buildings. Top stuff.

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    1. Thanks Roy, I always find it interesting that such simple bits are so easy to make, but I only doit because I can't afford many of the excellent cast itemsavailable.

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    2. I have to be honest and say my decision to furnish my wild west buildings was an expensive choice. I wouldn't do it again with any other skirmish type projects. Once is enough for me.

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    3. My wild west set-up has all interior furnishing too, mostly scratch-built (as are most of the buildings), but then again there just wasn't anything available thirty plus years ago.

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  8. Nicely done. Mind you, that's a lot of monitors; are you planning to build an office with a cube farm :-) ?

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    1. Thanks C6, I'm sure I'llbe making an officein the future or I'll find some use for them to furnish some of the buildings that still need some interior detail.

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  9. The computer screens looks great!

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  10. Bloody impressive, well done and very inspirational.

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    1. Thanks Irqan, maybe not suitable for your current adventure, but maybe a future project?

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  11. Brilliant computers. I bet no one has done this before!

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    1. Thanks David, but yes they have (see my link to dGG's hospital build above).

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  12. The desks look awesome and Andy at dagobbo is really good I love his terrain. It'll look great once all installed dude

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    1. Thanks Damon, without inspiration from others on the Interweb blogger thingy I doubt I'd get anything done.
      I do tend to stockpile bits though for ease in future builds.

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