Tenements (2)

As a pre-empt to my campaign I've been tidying up ,my playing board/work area and playing with a couple of trial layouts to show the models I've built all in one place.
This first shot shows the four "tenements" that I featured in last week's blog, just to prove that I did actually have them. The more astute viewers will notice that the one in the foreground has it's roof on back to front... Oh well.

 The first building has a set of double dooors and arched windows and with the photo below, best reflect the true colour of all four buildings.

This second building has a single door flanked by two columns with the window lintels squared off.

The third building again with a single door flanked by columns with angled window lintels.

 Finally the only building to have its doors painted, the lintels this time being triangular (obviously).
 Although I've called these tenements since starting the build my mind isn't completely made up as to their future purpose. Originally there were to be four apartments in each (two up and two down), but since finishing  the structural exterior I had other thoughts on their use. So far I've decided one at least will be four apartments and I'm considering another to be a single house, allbeit a bit grand. (I'm sure someone commented on the lack of a "nice" area). Another building I've thought could be used as offices and the fourth as offices downstairs and an apartment above (a Doctor's or a Dentist's practice perhaps ?)
I haven't shown any shots of the backs of these as they are truly indistinguishable .
To finish off this week's blog here's a couple of shots of my trial set-up using the tenements.

 I changed the layout slightly for the next few shots, the most noticeable change being the position of the car-park.

 You should also be able to notice the small road to the left of the photo above that's not present in the other photos above.

 You can play "Where's Sid ?" on all the city-shots, he's there somewhere but I can't spot him either.

 The last shot shows a fairly good overall view of the table, it's eight foot by 4 four foot (2440mm x 1220mm) with just enough space around to be able to walk and sit.
As for last weeks "mystery", it should now be solved and yes the tenements are big buildings. (sorry C6).
Next week I'll be having another re-arrangement of terrain boards and using the buildings I've got that haven't used in these shots.

I don't think I've any new followers to welcome this time around, but in case I've missed you somewhere along the way "Welcome".

Finally as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Tenements

It seems I started this build way back in early September 2012, (and it's still not finished), but as always I hadn't finally decided on one or two aspects of the build.  I always intended to have some internal detail and that plus the decision of roof access delayed me a lot whilst I wrestled with the decision whether or not to have a staircase up to the roof or a ladder to a hatch (like in my supermarket). As you can see from the photographs I plumped for the former; it gives the roof a more interesting aspect with the roof exit structure.

 Here's a close up of the roof, showing the rear of the roof exit and the HVACs I showed in blog last week.Rather than a single central HVAC unit I opted for two, it provides for a more interesting roof space and of course more cover for those roof-top battles.

The structure itself is basically a box built from foamboard.
There are windows in the front and rear of the building, I'm sure I had a good reason for having no windows in the sides but whatever the reason was, it's now lost to the mists of time.
Lintels and sills were either made from card, matchsticks or stirrers and various combinations of all three.
The photo on the right shows (from left to right)
Ground floor front, upper front, ground floor back, upper floor back and finally sidewalls.

Here's the rear of the building, showing the roof exit and rear door, both as yet unpainted.
The "plinth" surrounding the base of the building was a complete pain to make mostly due to the amount of strips that had to be cut.
Base measurements are about 16 inches by 10 inches (including the base) and the base surround itself is about 1 inch high. You get a good idea of the size of the thing from Sid. The height of the building (to the parapet is about 8 inches. (That's 400mm x  250mm x 200mm for those of a metric persuasion)

Final view, just to show the remaining side wall.
Early in this build I'd decided on the colour scheme  not being grey as I thought that I already have sufficient grey from the terrain boards and I wanted a brighter colour.
The colours I used came from B&Q
from their selection of tester pots (Acylic emulsions).  I bought two of each of three colours (in a buy three for the price of two deal).
Unfortunately none of the three were quite what I was looking for, but by mixing two of them together  I got the result I wanted (the colours were Sunflower and Wholemeal)
The third colour was Sandstone and was far brighter than I wanted, but I have used it as a highlight and I'm intending to use it on my "Sarrisa" residence.

That's it for this week, over the next week  I'll be having a major tidy-up in my wargames room and I'm hoping to be able to put out all the models I've currently made.
And for those of a detective disposition there is a bit of a mystery to be solved from the colour photographs

The painting has all been somewhat rushed so far on this build, but I did want to be able to post this, this week. I've fallen behind in my self-imposed schedule even more so that when fellow blogger Mathyoo (blog) visited but mostly because of an early arrival.
I am again a grandfather, this time to my eldest son's son, all three of their family are fine and well and like me a bit surprised that my grandson arrived two weeks early.

Finally, let me welcome my latest follower who I believe is Cash1204, (there's no way of telling who joined when as far as I can tell) I hope you find something here to interest you. If I haven't already welcomed you then apologies and "Welcome"

As always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

HVACs.

 I know I'm probably trying to teach Grannies to suck eggs but just in case you don't know what HVAC stand for , it's Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning. HCACs are mostly to be seen in films involving roof-top chases and are both ideal cover for figures and help break up the boring expanse of flat roofs.
 The top photo shows two of the card air conditioning units I've made. They're from either WWG, Twilight or Fat Dragon, but I can't really remember which. 
The second photograph shows a homemade HVAC unit shown against the commercial one

My unit is about the same size as the commercial ones at approximately 2cm x 6cm x 3cm high.
The original idea was to use the base of a plastic pork pie tray to substitute for the wire mesh, unfortunately this had many disadvantages. Firstly being see-through didn't help and secondly the glue I used seemed to have a very strange melting effect on the plastic.(I later found an exceedingly good cake tray packaging in red that would have helped). Other materials used were scraps of card, coffee stirrers and some boxes which were the "body" of the units, something akin to a normal matchbox could easily be used.

To give them some strength I cut and inserted polystyrene, before gluing the various bits to them. On the later units, because of the problems I'd encountered, I used wire mesh for the grills (the type you buy for repairing car bodywork)
The actual construction was simpleI glues a frame of strirrers around each on the long sides of the central core box and then added the mesh. Each end has a couple of cardboard bits added as does the tops of the unit. The vertical panels are once more stirrers cut to fit.
This last photograph shows the end view of the HVAC's and the card panel. The tops, as well as the fronts do have some variation as i was mainly using up scraps of card.
As usual, for some reason the photographs don't show the true colours of the pieces, it's not just my crap painting !

This week's blog post has been a bit of a filler as real-life events caught up with me last week, but next week I should have at least one or more of the four buildings I've been working on at a stage where I feel comfortable enough to post pictures. The internal walls and fixtures are however another matter, as I continue to chop and change my views about the buildings' purpose.

Finally I'll welcome my latest follower "Zed Monkey" whose blog can be found here and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

More Rubbish

In between all those bouts of apathy, whilst waiting for glue or paint to dry I came up with this small bit of scenery for my games probably inspired by Vampifan's and another's Black Cat Bases fly tipping model (I can't for the sake of me find the reference to the other)

"More bloody rubbish, my brush just isn't going to hack it this time"

My model is about 8 inches by 6" (200mm  x 150mm), which is slightly larger than the Black cat one, but I did want it to look like it could also be used as cover.
The photographs pretty much speak for themselves and I've more or less presented them in a clockwise fashion from what I consider to be the "entrance" to the dump.
My attempt at a fridge was made from cork scrap, from my terrain board builds.
The book that can be seen was an earlier effort too.


The next view shows a couple of old mattresses I made specifically for this .
The bricks were made a while ago from scraps of cork.
Some of my homemade plastic rubbish bags, which are dotted around the entire piece can be seen in the shot, as can a couple of tins, left-overs from my supermarket build.

This next shot shows  a broken toilet (although the obvious break in it unfortunately can't be seen in this shot).



There are more rubbish bags than can be seen in both these shots dotted around.

I've used some coarse string  (sisal or in this country often referred to as Post Office string) to represent the overgrown nature of this tip.

To make this bit of scenery I started with an irregular shape of card and filed the edges down then made a rough outline of  where I wanted the actual rubbish and a rough shape of the area I wanted left "clear"

To fill out the tip area I glued down bits of polystyrene and glued cork filings over it.


The next shot shows a sofa that I made especially for this piece, again using cork scrap.
It was made in an identical fashion as my other sofas and armchairs save for the fact that I made the seating have only two cushions instead of the three it should have had,
The missing sofa cushion can be found on the pile opposite the sofa.
This view also shows a couple of newspapers that I added as well as yet more bin-bags.

The photographs also show the smashed pallet that, again, I made especially for this piece.

The "tour" finally returns to what I designated as the entrance and again shows the broken pallet and a couple of bags spilling their contents over. Once more the bages were purposely made for this.
The pallet was made from matchsticks and coffee stirrers as were the bits of wood scattered around throughout.

There are a few bit and pieces that can't be easily made out from the photographs, there's wire mesh, a tire, various bit of planking and a car seat too.
As I glued an item in place I put a little more glue than necessary onto the base then scattered some cork filings to "bed-in" whatever it was into the model.
I used dark colours throughout for the bulk of the tip but the scattering of what colour there is really makes it for me, as anything less would probably have darkened the model too much.

So, whilst I think the Black Cat fly-tip is indeed value for money, by my best estimate this cost me less than £1 in glue,materials and paint. It took about a week to finish but that was at the same time as I was building Skips, working on my next four buildings and HVACs (the subject of next  week's blog - probably, maybe, ish).
Time-wise - I reckon I spent no more than 4 hours making this, after all it's just a pile of rubbish.

Let me finally welcome my latest follower who could be Chris or David, but I'm at the stage now where I'm losing track, I blame the drugs or my age (probably both) or the fact that blogger doesn't help, nevertheless welcome guys, hope you find something here to interest you.

That's it for this week and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Skips

I started making these skips quite a while ago as yet another project to fill in drying time gaps.
I guess I was inspired by Dave Van Dam's models which you can see here and also Vampifan's fine rendition of a WorldWorksGames' skip which appears in many of his bat-reps.
Skips are particularly useful as cover, observation posts and are probably a good location for scavenging and I'm sure for many other purposes too.
All my skips were built in exactly the same way, a simple net of four sides and a base all cut from one piece of card. The first one cut out was scored and loosely folded, the result of which was trimmed and adjusted for fit..
This first skip was then flattened and became the template for the others.
All the skips were then folded into their final shapes and trimmed to fit, so that even though they're all meant to look the same they are each in fact just a little different.
The card I used was fairly thin, probably too thin for use as walls in buildings, but easy enough to cut with scissors, score and fold.

In the photgraph above you can see how badly the fit is in some areas inside the skips.
The next stage was to make them look more like skips and less like fancy boxes.
Initially I had thought to use the tried and trusted coffee stirrers for the extra bits that would form the reinforcement struts (or whatever they are), but these were too wide (5mm+!) for the job so I cut some strips of card from a cereal packet to use instead.
The strips were applied in several sittings, they were allowed to overlap the edges and were then trimmed afterwards; the whole process was then repeated for other strips. The diagonal pieces were all cut to fit the particular gap they were intended for as were the two vertical strips in the top half of the skip, this was fairly time consuming.
After a quick, rough and ready paint job (as most of mine are) I had four skips which at least looked the part.

The photograph to the right and the one above show two views of the completed models. The models appear very brightly coloured but this is actually not the case, they all much darker in reality (I put it down to my legendary non-existent photographic skills)

Skips of course are never in this state for more than 5 seconds in real-life as the moment they're dropped off all and sundry will be sticking their own garbage into them without so much as a by-your-leave.
So the next task was to design some contents for them.
As I had four skips I obviously needed four loads and I had the idea of having them each with a different amount and type  of "fill".
I also had the barmy idea of having transferable loads, though I'm still unsure as to the usefulness of this and the loads may all end up stuck down.

I used some broken stirrers, my plastic sacks and  newspapers that I made a while ago. I also made some more bricks (from plastic this time rather than cork).
Each of the loads had a base upon which all the rubbish was piled, along with copious amounts of cork filings to provide texture.
 I've used scraps of foamboard, polystryrene and card to build up all the bases, nothing clever. The black sacks load has a two-piece card base on a card "box" for support whilst the load of bricks is a flat piece of card on  several scraps of foamboard.

The photograph on the left shows the brick load transferred to the red skip and the final load .
The final load seen in the skip on the right can be placed either at the back of the skip or at the front as shown here.
The final view below shows all four skips, completed sufficiently enough that I can say I'm satisfied that they can be used on the table.
I probably spent no more than four hours total on these at a cost of only pennies and time.

Next week I'll probably show you more rubbish that I've been working on in-between bouts of trying to get my four of my buildings finished (I'm guessing that in another three to four weeks time I'll have them to the stage where I can show them.)

That then, is it for this week it only remains for me to welcome my two latest followers "Doer-chele and Deathurgent", so "Welcome guys", I hope that there is something here to interest you.

All comments, as always, are both welcomed and appreciated.

Keegan's Hot-Dog Stand

"Time for a quick break I think"

I find that whatever it is I'm currently working on there always comes a period of time when I'm waiting, it's either glue or paint. So, in these frequent intervals I find myself tinkering about with bit and pieces and this is one of the results.

Probably the most interesting thing about this particular model (for at least some of my followers) is that not a single coffee-stirrer was used in the construction!

"Ketchup, mustard or BBQ sauce ?"

It was made over the course of a couple of weeks in quite a few sessions, each of about 10 minutes or so, though total build and paint time was no more than 2 hours.

The pictures should be self explanatory, the second view showing the side where the vendor would sell from.
The body of the model is made from 5mm cork (scraps from my foray into terrain boards)
In the top photograph the actual layers of cork can be easily discerned, making the model about
25mm to the top of the cart.

"Extra onions please"

The rear shelf (with the bottles) is a scrap of card, as is body of the signboard, the sign itself comes from one of the card Twilight Streets buildings sets.
The bottles and bread-rolls were made from a wooden barbeque skewer, as was the rear supporting leg.
The bottles were much quicker to make this time, as I'd had a lot of practice with them from my supermarket shelves.
The white panels, represent the various compartments that are found on these type of carts and are paper.

The canopy was made from wet toilet tissue paper layered over a plastic former, not unlike a "Kinder Egg", with paint and thinned PVA applied liberally, paper-mache style. This particular mix seemingly took forever to thoroughly dry out (more than 24 hours if I recall correctly), but was nice and solid when I carefully prised it free. The next stage was to cut it so that it laid fairly flat and to sand it smooth(ish). A quick measurement of the circumference base and a hanging border from a 5mm strip of paper was added, which was later divided into 12 segments and a 'v' shaped notch added.   A scrap of foamboard was added inside the parasol to aid the planting of its pole (a cocktail stick). A quick paintjob (obviously from the state of it) and I was pleased enough with it to call it finished.
A couple of final bits of info, there are serviettes on the stand, though none of the photos shows them clearly, the were made from newspaper, stacked glued and cut into triangles. The wheels where made from 5mm cork too and filed to shape.
In case you're wondering about the title it's an in-joke more than likely lost on everyone, you would have to be fairly old and have close connections with Newcastle to understand it (it has nothing to do with wor King Kev btw).

In other news, I'm now the proud Grandfather of my daughter's baby girl. Mother and child are doing fine and I do like the idea of having grandchildren (but not the idea of being a grandfather - makes me feel old, but what the hey - I am !).

Finally let me say welcome to my two latest followers, "StuG and Kris Marquardt" (I think), if I missed you out, my apologies but "Welcome", nonetheless, I hope that there's something here that you find interesting.

That's it for this week hope you all had a good holiday and as always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Billboards (2)

The world is now a much brighter place, but I haven't managed to do anything at all over the last week, luckily though I had allowed for this situation and split my finished billboards into two posts for just this situation.

Here's another of my larger sized, free-standing, billboards, probably not suitable for the roof-tops of buildings.

The construction of this and all the other ones I've made follow the same lines, namely coffee-stirrers, either glued together in strips of four or used singly for cross-braces.

All the actual "Bills" were taken from the Interweb and most, if not all, had to be photo-manipulated in some way or other as they were all taken from real-life ones at an angle to the viewer etc.

 The above two photos show the same signs, obverse and reverse. The Wine one is not one of my favourites, due its lack of colour, but I do like the Planters one.

Another pair of signs, the Hip Hop one is probably my least favourite. The Fisher-Price billboard has a lolly-stick glued to the bottom of the rear supports, this was for the extra weight to keep it stable.
All the smaller boards have a tendency to easily topple forward, but that shouldn't be a problem when they're butted up against the parapet of a building roof.

The final billboard of my current batch, nothing spectactular, but it was one of the last batch (I made them in 4's) which were made altogether as a sort of production line, rather than individually.
Finally here's a couple of photographs of posters that I haven't turned into billboards.
The first two have  a backing and surround, whilst the last two are merely prints.

The American Kennel club one features in one of the first batch of billboards and may end up just stuck to the side of a building.

These two could end up just stuck to the side of buildings too, with a suitable backing.

I don't think I'll be rushing to do any more Billboards in the near future, twelve (with a potential for sixteen) is more than enough.

Laslty let me welcome my latest followers "Clearco Miniatures" (you can find their site here - it's well worth a visit) and Alvaro, here's hoping you guys find something of interest here. If I've missed any new followers. sorry, (I blame the drugs)

That's it for this week, as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.