GAMEIN5D - Bigger Inside
  • HOME
  • PROJECTS BLOG
  • GAMEIN5D 101
  • Kick starter
  • CONTACT
  • HOME
  • PROJECTS BLOG
  • GAMEIN5D 101
  • Kick starter
  • CONTACT

The projects

(GAMEIN5D in action)

28mm Ruined Abbey - Part 3

22/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Part 3: First I decided I wanted something a bit better under the buildings, something like the remnants of paved floors and I also realised that there should be a lot of rubble around from all these ruined buildings.
For the building floors I spread milliput thinly across the base and scored a paving pattern into it. I used milliput because it doesn’t shrink when drying. This is really important because I know from experience that the best way to warp the base-boards is to put something that shrinks as it dries directly on to them. The image (right) shows the paving in the first stage, rubble and other detritus will hide the edges.
Picture
For the large amounts of rubble I cut up lots and lots of scrap foam packaging into brick-sized and smaller pieces. These then got tossed around in a bucket with a generous amount of white acrylic paint until all the pieces were coated. I then spread them all out to dry (image below).
Picture
From this point forward things definitely started to accelerate. I created the milliput paving under the other foam buildings and started planning how the rubble was going to be postioned around the layout. Much of it was going around the buildings but I also wanted to pick out the location of where walls used to be and maybe even suggest the locations of where other buildings may have stood (image below right).
I also made a better pass at painting the terrain adding some darker browns and greens to the lower lying areas and trying to get to a better colour to go under the scatter and flock later on.
 
After the image on the right was taken I also removed all the buildings from the board and airbrushed them a light grey
Picture
shade and gave then a wash with Agrax Earthshade. The wall sections were trimmed down and painted. The paving stones were painted with a mix of brown and burnt umber (Crawford and Black cheap and cheerful) and the rubble was removed and given a the same treatment as the buildings. I probably didn’t take enough photos at this point both because I was on a roll and it’s still not something I’m particularly used to doing … sorry.
It does at least explain the somewhat sudden jump to the next photo though (image right). This is the start of the end really. At this point I have just started to work my way around the board.
 
The wall section was bonded (PVA) in place and I used a large cheap brush to splodge (very technical term that) on slightly (1:4) watered down PVA where I was going to
Picture
scatter Woodland Scenics coarse ballast. This was a great colour match for the stone colour I’d painted the walls and buildings. I was also (finally) brave enough to bond down the buildings (PVA again) but not until after I had checked the boxes folded up a couple of dozen times.
A word about scatter and folding boxes: If you get too much scatter on the hinges of the boxes it can cause problems when you fold the boxes. To counter this I try and use less, and finer or softer, scatter materials when I’m working across hinges or try to avoid them entirely if I can.
Now it was just a case of working my way around the board. I used PVA to bond the buildings in place and then added the larger pieces of rubble where walls may have fallen down, I used smaller pieces of the foam rubble around and between the larger and finished it off with Woodland Scenics coarse and then fine ballast.
Picture
Picture
The two images above and the two below are me continuing to work my way slowly around the board.
Picture
Picture
And suddenly … I started to believe I may actually finish this layout. Having bashed through and done all the sticking down of buildings, rubble and scatter the board was quite damp so I thought I may as well carry on and start to add some flock, darker green in the lower areas and mixed blends and a lighter green in the higher areas which is a nice way of shading.
Then the slight mania passed and I realised that everything was definitely in need of an opportunity to dry and solidify. At this stage (and in the image on the right) it was a bit of a PVA swamp I started to have at least 3 bodings about whether or not it would all now fold up. Of course it was far too late to do anything about it and any attempted folding up while things
Picture
were still drying would probably result in a spectacularly horrible Atlantis-like sliding of everything off the board. So I decided not to do that and left it to dry overnight and tried not to worry (too much).
Picture
In the end though it worked out. The next morning it had dried pretty well but I left it until I came back from work that evening to check it all out.
 
The “first-folding” was a bit traumatic and stressful as loose scatter gets everywhere and gets stuck in the gaps and stops the magnets connecting or gets wedged in the
hinges and stops things folding but a bit of blowing, a gentle brush (possibly getting a bit Mills & Boon here) and liberal application of a dust-buster (hopefully never used in Mills & Boon) and the problem is cleaned up and the boxes folded up nicely. Although not finished I definitely felt I was finished enough to show others (and at time of writing I still haven’t got any further) but I was still quite happy with some of the elements (images above and to the left).
The End: Well … the end of this tutorial anyway, I hope I’ve shown the main stages of how I built this terrain and how to make sure the whole thing folds up as it should. I haven’t included any photos of it folded up as that would just be pictures of a box with a logo on it (with a magical secret within) and the YouTube videos so a better job of showing that (search GAMEIN5D).
Picture
Picture
 
Happy building. Jon
0 Comments

28mm Ruined Abbey - Part 2

22/4/2018

1 Comment

 
Part 2a: This is probably the part I enjoy the most because it’s basically just playing around with the terrain elements you have and imaging how and why the various pieces fit together. The only difference with the GAMEIN5D boards is that you have to keep one eye on how things will fold up into 3D. Fortunately I’ve always been OK at “seeing” how things fit together but even if you’re not its easy just to blue-tac things to
Picture
the board and then fold up the boards to see if they fit – if the box closes – it’ll work fine. This was pretty much what I settled on in the end (image right); I’ve separated the two boards so you can see where they are located. The idea was to have the Chapel and Temple ruins in the centre as the “bottom” of both boxes – I liked the idea of the later Abbey being built on the site of an older Temple. The three ruins and the wall on the top right of the photo form the outer remnants of a larger building and the two (black) buildings on the left are what remains of another building in a larger monasterial complex.
The technical bit: making sure it all folds up. I’ve tried a few times to come up with some sort of diagram to facilitate showing people how to make sure things fold but in the end it comes down to using your imagination and/or blue-tac, folding it up and checking nothing crushes anything else. Specifically in this case (and here I refer only to the first photo in this section) the main trouble-spot was the Ruined Building at the back and the Ruined Chapel in front of it as these were the two biggest elements and I wanted them next to each other. However by moving the Building “back” enough you also raise it “up” in the folded box and so out of the way of the Chapel. In the end I blue-tacked it and folded the box up to make sure. The building (top right) is on a single “lid” tile
Picture
Picture
so that got blue-tacked and I closed the box (there was loads of room for this). Similarly on the left-hand-side the upper black building needs to be moved “left” enough that it doesn’t impinge on the Temple Ruin when the box folds but as the Temple is quite low this isn’t too problematic. The bottom-left black building is also on a lid-tile so again I blue-tacked them all and folded up the box to make sure they fitted. Two more pictures from different angles are shown on the right.
At this stage it was buildings (check), layout planned out (check) and hopefully the whole thing would fold up without horrible grinding/crunching/oh-bugger I’ve just ruined hours of work – type noises. However, I wasn’t brave enough to bond anything to the boards just yet as I wanted to build up the flat areas first.
Part 2b: At this point the rest of the board was flatter than a disappointed flat-fish and while there’s no reason a monastery needs to have particularly lumpy grounds I felt a ruined one would probably have mounds where walls once stood. I used some foam-board which I’ve had lying around for actual years but I wished I’d used up some of the cardboard packaging I
Picture
had left from the boards (that’s definitely making it into the sequel). Quite simply I cut out some shapes and chucked them around the board, moving them until I liked the layout and it made sense with the wider idea of the terrain. In some cases I layered one on top of another literally making a sort of contour map (image right).
Picture
Picture
The foam board is nice and flat and light-weight and once I was happy with where everything was (and I’d checked that I hadn’t messed up anything
once the boxes were folded) I used PVA to glue down the bits of foam board. Obviously at this point the newly raised lumps and bumps looked a bit blocky (image above left) so I used the same Polycell foam filler as before to smooth those steps out and give the lumps and bumps a more rounded appearance (image above right). This is a pretty slap-dash affair and quite pleasing to do; once it was dry I went over it all with a bit of sand-paper.
Then it was just a case of working my way around the whole board and giving it all a rub-down with sandpaper (a much less pleasing job). At this point I also decided to base-coat all the building elements (Vallejo polyurethane primer again). I’m not exactly sure why as it didn’t serve any great purpose at this stage but with hindsight it did make the buildings stand out really nicely from the board in photos (image right).
Picture
Picture
It did still all look a little flat and I wanted more texture under the actual buildings as well so I went back for another go with the foam filler and tried to eradicate most of the perfectly flat parts. I also spread out a decent amount of filler where the buildings were going to be and replaced them making imprints of the building pillars before removing the buildings again. This gave me both a reference for where the
buildings were and more texture beneath the buildings themselves.
Partc 2c: I actually wasn’t kidding about the procrastination stage. Buildings on, buildings off, buildings on again and generally not getting very far. At this point I also decided to paint the terrain green (image right) mostly because I was bored of it looking white and I wanted to feel like I was making progress (I wasn’t) and also because I wanted to see if I could put some
Picture
very cheap (£2 Daler and Rowney) paint through my airbrush (I could). This is a very common stage for me when building stuff and usually preceeds the final, somewhat rushed end-stages where I push on regardless, make decisions without really thinking them through and more-or-less hope for the best (I don’t recommend this stage to others, many models died because of this). (Go to Part 3)
1 Comment

28mm Ruined Abbey - Part 1

20/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Part 1: The Amera buildings are namely F225 Ruined Chapel and F224 Building Ruins as well as F218 Temple Ruins, F207 Terrace Ruins and three F215 Ruined Walls. They come looking like the image (right) and it’s a very quick job with a sharp knife to remove the parts from the plastic sheet. The parts are thin and one sided, which is great because it keeps them light and although you can definitely use them like
Picture
this I like to “pad – out” the walls to make them a more realistic thickness. The picture (above right) is of the Ruined Chapel and this is the biggest element on the board and I thought it would make a great centre-piece for the whole terrain.
Here is the Building Ruin (image right) with all the pieces removed from the main sheet. This model comes with a base which is just a piece of flat plastic - I used it even though I was eventually going to bond it to the board. Waste not, and all that.In order to pad-out the walls I traced around the walls and floor onto some pieces of foam packaging (image below left) and cut them out using my hot wire foam cutter.
Picture
The foam is 25mm thick so when I finished I cut it in half to give two copies about 12.5mm thick. I then made some changes to the second copy to make it even more wrecked (image below right). This will form the basis of a second ruined building.
Picture
Picture
[Going back to the Amera Ruined Building] I then push-fitted the parts and trimmed and cut pieces as necessary so that the original plastic parts and the foam parts all form a
coherent whole. This mostly involves pushing it all together, then it falling apart, going back and trimming some more until it all fits together nicely.
The only tricky bit is cutting a horizontal section from the front and side walls so the floor can fit in. Eventually I got it all to fit and PVA-ed the heck out of it et voila (images right)!
Picture
Picture
I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with the base and then I spilled a load of PVA on it anyway so I smeared it out to make the surface a bit bumpy.
Picture
There were some sharp edges where the plastic and foam didn’t marry-up well so I used a foam filler (image left) to fill in any gaps and smooth out any remaining problems. I really like this Polycell stuff, it dries really quickly and you can sand and paint it once it’s dry – it’s great for applications like this (I’ve no idea what it’s like for the DIY purposes it’s probably intended for).
Overall I was pretty happy with how the building turned out at this stage.
I built the Ruined Chapel and filled out the walls in the same way – this model has a much more substantial and detailed base with loads of rubble
Picture
Picture
(images above right). At this point I also put together the second lot of foam pieces I cut before. I roughly joined them using tooth picks.
Picture
Picture
The assembled building is shown in the images on the left, a bit blocky and clumsy looking at this stage but as I was making this up as I went along
I was actually OK with how it looked. Certainly it was encouraging enough to try again so I sketched out some designs on foam in a similar style to the Building Ruins I already had. What I didn’t do was take any photos of these stages unfortunately.
So … I think a more detailed look at how I made the foam buildings is best dealt with separately and in more detail somewhere else. In short I cut out my designs using the foam cutter, then assembled them using tooth picks and PVA. I then used the tip of a foam cutting tool to score some brickwork details into the surfaces of the foam. Finally I base-coated the whole thing with Vallejo polyurethane primer.
Picture
I also tried base-coating with an aerosol primer but it appears that was solvent based and I melted the model – live and learn. I also learned that black is not the best colour for photos as well but here’s (image right) the best picture I have of the buildings. At this point I had all the main building elements, at least, constructed and in a state to go on the board so it was time to move on to Part 2.
0 Comments

28mm Ruined Abbey - Introduction

20/4/2018

0 Comments

 
Getting the idea. I had some large, 28mm terrain elements already from Amera Plastics. Since they all had a vaguely Abbey-esque feel I was reminded of trips to Fountains Abbey which was this really cool ruined monastery which we used to visit when I was little. Who wouldn’t want to wage a futuristic galaxy-spanning war in a place like that?
It seemed like some larger ruined building elements with remnants of walls in a coherent design would make for a pretty cool layout – hopefully.
Picture
Starting somewhere. So here’s the starting point (image left) – a two W – board layout. I do prefer the W’s they are less versatile but I tend to stick to rectangular layouts anyway and the boxes are a bit more robust. That said the plan will be to add two A – style boxes eventually to make a full 6’ x 4’ layout. All the Amera elements are roughly assembled and placed on the
board and I start by shuffling them about trying to get a feel for where everything might go and what might be fun. The little cottage (F223) didn’t make the cut – maybe it’ll make the sequel. First impression was that I was going to need some additional elements (even 4’ x 3’ is a lot of space to fill), and as I wanted to try and do something with the foam packing I had left, this seemed like an opportunity to have a play around and scratch-build some ruined buildings. So with that in mind this “tutorial” (for want of a better word but it’s really just a description of what I did in approximately the order I did them) will now be split into 3 main parts:
  • Part 1: where I assemble and/or build the main ruined building elements.
  • Part 2: where (a) I decide on the locations of the main elements to the board and (b) start to build up some uneven terrain across the whole board and (c) procrastinate a lot.
  • Part 3: where I fix down the main elements and finish with paint, scatter materials and flock.
There’ll be overlap of Parts 1 – 3 and as I’m a numpty I didn’t take pictures of every stage so forgive me if there are some serious (though probably not as bad as The Last Stand) continuity issues with the pictures (go to Part 1).

0 Comments

28mm Ruined Abbey - Video

6/4/2018

0 Comments

 
So ... my KickStarter was funded and the "fun" began - cue a year of doing nothing but making 200+ GAMEIN5D boards from scratch and by hand. Plus all the joy of solving the problems of mass producing large items in a small room, shipping large heavy objects all over the world and retaining sanity. Thankfully I had very nice (and most importantly patient) backers.
Picture
With that done I can return to the, much more interesting, business of making stuff and I've made this 4 x 3 Ruined Abbey layout. There's a video of it giving more details up on YouTube and I'll be posting more details of how I made it here over the next few days as a sort of tutorial. I hope you like it.
0 Comments

Return to North Africa

15/11/2016

0 Comments

 
Now that the madness of getting ready for the show has subsided (and ignoring for a moment the madness of trying to get something on Kickstarter) ... I think I'm done with the extension to the North African piece. The whole thing was supposed to be sparse because (a) it's a desert and (b) I wanted space to be able to add mobile elements and game on it.
Here's one of the trees - trees are hard.
Picture
Why is it that superglue bonds skin  with gleeful enthusiasm but won't glue lichen onto a bit of dry stick? Now most of the superglue has come off my fingers I'm a bit more sanguine about it.
Picture
I've also mostly finished basing the two buildings but I'll post about those later. For now I want to concentrate on the whole board. 
​Here's another of the little bedraggled trees though.
And here's the whole board, combined with the other. I've had to move out of my normal work space to take the photos, and there isn't as much light. The whole board is 1.08m by 0.72m - big enough for our dining table anyway.
Picture
Here's a couple of images from across the board.
That poor little sherman's done some work. I've got more photos of it than my children.
Sorry, I just like taking these - here's the obligatory aerial shot. 
Picture
And finally the whole thing folds up into a nice little set of boxes. Cheers!
Picture
Going
Picture
going
Picture
gone.
0 Comments

1:72 scale desert buildings

29/10/2016

0 Comments

 
This post is about how I build some of the buildings in my North African dioramas. Which I suspect is a pretty low tech, low skill method - but it suits my "do it and see how bad it ends up" approach to most things.
So ... I got this little resin building off ebay ages ago - and I was a little underwhelmed. But it only cost £3 so no real worries there.
Picture
Also, it's a decent size for 1:72 and gave me a nice feel for the proportions, it also had a nice texture on the outside, but that said, it's a pretty boring building.
Picture
This is a blob of modelling clay, rolled out flat and then I've pressed the resin building into the clay to make a mold. I've done this 3 times, overlapping to make a wider building. Then I added rectangle of clay for windows, and some small rectangles for wooden beams to support the ceiling. ​I trimmed a matchstick to make a little tool and just pushed it gently into the clay around the doors and windows to suggest a frame. This is the front of the building.

I then repeated the process several times, to make a back, two sides and an outer wall as this building will have a little staircase going on to the roof. That's why the rear wall is a lot wider - needs room for the staircase. Not much measuring here (which I regret later) but it's more fun to crack-on and do it by eye. That's what I told myself anyway. 
​Next the plaster - great fun - although the damn stuff starts setting really quickly.
Picture
Picture
I drop the molds from a small height a few times to level the plaster. I make sure it's as level as possible, otherwise it's hours of sanding down the backs, and the plaster cracking, or sanding my fingers.
I use plaster of paris, because it's cheap. I keep looking at the hydrocal and thinking "can it really be 5 times better". So far and going with with no - cheap and cheerful.
They took about an hour to dry enough so that they'll come out of the molds. Also, in that time the modelling clay can be reused for another mold (but probably only one more).
Here they are straight out of the mold - looking awful. A bit of clean up with sand paper is now needed, looking for straight sides. The stairs came from a spare I'd made from an
Picture
Amera Plastics molding of the Airfix desert outpost in 1:72. I've used their molds already to make some of the buildings in a previous piece. Now I sanded the edges, and the backs, and my fingers (just a little).
Picture
Picture
Soon they were looking a bit better and with the nice straight, sanded edges it was time for a bit of dry fitting. If only I'd measured stuff! The next hour or so wasn't so good but we'll skip over the 1000 times the thing fell over, or I cracked a bit off, or a large piece broke or I dived in and cut it down too much and had to stick bits back on. 
Let's imagine instead; that it all went swimmingly, you can imagine some music playing quietly in the back ground if you like. The whole thing collapsed about 1 second after I took this photo. So I took the hint and just glued some of the pieces together.
Super glue works quite well on plaster, which has always surprised me. Not as good as on fingers, but pretty good.

So, onto the roof. I cut out a rough roof shape and then trimmed it down until it fitted pretty well. This is just 3mm balsa wood which is so easy to cut. Here it is fitted into place. I also made some beams.
Picture
Picture
Here's the roof fitted into position, there's a lot of white tack inside holding it all together. As you can see the holes for the beams are above the level of the roof - genius - did I have a good reason for not measuring anything?
So, I thought what if I just use the wooden roof as a base and pour over plaster to give a plaster roof instead? So here's the beams (above the roof they're "supporting"), I also needed an extra step and a support for where the wooden hatch is going to be.
Picture
Picture
Then I glued the the beams to the roof, put the front and back walls on and glued the rest together. Some elastic bands held it all in place (wish I'd thought of them earlier).

Then I left it to dry properly and settle down, plus I'd been working on it for hours and was going slightly crazy. Back away from the small building - let it go.
****  brief interlude while I went of and did stuff like being a parent and housework  ****
Plaster time! I'd have liked a photo of the plaster going in but I only have two hands and for some reason the plaster sets like a ... well, a really, really inconvenient fast thing. Which is a nightmare if you mess up.

I didn't mix quite enough plaster though so you can see the beams but I was well chuffed with this - it looks like a proper house and everything.
Picture
Here's the view from the back after I'd added a little extra plaster - I made this thinner so it would run better, it still set fine. I also did some 1:72 scale plastering around any cracks and joins both inside and out. My 1:72 scale plastering is just as bad as my real plastering - but is easier to sand neat.
Picture
And that was mostly that. I faffed around a bit plastering and sanding bits I wasn't happy with but really it just needed time to dry properly. While the memory of all my mistakes was still fresh I did another one using the same molds but didn't cut too much off this time so it's a bit bigger, for the second one I tried putting a few bullet holes in the walls, I'm not convinced. When they were both dry I primed them, then they had a coat of white, vallejo off-white and then some very thin wash coats. They're not finished but they'll get more attention later, if they're well behaved, and if/when they get put into a project. Here's some photos of them both. I hope you like them, they were fun to build and the second one didn't take more than a few hours and a few more grey hairs.
0 Comments

A Time lapse Diorama video

23/10/2016

0 Comments

 
For better or worse I have uploaded my first ever video to youtube. Shame about the weird "glitch of blackness" which I'll try and fix. I'm also working on an extension to this board to make an even bigger gaming area. I've done a fair bit so the next few posts will be catching up with where I am with that.
If they video doesn't work for some reason you can always go to my youtube channel, with it's laughably small content of ... 1 video. Although I suspect one or more of my sons creations will appear on there before too long.
0 Comments

The First GAMEIN5D - North Africa 1

14/10/2016

0 Comments

 
I should probably have made this my first post, but I never got around to sorting the photos out. This also contains a lot of stuff that I did ages ago, when I was even worse at modelling than know (I know, hard to believe but true). And the boys have been trashing it for ages.
When I was little I had a great collection of soldiers, mostly Airfix, but my favourites were the Matchbox 8th Army and the Afrika Korps. I remember buying the Afrika Korps box from Masham steam fair, some time in the early 80s I guess. I was well chuffed, but also just slightly confused as to why anyone would name soldiers after dead bodies.
Picture
My other favourite set was the Desert Combat Pack, an awesome Christmas present. I played with that for endless hours. When my own kids were old enough, I gave them my old collection (like I had a choice, they also got all my Matchbox cars). Coincidentally, around this time Airfix had reissued the 1:32 desert outpost and I thought it would make a great present to make it and build a gaming board around it. There were several other toy-related issues at the time too.
  1. Toy soldiers everywhere.
  2. Rubbish plastic toy boxes.
  3. It's so much more fun to play on a proper game board.
  4. Gaming boards at 1:32 would be quite big - we have no space.
  5. Nostalgia overload.
So I set about making a gaming board that would hold all the soliders and fold up nice and neatly into a toy box that wouldn't fall apart - hence the GAMEIN5D began.

Below are some pictures of the original version, which has been played to death with since it was first made.
Up until this point I was slowly getting back into making models. Something I'd done a lot as a kid and a teenager. Then not so much until middle age hoved into view.
I'd done a few planes and was trying to get better at everything so this project really made me learn quite fast - least-ways I made a lot of mistakes, which is almost like learning.
As you can see, I still have the original Panzer and armoured car, and one pill box. I also did complete the desert outpost and the 1:32 airfix strong point (not exactly deserty but the boys don't mind) I'll try and add some photos of those later too.
This project came with some serious baggage though. I loved those Matchbox troops and finally persuaded my parents to let me paint them. My Dad made models too so I set to work with his enamels ...
Many tears later, and a desperate (and sadly futile) ​attempt to get the hideous paint job removed, this Airfix soldier is a 30 years+ example of how bad I was at painting models as a kid. ​Worst of all, I'd ruined (to my mind) two of my beloved Matchbox soldiers.
Picture
Picture
So it was so pleasing to be able to have another go after all those years. And here they are. Now you might have a point if you say these are still rubbish, but my inner ten year old will
Picture
still be jumping up and down with joy. I do still think the guy on the left looks like he needs a wee though. And I painted Monty. He's not wearing thick white socks, that's white tack as he's currently in the repairs box, snapped off at the ankles.
Here are the rest of the gang. Tried to do at least one of each from the Airfix and Matchbox sets. I've also added a photo of the DAK soldiers too, as you can see, they are still not painted. Another addition to the Dad list of incomplete jobs and reasons for guilt.
Here are a few photos of the buildings, a little brick building and a weird bit of vegetation. It's all a bit ropey as I was even more of a novice then, than now but I had great fun doing all of this and my son absolutely loved it. He's played with it for hours. He even plays with them the same way I did, 35 years ago. ​
And that was the first GAMEIN5D, a gaming board that folds up into a box. It solved all the problems I was trying to solve, and scratched the nostalgia itch. But it totally got me back into making models - and trying to get much better at it.
0 Comments

Final post on this one (I promise)

9/10/2016

0 Comments

 
I've took, what I hope, are some better photos, and some photos of the whole thing folding away. That's the point of the GAMEIN5D idea, you can build something quite big, with quite a lot of vertical relief (buildings in this case) and it all folds up in a nice, stackable box. I should really put a nice design on the outside of the boxes, maybe for SMW. If you've read this whole diorama post, thanks for your time, and patience.
First some more photos of the details. Not much point in hiding the imperfections, but magnification is not always kind. I hope you notice I even went so far as to hang one of the kids sheets in the background. That's classy that is. And I couldn't face moving all the accumulated junk from my desk.
Finally here's the whole thing disappearing into some nice small boxes. Now I've got space to make even more.
0 Comments

It's a diorama Jim and something scary

7/10/2016

0 Comments

 
I'm calling it done, although I'll almost certainly keep faffing with it. And once the boys get hold of it, I'll be repairing it - a lot.  
Here's a few shots of the detail. I know what's out there and how amazing some the work you all can produce is, but for me, I'm quite pleased with how this turned out.
The thing with the close ups and slide show format though, is that I can't help but think of this as "diorama porn" and imagine some Barry White  in the back-ground.
The "something scary" is that I've got a stall at Scale Model World in Telford in November. I'll be showing off the GAMEIN5D idea, trying to promote my Kick Starter, and using this model (plus some others) as an example of what you can do. Please come and say hi. I suppose I should show it all folding up - that is after all the main point of the GAMEIN5D boards. First one final aerial shot, I think I'm finally getting the hang of them. I'm going to try and take some better final shots for one last post on this.
Picture
0 Comments

A bit of greenery

2/10/2016

1 Comment

 
Right from the start, I wanted a very arid look this this but I thought it needed a little vegetation. The bits of privet make pretty good trees, gluing bits of green lichen to them is a nightmare though. Superglue was useless - how can the damn stuff stick fingers do efficiently but won't stick anything else. I ended up using tiny amounts of contact cement and a cocktail stick. 
Picture
I used a small drill to go into the base around rocks or other places I thought a tree could take root. I also put a few tiny fragments of lichen around the bases of the buildings and around the well. I tired to keep everything to the right of objects to give a sense of consistency - almost like a prevailing wind - I guess. 
I also think I'm finally happy with the overall colour. I think I'm ready to call this. It's been fun but it's probably time to ease back on the obsession.
Picture
1 Comment

Where the devil is

1/10/2016

0 Comments

 
Details! I've glued that wall down in sections and added rubble next to the lower sections and gaps (rubble + ruin, as before). I tried to have some sense of narrative in that wall sections near craters were broken or at least damaged. The walls had some washes of brush water and agrax earthshade as well as some nuln oil carefully applied to cracks and along the sides.
I'm continuing to paint the small items, boxes, bits of timber etc. On the right here you can just make out the legs of an upturned, broken table, inside the building, it's sitting on a yellow "rug" made from a piece of patterned tissue. It seemed important at the time...
​
I wish the photo below had come out better, I was quite pleased with the little signs.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
After reading around a but about Operation Crusader and having a look around North Africa on google maps, I've settled on somewhere south of Tobruk. Hence the signs pointing to Sidi Rezegh and El Adem.
Picture
The well's now finished too, except for a bit of vegetation perhaps. The barrels were painted bolt gun metal before two different rust pigments and a dark wash.

And I'm still working on the colour of the whole board, still got that weird greenish-orange, but it is slowly surrendering to multiple layers of very thin wash. I figure that way I can't do anything too catastrophic.
Picture
Picture
Nearly there, just a few more details, keep working on the colour and I'm almost done.
0 Comments

Walls are hard

30/9/2016

0 Comments

 
I think I will start at the end on this post. Below is the complete wall sections that I decided I needed. They are the end result of much failed experimentation and possibly the invention of some new swear words. The walls are not stuck down yet, just put in about the right place. I've no idea how everyone else builds walls but this is how I did it.
Picture
Fairly decisive failure to begin with - too much glue too early. Actually, this is well down the list of failures but pictures of me getting cross with Italeri's wall sections or getting covered in glue probably don't make for great blog posts (I may be wrong, I believe I have established my lack of expertise in these matters).
Picture
Picture
But I kept trying, there was something quite compulsive about trying to build a dry stone wall in miniature.
In the end; the method I settled on was the following. I don't for a second suggest anyone else should try this - there must be a better way. Or something on the TV.
First I spread out a plaster mix about 2mm thick across a decent sized piece of kitchen foil. Once it's was dry I bashed it up, while it was tempting to unleash all that middle-aged angst and immolate it, I tried to be careful. I wanted pieces between 5 - 10mm. The foil puts a nice texture on one side which I put on top. Then the "fun" bit. I built small sections of wall on pieces of flat foil, and tried to make the pieces overlap. Like I said, quite fun really, which probably says far too much about me. And it amused my wife, who I suspect, after deciding it wasn't quite the final straw, filed it in the "future grounds for divorce" folder. 
On the last layer of wall I tried to use smaller pieces and lay them side-by -side to it looked like the wall was in two courses.
​Once the wall was built I dripped watered down PVA all over it. Again using a long needle nozzle to make sure every surface was wetted with glue. Once dry the foil peels off the bottom (mostly) and the walls are fairly robust.
Picture
Picture
I built various sections, different lengths and heights as I want some parts to be falling down. I also built some wall end sections which I want to put posts into. They got a spray with grey primer first and then I hand painted them with Golem Smeg. But they'll need more painting.
Then I plonked them on the base and took the photo. In between waiting for paint and plaster to dry I've also carried on painting the minor items, you can see some barrels, etc. on the big photo at the top too. And the privet's out of the oven, nicely dried out.
0 Comments

Minding the gaps and details

26/9/2016

0 Comments

 
Much like me, if I stay in place too long, buildings in the desert accumulate a good build up of rubbish around the edges. Also a bit of stuff around the bases of the buildings will allow the hiding of any remaining gaps, or anything else I don't like the look of. I applied a PVA + water solution (40/60ish) along the edges of the buildings with a needle nozzle so it doesn't slosh everywhere.
Picture
Picture
Then I sprinkled the remains of the finer bits of of ballast and sand left over from the rubble-isation (I can event words if I want to). It helped to blow gently towards the buildings so that the material built up in the right places. Then just repeat, I tried to use slightly finer particles towards the end. I think it worked better above, but not so good on the left. On the left I used too coarse a material - not for the first time.
Once dry, I wash over several times with the brush water, sometimes taking a bit out and darkening it if I run out of patience with how long it's taking. I've also started thinking about a few minor pieces, road signs, barrels and boxes, minor trash left lying around.
The sand bags are living dangerously. Little pieces of evil that are a nightmare to trim, don't stack and were clearly created with the sole purpose of making life difficult.
Picture
I've seen some awesome sand-bags created by other modelers, but for me they are definitely a work in progress. Also, I think the whole thing needs walls. Maybe walls will be easier than sand-bags.
0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture

    Hello, I'm Jon. 

    I'm very much a learner model maker, especially dioramas, gaming surfaces, models and toy boxes for me and my children.

    I also invented the GAMEIN5D base boarding system which I'm trying to develop into something more.

    Archives

    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    April 2018
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    Categories

    All
    28mm Lava Terrain
    28mm Ruined Abbey
    Bases For Miniatures
    Dioramas
    Etc.
    Hello
    North Africa 1
    North Africa 2
    Paint
    Tanks
    Tools
    Z230 Redoubt

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.