So what do we still need?

With all the work that I've been doing on the city terrain I've come to a point at which i wanted to take stock of where I was at with it all.

With this in mind I decided to put out the set as it is to get a feel for what it still needs. Alright....I really wanted to play with my toys.

It all looks a bit barren at the moment so clearly in need of more to bring it to life. I want to see if I can find a good source of lamp posts and street furniture such as phone booths, bins and mailboxes. I have a few vehicles already to add which should make the roads seem less empty and the road works will help with that as well.

The scrapyard is also looking sparse at the moment as it is crying out for some battered cars. I have a plan for those but it is usable in its current state. It needs more but I must be careful not to over clutter it as that will restrict its usefulness during games.

After my quick play I knuckled down to painting again. First up was a much needed addition to the scrapyard, the site office. A small kit from TTCombat, the Portacabin fits in well as being the type of mobile prefab that would end its useful existence as home to some dodgy scrap merchant.

It has been weathered with brown and black washes but I think the mdf drinks those so I think I'll break out the inks to make the weathering darker. Urn commented, when seeing a picture of it, that it needed something more and I think he is right. Needs roughing up a bit. I think a bit of dirty brown sponged on will provide that look/ I want to add some graffiti to some of my recently completed buildings and this will be the perfect tester. I couple of "tags" on the back in the form of transfers will hopefully complete the ruination of this once fine cabin.

I've had a mind to add some posters and extra decoration to some of my buildings and Urn has kindly done some colour printing for me of some pictures I've gathered from the internet to add flavour to all these kits. I have been having some trepidation as I really didn't want to end up making the buildings look worse by having some badly applied paper wrinkling up on their sides and looking a bit naff.

I made the decision to try to use some varnish as glue rather than PVA and last night I got the chance to do a test piece to see if it would work. I used Vallejo liquid Matt varnish and applied a smooth moist coat to the piece of wood and applied the poster straight away. I then immediately brushed over the piece with the varnish again making sure that all of the paper was smoothed down and covered. It was set aside to dry.

I'd been worries that it would still curled up or wrinkle but I could not be more pleased with how well it works. This will be the technique I use and I'm now rather excited to add bits to my other buildings. It will mean that any surface which gets a poster will have to be varnished completely but this is fine as I had planned to varnish them all to try and keep them in good condition.

I've not had a great chance to get much hobby stuff done at work over the last week but I have started on getting some more figures prepped for Pulp City. First up.....umm....yeah,..some hookers.

 I have more respectable townsfolk to add! I promise!

TTFN!

The next step

Now I've got a gaggle of buildings I really need to get the base boards done to tie the buildings together on the table.

With that as the goal I've started working on them. First off was the cutting out. Pretty straight forward process to cut the 9" by 12" board sections. After that it was a simple matter of rounding the corners and marking out where the pavement stones were going to be etched in.

Given that there are twelve boards this job took a while but wasn't as tiresome as the etching. This foamed plastic is pretty easy to carve and etch but after a while it is telling on the hands. Two nights worth over the weekend got the job done and I was pleased to see the back of that part. Also etched in were the drain inlets on the sides and the manhole covers.

These turned out to be easy to do and I'm hoping that once painted they will look really good.
I've kept the design of the boards as modular as possible to give lots of flexibility in their usage. I suspect they'll be a bit swamped by the fire station but if it proves to be too large I can always cut some more boards to suit any buildings that look over-sized on them.

If they work out as intended I'll be able to leave spaces between the buildings as alleyways. Monday night the painting started with each of them receiving a coating of Vallejo black primer. It is a good paint that holds well. A pretty unspectacular stage but it was important to make sure the primer was worked into all the etched lines.

With the black down as a foundation I got to work last night on the grey to bring the pavements out. Lots.....and.....lots of dry-brushing but again....worth it in the long run.

One shade of grey all over and then the pavement portions masked off and given a dry-brush of a lighter grey to make them stand out better. The four boards with large sections on black still on them will be the scrapyard and the black sections will be receiving a mix of brown paints this week. Also still to do are the drain covers and manholes which I'm going to pick out in bronze and then dull with multiple layers of black wash. I am excited to an unwarranted degree at the prospect of painting the manholes. I do not know why!?!

All the boards will get a coat of matt varnish to protect them but I am umming and arring about a coat of army painter dip first to add a touch of colour and the extra protection of the thicker varnish.

I'm looking forward to setting up some buildings for a group shot of them once complete. I think I need to turn my mind to a bit more street furniture like lamp posts, bins and bus stops. Stuff to add a bit of extra cover on the street. I'm also tempted by some of the TTCombat resin sets that would look great as alley junk.

TTFN

2 projects finished in one evening!

WOOT! WOOT!

I didn't have much to do on the Petrol Station so that was a quick job to finish. I think that I'd probably preferred to have put a bit more white on the body of the building in hindsight but overall I'm fairly pleased with it.

Lovely kit to put together and to paint. A ridiculously well price kit at that!

I still had plenty of time last night after that and I decided to start on some of the bits that I need to finish to progress the scrapyard and town sets. The resin fences were next and I managed to get them finished in one sitting. I'll have to give them a lick of varnish but the painting is all done. Three different browns dry-brushed all over each of the fence sections and then the verges were treated to a two tone green dry-brush.

Not the most spectacular of projects but all important for what I'm aiming for with the scrapyard.

Next? Well I really should try and get the base boards for the town and scrapyard cut and prepped. This should also given me off-cuts from the plastic that I can dress up and use as the dock side edging. I'm quite looking forward to making these boards as the plastic is soft enough to etch into easily and this means that the pavement edges will be simple to do but should look pretty cool once painted and dry-brushed.

I'm hoping to add a few small points of interest to each piece by etching broken flag stones, drains and manhole covers which I hope will add to the flavour once all this is brought together on the table.

TTFN!

Readying the next tranche

I'm coming to the end of the first set of buildings for my town and I'm of a mind to try and get one of my planned scenery sets pushed to completion.

I seem to be working on elements from my town and the scrapyard and also the docks at the same time. In fairness the Scrapyard and Docks are really just add-ons for the town but I don't seem to quite be close on any of the sets. I had a tot up and I think I've got in excess of one hundred hours worth of stuff to finish all three.

My thoughts turn to how I can get the most on to the table in the quickest time. Seeing I already have several good size buildings for the town it will be usable but limited so I'm playing with the idea that I should finish the scrapyard, with only twenty(ish) hours of work required to get it to a playable state.

Those twenty hours will involve making a base board for the scrapyard and painting the fence, site office and caravan. There's obviously more stuff that I want to add to the set but that will suffice to get it sizable enough to use with the town to fill a 3x3 table. With that in mind I decided to use today's clement weather to get some spraying done to get some of the next bits ready for painting.

One lunchtime spray-a-thon and I've got the stuff to finish the scrapyard undercoated along with some other bits and bobs for the docks and town.

I'll also need to make some pavement baseboards for the town and a forecourt for the petrol station but I can do that at the same time as the scrapyard board. Not planning anything especially time consuming there.

The Petrol Station itself is almost complete. Just need to do a couple of last bits like the window frames. Should be finished tomorrow night.

I would do it tonight but the Empire are threatening one of our bases so the X-Wings are being prepped for launch.

If there is another good days weather I should get the chance to spray the fire station, the brownstone apartment and the ship which is now complete.

TTFN

Progress from the weekend

I haven't rested upon my laurels this weekend but I was more involved with getting things built than painted. The Fire Station from TTCombat has been eye-balling me from the shelf in my study and I finally caved in on Friday night and put it together.

As with most of the TTCombat kits I've made so far, this one proved easy to build. The main body of the building went up within two hours with the windows fitted. On Saturday the grey card trimmings went on with equal ease.

It is huge.

I'm looking forward to painting it but can't quite decide if I want to do the brickwork in a sandstone colour with red upper walls or pale walls with red brick detail and trim. The Red brick would fit with the buildings so far and would be nice and colourful so I suspect I'll go for that.

I have to add that there was a cutting error on one section of the kit that I reported but then I discovered they'd actually included a whole spare sheet to address it. The really impressive bit was that I sent the message at 21.48 on a Friday night and got a response within about 15 minutes checking if I needed replacement parts. Good Service!!

After that I got back to painting the Petrol Station. I've dry-brushed all that I can now including some colour on the outside and I've come to the slow part of painting in all the etched lettering. On the most part it is so crisply etched that it isn't a particularly hard job just time consuming and surprisingly enjoyable. I was expecting a mutter-fest of hasty brush swaps to correct mistakes but on the whole I kept in within the lines!

 I've also done a light floor check effect to break up the internal space.

Tonight it'll be finishing the red trim details and, if a I get time the petrol pumps which need a few bits picking out. Looking at the pictures they do need a bit more colour on the body of the pumps as well. A bit of red methinks.

I've done a bit more tinkering at work on the TTCombat container ship. A hulking model and pretty easy to construct like most of their stuff. Just the main bridge window to finish now and I'm thinking of adding something on top of the bridge like a rader.

This thing is about 75cm long. Its a WHOPPER! I haven't actually joined the two main sections together as I suspect that would be a total pig to paint as well as being a pain to store.

TTFN

Another finished and another started.

The urban painting marathon continues.

The fast food joint got its last licks of paint. I've still got to add the counter inside and yummy looking menus and teaser posters but I've not got those yet (hint hint Urn! ;-)).

So its finished until the extra bits are sorted. On to the next one, the petrol station. I think it'll be the last for this tranche as it completes a storage box worth of buildings (apart from the Sarissa repaint) and I really do need to look at doing a few other things.

I'm going for Yellow and Red trim colours to make parts of it bright so I've dry-brushed it quite heavily. The sections that will have colour will probably have another dry-brush to lighten them even further after they've been masked off.

There is quite a lot of writing and detail to pick out so this might take a few evenings to complete.

There's been a little progress at work on the ship but not as much as I'd of liked. Dock crane added for effect.

;-)

TTFN

Infinity Train

This is the completed model for my infinity train.  In common with most of my projects, it got 80% done really quickly, another 15% done relatively quickly after a lull..... and then the last 5% took me ages as I faffed around and didn't get on with it.  This tends to leave me with a huge pile of "nearly finished" things on my workspace as I drift between projects....

Anyway, here it is, and it's a bit of a beast....

Fully four feet long and great fun to put together and paint.  And retailing at £20 delivered from ttcombat it's a real bargain.  As it covers the length of the table, there is no need for track.

 

I decided on a Green colour for the wording and final arrows.  The train is heavily weathered as I figure a cargo train isn't going to get much cleaning.

 This is one of the power cars and you can just about see the hazard stripes that I decided it really needed to finish it off..... but of course, I didn't have any long enough, so I had to go and find an image on the internet to print onto my transfer/decal paper.  Here's a better picture:

The decal/transfer paper is one of my best purchases but it is a fair bit thinner than most commercial decals and my home printer doesn't lay the ink on as thickly so it can sometimes be a little translucent.  I think it works in this case as it shows wear and tear without me weathering it :)

 

And the thing that took the longest for me to do?  Junt suggested that each train needed it's own identifying number.... and try as I might, I couldn't shake the feeling that until I added them, it wouldn't be completed.  so here is a close up of one.... you can also see it in one of the pics above to prove each is unique......  I'm now looking forward to getting a game in on it!  Just need some cargo for it.....