Middle East buildings

[matakishi]

I started posting these on my Ambush Alley thread but that will soon be taken up with me wittering on about painting the miniatures and playing the game so I thought I'd start a fresh thread here for those that may be interested in a modern Middle East setting for other things.

My latest buildings:

Vehicle repair shop:



Apartment complex:



Street (slum) section:



Figures are 28mm Modern British from The Assault Group. All my own work, details and instructions here:
http://www.matakishi.com/makingdesertbuildings.htm

[JollyBob]

They look really good all together like that. I am impressed. I think I'll have to get my finger out and start building. I've only had the "how to" pdf off your site for 12 months... :roll:

[knoxville]

nice, but waaaay too tidy!

[matakishi]

nice, but waaaay too tidy!

In what way?

[Gundamentalist 5.56]

nice, but waaaay too tidy!

In what way?

From personal experience in Egypt and Jordan, modern Middle Eastern buildings look like they've never been finished, they're all made of concrete (sometimes crudely), they have a "sweaty lived-in"* look, and they are rarely painted (unless you're in a nice middle class area) and left bare concrete. And the streets are worse: either open sewers, or concrete pavements that have been stained black from bins leaking on them and drying (just like you'd find behind a restaurant or something in the West End).

* its the best I could come up - or "a lived in patina"

[PeteMurray]

I think they're very cool. And since they're cork, you could even change or add signs on them to have them be everything from ME apartments to the tenements of neo-Tokyo.

Wish we had cork tile here in the states.  

[matakishi]

All the experience I have with these kinds of buildings is that they are dusty and the dust is the same as the ground colour, so, I paint these buildings ground coloured!
I used the exact same colours as my base boards so that they'd look part of the landscape. The first ones were all the same concrete colour but I couldn't stand to have them all identical so I varied it.
I don't intend to paint them 'ground colour A' and then dry-brush them 'ground colour B' so that they end up looking like 'ground colour C'. I'll just paint them 'ground colour C' to begin with.
I notice that doors are often painted brightly but I don't do doors so that's not an option  
I'm not doing streets either so the stains will have to be imagined.

I did consider putting in rubbish piles and bins etc but ultimately these things just get in the way of placing figures so I have to adjust the footprint of the buildings and make them larger which adds to their unweildiness and means I have fewer on the table without adding anything to the game so I left all that stuff out. They are. after all, just boxes to play games with and each one has to be able to hold two stands of figures (50mm x 50mm squares or 60mm circles) plus several command figures and sundry extras whilst only measuring 130mm x 80mm themselves.

I could make super detailed buildings and have done in the past but they're too fragile to game with without lots of repairing and, to strengthen them enough, they really need to be one piece items which essentially makes them blocks that just take up room. If I want that I'll use a rock which is cheaper and faster to produce  

I'm aware that my approach isn't for everyone and don't expect it to be, but it's what I want for the games I play and hasn't been arrived at by accident. On the contrary, I take a lot of time to plan what I want a building to do before I begin to make it.

Usually I'm happy to discuss my reasons for doing something a particular way and to hear alternative views on how to achieve what I'm after. If I can help someone else achieve the result they're after that's good too. What I do object to is 'drive-by' comments that offer an unsubstantiated opinion is a snotty, know-it-all way. If I wanted that I'd go to TMP  ::

[matakishi]

Pete,
They are intended to serve many purposes (which is another reason I've kept them rather 'vague').

[Phil Robinson]

I like them. You are so productive, do you not sleep?

[Captain Blood]

I don't know about the middle east, but that little townscape is a dead ringer for the place I sometimes go on holiday in Fuerteventura in The Canaries. And that's off the coast of Africa, so broadly 'in theatre'...  :wink:

I'm telling you, it's the absolute spit of it - you must have been there!

[Hammers]

That'd be a wargaming scenario: rowdy English tourists vs. the Guardia Civil in Matakashi's Fuerteventura scenery.

[Grimm]

nice ,it look like the buildings in my last hollyday in Turkey

[Malamute]

Top stuff as always Paul.   It must be a pretty impressiv looking table when you all the pieces set up. What size table are you planning this for?

[Plynkes]

Wandering around the net I stumbled upon this page of Arab film posters:

http://www.library.yale.edu/neareast/poster.html

They could easily be printed off and used to add a bit of colour to any Middle East building complex. Of course, to keep your buildings usable in many contexts, you might want to fix the posters to plasticard or something, and then fix that to the buildings in a non-permanent way, such as with blu-tac or something.

Or one could make some free-standing advertisement hoardings.

I'm sure it would be quite easy to find lots of other stuff like this on the net.

[matakishi]

Nick 4ft square for most games. Some, like Crossfire, will be on 6 x 4 but the built up area will still only be 4 x 4 of the total.

Polynikes I said time and again that I wasn't going to add posters (just a second ago on the TAG forum as a matter of fact) but, damn you, those are too good not to use  :x Curses!

I'll stick them on I think, anachronistic or not, I don't really care  ::