Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: PhilB on July 16, 2017, 10:10:51 AM
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A recent post here got me thinking about the Warhammer/Citadel Laketown House model again. I'd admired it when the first posts popped up here, with folks talking about it going sold out in hours from becoming available, and decided I had to have one or two for myself. I was also intrigued whether it could be built with a playable interior.
Here are the sprues:
(http://gdurl.com/7UjI)
Notice the two two-story building facades in the upper left corner. This was my first clue that this model wasn't intended to show off the interior. I couldn't build a detachable second story without whacking each of those pieces in half. So I did - vertically, just under the second floor overhang. It was a very fiddly cut, since I couldn't use my handy steel ruler to guide my hand. But it came out *fairly* straight:
(http://gdurl.com/9sbO)
Still, I thought, those smooth interior plastic walls with bulging sections corresponding to the outside windows and doors are not ideal to represent the interior layout, even with a lot of surface work. So I pulled out some cardstock calendars from my bank I'd been saving, measured three times and cut out some interior walls:
(http://gdurl.com/33k4)
Also notice that the two second-story facades are double-sided, so no card was required for those walls. The two sides don't match, allowing those assembling multiple kits to add a little variety, but it does mean that the inside wall (and window) won't match the outside wall. Oh well.
(http://gdurl.com/G9wZ)
So, prior to assembly, I prepared all the interior walls by scoring them and marking board ends, and also experimented on doing the inside of the second-story window (with mixed success - need to make a better effort next time). Mixing ochre, burnt umber, brown, white and black acrylics I got from a craft store (far cheaper than my usual Foundry paints), I tried to shoot for a heavily weathered interior and exterior, keeping the beams darker for contrast:
(http://gdurl.com/I4Mj2)
Finally, I'm quite happy with the bare interiors on both floors. Plus, as near as I can tell, I'm the first gamer to post online pics of the Lake-town house complete with interior!
(http://gdurl.com/PaON)
Mind, this is still a work in progress. I haven't painted up the nets and other miscellaneous gear that is modelled on the building exterior and on the various other bits and bobs I haven't yet assembled. And I'm not sure I'm really happy with the weathered wood of the dock and platforms. Comparing it to real-life pics, it's far, far too dark to really represent weathered wood. I'm fairly happy with the dirty blue on most of the exterior walls, but still can't decide if I should redo all the docks and platforms in pale weathered wood.
(http://gdurl.com/c3Mv)
Next step will be to do something with the interiors. Here's where you lads can help:
1) I noticed that the Lake-town folk must have been really, really cold! There's no fireplace on this house! So should I try to sculpt a fireplace and chimney from some leftover expanded polystyrene bits? Or cobble together some sort of cast-iron stove with a metal flue? Seems like the second choice would be a bit anachronistic, but I'm open to ideas.
2) I need to build either stairs or a ladder for access between floors. I'm thinking a narrow staircase built of cardstock (so as not to hog too much space in the already claustrophobically small interior) and a trapdoor on the second story.
3) Should I build removable or fixed furniture? I'm thinking most of it's got to be removable, because the interior is so small it's already going to be hard to place figures in combat.
At the end of the day, I'm wondering a bit whether it isn't wasted effort trying to build an interior on a house this small. The spaces aren't really varied enough to make for interesting battle scenes. I suppose the interesting part for skirmish games is bound to be more with the platforms and docks *outside* the house.
I'll post final pics in a few days, once all the nets, fish and other details are done.
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That is really great work, I will follow this with interest as I have three of these waiting to be built. I hadn't considered interiors but yours looks really good. As to a chimney..............?
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Nice work.
Docks - I'd just dry brush more lighter shades on top to lighten the colour.
Interiors - I like what you have done. I'd probably leave it as is - it gives you upstairs and downstairs as separate areas to game in. Which is probably sufficient for a small building. As for stairs, perhaps a trapdoor and ladder?
Fireplaces and chimneys - these really need to be brick, especially in a wooden house. A metal stove would be better, but not sure how well it fits in the LoTR world technology wise. Or perhaps Laketown is in a warm zone - houses in the Australia and NZ tend not to have fixed internal heating.
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Fireplaces and chimneys - these really need to be brick, especially in a wooden house. A metal stove would be better, but not sure how well it fits in the LoTR world technology wise. Or perhaps Laketown is in a warm zone - houses in the Australia and NZ tend not to have fixed internal heating.
Surely they'd at least need a cookstove of some sort. My ex-inlaws have a narrow 15th-century-vintage house inherited from some grandparents in a small village in central Auvergne (France) whose only heat source is a large cast-iron cooker on the first floor, that (kind of) heats the upper 3 floors through grilled floor vents. That might be a solution here, with a tubular chimney like Lord Snapcase's lovely example.
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A cook stove would be a good idea.
I would have a think about the balance between playability and realism - as generally the more you go to realism the longer it takes, and you can eventually end up making things less playable.
At the minute what you have looks good and looks very playable.
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Very nice.
May be the mantic dungeon scenery would be a good way to fill the house? A bookshelf and a table would really tie the room together :)
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A bookcase! A stove! A table! Thanks for all the great ideas.
So, here is the next installment of this project. I have scratchbuilt eight bits of furniture to fill the interior, but decided to leave them mobile so they can be moved or removed as necessary to place figures.
(http://gdurl.com/FMW6K)
The bookcase, the stairway, the trap door, the large and small beds, the table and the chair were all built out of cardstock (old bank calendars). The stove is an inverted golf tee I found in my yard. The large bed's headpiece is a plastic handle from some pool supplies packaging. The bookcase was the most fiddly, since for the books I cut out dozens of tiny (3x4mm approx.) rectangles from card, then glued them together in groups of 5 or 6 before placing them on the bookshelves. This gave a satisfactorily uneven appearance, as if the books were of different sizes, or just haphazardly shelved. In the foreground of the above picture are all the bits and bobs that were actually included with the laketown house kit. I decided to mount them in groups on standard 25mm washer bases (tarted up to look like boards) rather than glue them to the house or the docks directly - so as to keep things more modular.
(http://gdurl.com/COZj)
Here you can see the bed inside the first-floor interior, with its nice headboard. It's funny, I had stuck that bit of plastic in my pocket meaning to toss it in the trash... was my subconscious already telling me to use it on this project?
(http://gdurl.com/Q7ES)
Here you can see the stairs a bit better. Notice the door under the stairs. Gotta have somewhere to keep annoying kids until they're ready to lean wizardry!
(http://gdurl.com/mvl4)
Here you cas see the bookcase and trap door a little better. I still can't decide if I should paste a flat black sheet of paper under the trap door to simulate the darkened depths below.
(http://gdurl.com/RmAY)
Here is the second stage of the house exterior, with an assortment of barrels, baskets and wicker fish traps, as well as a tavern sign cribbed from the internet and printed to the right size to be pasted in place before being doctored a bit (google = "tavern sign" <g>)
Next step will be adding an exterior chimney for the stove, a bit of moss & vegetation on the house, maybe doing something more with the interior walls. OR maybe just call it good enough, dullcoat it all and move on to the next project.
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Absolutely lovely work!
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Very nice work on the furniture- really lifts the interior. Glad you ignored by leave it as is suggestion.
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Beautiful both on the ouside and inside!
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Great stuff! ;)
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Well, I'm giving the lake-town house a rest and moving on to an entirely scratch-built half-timbered house that I plan to use in the same village, as part of a swamp village.
This current project began after using a number of commercially-available 2D terrain tiles, some of which show house interiors. I thought, why not build the 3D portion of the house, based on what I'd learnt from the Lake-town house and from dozens of pictures of real and model half-timbered houses gleaned from google?
(http://gdurl.com/BJfS)
This is the floorplan I began with: a 5x5 shop interior with three rooms, on a one-inch grid to facilitate combat movement. I also thought that if I used the interior printed on paper, glued into the model, I could skip the laborious paintjob on the inside of the house. That meant I also needed to print up walls. So I looked for some nice half-timbered textures, some doors & windows, and prepared that as well, sizing everything to match.
(http://gdurl.com/QcZR)
So armed with a large bag of 3mm square basswood sticks picked up at the local craft store (Cultura) I began gluing theouter grid onto cardstock base, again from my stock of saved-up bank calendars. I tried to make the doors and windows of a size that matched the floorplan, but after looking at the finished result, I think the next house will need smaller doors & windows, if only not to dwarf the dimensions of my lovely Lake-town house kit.
(http://gdurl.com/5emb)
After much gluing, measuring, cutting and careful size-matching, this is the result of the first-floor interior. I'm fairly pleased with the printed interior walls, and the lack of protruding interior beams is somewhat made up for by the 3D relief of the exterior. This picture shows the walls simply fitted in place, but the next step will be gluing them in place, as well as cutting out the interior doors, for more visual fun during gaming use. It's going to take me a few days to glue all those walls in place, since my supply of clamps is limited, so it'll be a few days before I show you pics of the next stage of construction.
I still haven't decided if I should make a half-inch or full inch cantelievered projection over the front door or not, as one sees on many extant half-timbered houses. I think a full square will look goofy, and even a half square (half inch) projection might be too much. Might be best to keep things toned down, and do say a quarter-inch projection, despite not getting any more real playable space from that on the second floor.
Any suggestions as I proceed?
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Lovely stuff. You did right to repaint the walkways etc - they looked good before but really outstanding now.
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Beautiful! I love how you have painted the wood- very nicely done.
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Iain and Codsticker: from googled images of aged wood, I saw that it was almost invariably so lightly brow in was nearly pale grey. with an additional wash, the Lake-town house docks are closer to that than originally, but I think that's all the further I'm going to take it.
On to the scratch-building project!
The first floor is close to completion. I've glued in all the interior walls, slapped some paint on the outside, and it's starting to look like something.
(http://gdurl.com/NgBh)
I tried to simulate wood grain, but even my thinnest brush was far too fat for the job. I kept at it though, with some burnt umber craft paint, and the wood beams are starting to look better. Though I seem to have missed one or two.
(http://gdurl.com/Vv9u)
The interior walls are very thin, but not jarringly so. the worn-out wattle and daub motif I printed on them seems a little too extreme, though. I'm wondering if I should paint over part of it with a plaster color, leaving only a few corners showing the wattle and daub... but not sure whether it's worth the effort.
(http://gdurl.com/HQsX)
I experimented in the lower left corner of one facade to do a sort of trompe-l'oeil area where the plaster has chipped off exposing the wattle and daub lattes underneath. It's looking as if it might just work. If so, I intend to put three or four such patches on each façade.
Next stage will be to build the front overhang and supporting beams for the second floor, and then take this thing up a level. Questions abound:
1) Should the upper lever not only hang over the lower, but also lean out in all directions, as many commercially available half-timbered houses do? Or is that more of a caricature feature than anything else?
2) Should I do a full second story, and only then work onto the roof (potentially adding an additional story) or should I build in planning for the roof on my second story design from the get-go? Already I can feel the architectural choices weighing heavily on my brow. <g>
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The project is progressing... but there remains so much to do.
(http://gdurl.com/2F1g)
(http://gdurl.com/ZPPB)
I spent an inordinate amount of time on the door, especially since it'll be barely seen under the cantelievered overhang. But that's what obsession with details will get you. The door handle is a section of spring from a ball-point pen glued behind a tiny half-section of the plastic inner pen tube itself. Notice in the second pic that it... opens! I racked my brain trying to figure out how to mount the door so that it opens, and finally hit on this: two pins. One pin is cut in half & glued to the bottom edge of the door with about 1.5mm of the pointy end sticking out. A corresponding hole was made in the floor by the door jamb. A second pin is glued to the top of the door so that its head projects some 9mm above the door - the exact thickness of the wall above the door. A thin grove was cut in the underlying card structure to hold the pin, then another card was glued across the top (as the lintel) but *not* glued around the pin itself, allowing it to turn.
In the meantime I also painted the windows, using the card sections I cut out, trimming them slightly to fit, scoring where the mullions and muntins would go, then tarting up the panes with several shades of blue, and the mullions themselves with two shades of brown. Then, after all that work, I glued the side window in... upside down! Much hair pulling ensued, but I used enough superglue that I would destroy the window trying to remove it. It will remain an object lesson in paying attention when you cut or glue!
(http://gdurl.com/FbfG)
So, on to the second floor! I decided to have the front and sides lean out just slightly, like 2cm over the 40cm height of the side walls. I was a wee bit leery of expressly building something not to be square, but it turned out all right. I first glued the beams around the edge of the floor, then used them to help position the cards used for the walls. The other beams were only glued on afterwards, each time measured in situ so as to fit. I doubt I could've calculated in advance the exact lengths or placement of any of those beams, they just fell into place around the windows I'd cut prior to assembly.
(http://gdurl.com/1Hfy)
Another word about the interior: these Rackham terrain tiles were a real godsend for me when I first picked them up some years back, and they make for a very vivid interior, even without modelling furniture and interior walls. Of course I plan to do both, but they still look nice. And they only required a bit of editing to fit my project. For the walls, however, I realized I'd grown tired of the exposed wickerwork on the ground floor (a bit too extreme for a house that folks live in, especially since all it takes to repair wicker and daub walls is a bucket of mud!) and so searched the web for some other half-timbered textures. I finally found one whose plasterwork was very nearly the shade of ochre I'd chosen for the exterior, so that one it was. I planned the windows according to those shown on the Rackham tile, and just remembered in the nick of time *not* to cut out the windows in the back facade, as that's where the chimney will rise to the roof!
Speaking of the roof, I must have spent six hours perusing different methods for roof construction from various tutorials on the web. I thought about trying to recast the roof from my second Warhammer Lake-town house, but I've never done any casting and was a bit leery of jumping off that bridge just now. So I settled on the time-honored method of cutting out thin strips of shingles from some thin card (old medicine boxes I'd been saving and had already used on some scratch-built wagons) and then gluing them in layers to the underlying roof card (more bank calendars were sacrificed to this project than I would've thought!).
(http://gdurl.com/ARYw)
(http://gdurl.com/lJ3d)
I know you're all eager to see the final painted-up results. So am I! But there's a game of Pathfinder on tonight, and I'm bringing pizza, so the morning will be spent kneading dough and cooking rather than painting. <heavy sigh>
So, what's left? I've got to add another 90mm of chimney to the bit I've got started. It's my first attempt at using a hot wire cutter. That thing melts polystyrene fast! Some of the cuts were far too deep, but I think I'm going to keep this first chimney as is, and it still needs a few layers of paint.
(http://gdurl.com/OOC7)
I'll also need to do more interior walls, doors and windows, a stairway to upstairs (d@mn! I forgot to cut out the floor in advance!), the furniture, and then the exterior terrain around the building's base. I kind of wish I'd planned on doing a visible stone foundation, or even a stone first floor... but my planning hadn't got that far when I started this project.
Any suggestions or comments from you folks would be greatly appreciated.
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Ohh! Those shingles are really nice. Thanks for taking the tie to explain the method!
Eagerly awaiting the painted up version :D
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The half-timbered house is progressing nicely!
(http://gdurl.com/xlrB)
Here you can see the completed roof with a dark grey paintjob. I gave the whole roof several coats of grey wash (with a hint of blue - but I should've used a bigger hint!) then painted several shades of highlights on each individual shingle. 4 hours of work there! Now it's done, I'm convinced I should've made it a lot lighter (and bluer) to simulate slate shingles... but I'm not going to repaint it. Next time!
You can also see in this picture a shortcoming of painting the two floors at separate times. The ground floor exterior walls are much lighter that the second floor. I'll need to give them another coat, using the same color.
(http://gdurl.com/1dOI)
On the rear facade you can see a design problem. I never thought about why chimneys usually rise to an off-center position next to the roof peak. Instead, I put my chimney right up the center, and it was only when I got to the roof that I realized I had the top roof beam coming out right in the middle of the chimney. Oh well. Next time I'll get it right! Again, the hot foam cutter made for really rough work. Next chimney will need to be carved with an xacto knife, I think. But this one will do, despite its deep, deep groves between stones.
(http://gdurl.com/sSxL)
Here you can see the interior walls on the second floor. All the interior walls were printed on paper and glued to the card base, and I like this texture much better than the one I used on the first floor. I learnt my lesson about preparing the interior walls, though, and did all the painting prior to gluing those walls in place.
(http://gdurl.com/W4ze)
In this view of the second floor interior, you can see the doors open. I decided to try a different method of hinging the doors, simply using paper hinges. It won't be as durable as the pin method I used on the ground floor front door, but it was certainly easier to implement.
So, what remains to be done?
- Add another coat to all the exterior walls so the upper floor and the ground floor have the same base hue.
- Scupt the interior fireplaces to correspond to the placement of the chimneys.
- Make a stairway from the ground floor and cut out a piece of the intervening floor to accept the rising stairs. I should've cut that gap out before assembly. Oops!
- Paint the upper floor windows and position them right side up this time. <g>
- Make all the furniture for both upstairs and downstairs.
Any suggestions or comments?
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Looks really good!
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stunning indeed .
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:o Masterpiece !!!
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Thanks for the comments!
I'm moving part of this thread over to the Workbench forum, to talk about rivets and woodgrain. And also to ask questions about board thickness and climbing ivy. I'll come back here in a month or so with pics of the finished house set up as a tavern, complete with patrons.
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=103061.0 (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=103061.0)
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HAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!...Man!!...that is looking GOOD !!!......Lovin all the neat details and stuff you are working into the scratchbuild.
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That's looking lovely. Characterful and deliberately imperfect, if that makes sense.
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That's looking lovely. Characterful and deliberately imperfect, if that makes sense.
Yes, that's exactly what I was going for. Apart from the design error of putting the chimney straight up the middle and intersecting the ridge beam. <sigh>
I wanted to make the roof sag slightly, but when I made that decision, I had already glued the shingles on, so it couldn't be too much. I cut out a curve in each of the roof panels along the top, curving down in the middle about 3mm. It's really too slight to be noticeable if you're not looking for it, but it still gives it a little character-ful touch.
The other thing I think I should've done differently was that I didn't fill in the spaces between the wood beams on the façades. They should be plastered flush or nearly so with the beams, but I just painted the underlying card walls as if they were plastered. It's not jarring, as such, but this kind of a project is really a learning experience. Next time will be better!
I'm away from home right now, but my next step will be to finish the furniture, add inside fireplaces, and do the windows. I'm not sure how I'll go with the windows. The shadows show a diamond-shaped latice of window panes (not sure what that's really called) and several solutions present themselves:
1) I could do like I did on the ground floor windows: scribe lines in the card I cut from the windows, paint the panes in variable blue tones and paint the muntins (are they still called muntins in a diamond-shaped small pane design?) with shadowed undersides.
2) Use some appropriately-sized screening for the windows, and stretch watered-down PVA over the gaps to dry as translucent panes.
3) Use photocopier transparencies and print the diamond-shaped muntin design, then leave the windows transparent.
The first method is the only one I've tried so far. I saved and labelled all the card pieces I cut out, so they would be exact fits. The second and third methods are stuff I gleaned off youtube. Should I use the first method so as to retain consistency of design with the already completed ground floor? Who can comment on the other two methods? Or has anyone got a better idea?
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Apart from the design error of putting the chimney straight up the middle and intersecting the ridge beam. <sigh>
Shouldn't have admitted that, I thought it was a neat touch! Like the builders put the chimney on afterwards and just thought 'ehhh, let's just build around this beam'.
I've used wire mesh for windows in the past, but haven't tried the PVA glue trick - sounds fiddly and prone to damage but may look good?
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Very impressive, will be following this thread