Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pulp => Topic started by: Cherno on July 23, 2012, 09:12:36 PM
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Hello fellow Lead Adventurers!
The Lead Adventure forum is a great source of inspiration, and after seeing Orctrader's excellent Cultists and Ghouls (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=44073.0), the latter painted in a monochrome scheme, as well as this Wargames Painting & Modelling article (http://www.scribd.com/doc/59305517/wpm-3) I decided to have another go at a project I initially startet a few months ago.
(http://www.abload.de/img/sin-city9guzr.jpg)
Most of you will know the comics or the movie, I always was a fan of all artwork that is stylistically unique, and Sin City's stark black and white contrasts is one of my favourites.
(http://comicsmedia.ign.com/comics/image/article/599/599473/five-days-of-sin-the-ladies-of-sin-city-20050328064443782-000.jpg)
While playing around in Photoshop I somehow thought about playing Sin City on the tabletop, recreating all those great fight scenes from the movie; Marv beating up a bunch of riot cops in an apartment building, Dwight and the Girls in a shootout with a team of foreign mercenaries at the tar pits, and so on.
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic89947_md.jpg)
There is, in fact, an official Sin City boardgame, but it's pretty abstract with the Sin City theme pasted on to cash in on the franchise. At least that's what I think about it from reading the description and looking at the game board without having played it. Cards... Counters... NO MINIATURES?!? Thanks, but I'll pass ;)
(http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic187975_md.jpg)
So as usual I had to build my own game components. I used the tried and tested TLX system by World Works Games and converted the textures to Sin City's pure black and white style, using custom textures from free web sources where needed. I guess it's heavy on the black ink cartridge, but luckily I have a spare b&w laser colour printer that is just fine for the job and in fact prints large black areas (such as on the streets) better than my Canon inkjet printer.
Instead of the TLX anchor system (which is the only thing I hate about it, those anchor tabs looks out of place once folded up), I again used rare earth magnets for the posts and tiles, a system I originally used in my Mayhem: Apartment TLX Promo build... Revisited! (http://www.worldworksgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9293) project.
Of course, Sin City needs it's corrupt cops, desperate dames and hard-boiled detectives, so I converted a bunch of suitable Standees I already had on my hard disk to the same black and white style as the scenery.
Enough talking, let's see some damn photos!
Today, I quickly threw together (actually it took the whole day) a small scene of a mysterious murder being investigated by the police in a dark alley. I put a little piece of cardboard with a chalk outline on the ground, with a puddle of red blood that is the only thing that's not black or white in the scene, keeping in line with Frank Miller's style of only using color for important elements, and the movie that used red blood in the "The Hard Goodbye" segment.
The car is from World Works Games' Mayhem Bank set, also converted to black and white, of course.
(http://www.abload.de/img/scene1b1pm2.gif)
I set up a single LED light source and increased the contrast of the photo, everything else is jsut as it looked in reality.
Below you can see the whole uncropped scene to get an idea of the setup I used. Obviously I only used the most bare-bones amount of elements needed in order to complete this scene as fast as possible.
(http://www.abload.de/img/scene1_rawpwr4x.jpg)
Now, as for the game itself, I haven't dug deeper into what rulesystem to use or what style of game to create. It will most likely focus on very limited skirmishes with a maximum of four characters on the "good" player's side and roughly double that amount for the baddies. The terrain will also be limited in scope to get to the action quickly without wasting turns sneaking around the board with no enemy in sight.
The "hero" characters will have various special abilities and equipment and of course be very hard to kill. Scenarios could be anything from the iconic fights from the source material mentioned above or entirely new settings with fresh characters.
Two rulesystems I've looked into are .45 Adventure and Savage Worlds: Showdown. I'd ideally like to have a system that supports campaign play and character advancement. Maybe I'll also take a look at The Department and just disregard the SciFi stuff :)
I really don't know where this project will end up and if I'll ever get so far as to be able to play it, so for now I regard it as a pure "fun project" like my Hired Guns project (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=40766.0).
So long! See you in Basin City! ;)
(http://www.comicwallpapers.co.uk/images/main/Dark%20Horse/Sin%20City/Large%20Thumb/Sin_City_952_big_thumb.jpg)
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I LOVE these kinds of projects! They're fantastic for their artistic creativity.
Yeah, definitely will be watching this!
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very cool!
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Made some new photos :)
(http://s7.directupload.net/images/120730/ic7qx3mj.jpg)
(http://s1.directupload.net/images/120730/8h4nzaqf.jpg)
(http://s7.directupload.net/images/120730/vcqa7bd2.jpg)
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That is outstanding! 8)
In fact, your standee fetish is perfectly suited to capture the look and feel of both (other) media.
The stark lighting, with the resulting sharp shadows, also mimics the deep contrasts of Miller's work, so really complements your already excellent artwork.
Keep it up; I'm following this with much interest!
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Very cool. I love it!
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Well done! It's a nice and original idea :-*
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Snazzy! Very atmospheric. :-*
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Fantastic project!! I was preparing an Undead army with One Monk paperminiatures but I move and now the laser-copies are a bit expensive here (comparing the price I used to pay where I used to live)!! Black and white games would be a perfect way to continue some paperprojects indeed!!
Thank you for posting!!
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Really a beautiful look.
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Now this is a project to watch.
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Looks sharp! I loved that movie.
Will follow this with great interest.
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Thanks for all your kind comments :)
I wouldn't have thought there'd be a big amount of interest in this project as it really was something I thought of by pure random chance... I figure after my Strange Aeons project which used paper and cardboard exclusively I could try to create another unique style on the tabletop, by pushing it even further and making it black and white. It remains to be seen how a larger scene will look and if the scenery will still look good when the one-source lighting is replaced by normal ambient room lighting.
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I'd say use one 100W bulb in the room, but not directly over the table and stark lighting is a non issue... :D
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Nicely done!
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I ordered a hardcopy of The Department (http://www.departmentoffabricantmanagement.com/)yesterday. Blade Runner has always been one of my favourite movies and I really like the concept of combining noirish 40s style with a grim near-future reality. If I find the rules appealing, I might continue work on this project. The problem will be to add futuristic things like spinner cars and androids into the game world I have created seamlessly. The first thing I plan on doing is to built a noirified (tm) version of the "Interceptor" (http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?view=product&product=156) vehicle by World Works Games / Mel Ebbles and see how it looks on the table. It might prove difficult to explain the existence of a 1930s sedan next to a flying police car! :)
(http://www.abload.de/img/nkcc7atnu1pl5.jpg)
(http://www.abload.de/img/6gmv30kftroi7.jpg)
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My copy of "The Department" arrived last week. Not really had chance to give it a thorough read through yet but it all looks promising so far.
The one thing that did make me twinge a bit was it looks look a lot of civilian figures formed into crowds are needed to make the game truly shine. You could well have a new 'standee' convert on your hands here, Cherno. Always given card/paper figs a wide berth in the past but your Sin City project looks awesome. Might give it a try myself for The Department rules. The other advantage with using standees, of course, is that my Mrs won't give me grief about buying more lead :D
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Thanks for your comment! I thought about the civilian crowds required (three crowds AFAIK) and what I plan to do is make large round bases and just stick a couple of civilian standees on them. This way they can just be picked up and moved easily. I might even use them without a base for a more realistic look. Six standees per crowd should look about right if other models should still be ableto move through them. That's 18 civilian standees just for that purpose... hmm! I think I need to find someone who has the excellent Mega Miniatures civilians painted and make him or her shoot some photos for me! (hint hint!) :)
On a related note, I did something similar for my All Things Zombie Project (http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=40694.0). Everytime the number of zombies on the board would get too big, I would just replace a bunch of them close together with a simple counter that would move around representing the group. A D20 on top would show the number of zombies still in the group, which could decrease or increase due to gunfire and more stray zombies joining it's ranks. Again, this is something I imagine would be included were ATZ sold as a elaborate boardgame close to the TT version.
(http://www.abload.de/img/horde69jjt.jpg)
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My copy of The Department arrives yesterday and it looks promising enough. I'm currently working through the rules. I have yet to decide wether I will stay with the contemprorary buildings and streets of I should get WWG's Street of titan for soem moe Sci-Fi streets with VTOL markings etc. Either way, I plan to build b&w version of those nice hovercars they sell für 2.50 USD a piece.
http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?view=product&product=172
http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?view=product&product=157
http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?view=product&product=153
(http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/media/promos/vb_2.jpg)
(http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/media/promos/Streets_of_titan/sot_2.jpg)
(http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/media/promos/hl300/hl300_1.jpg)