Andy's Pulp misadventures...

[Andy in Germany]

My goodness but it's been a while...

Model making time is being squeezed by job hunting and if I’m honest by building a touring bike, (which obviously I have to test, right?) so I dug out a simpler project for this week, namely building a BMW motorbike for swashbuckling tabletop adventures.



Suitably painted this should be the ‘go to’ vehicle for your heroic last minute million-to-one-chance escapes or alternatively pursuit of the bad guy.

I’m not too sure what colour to paint it though. I realise the kit is for a military motorcycle but do you think I could get away with having it in vaguely civilian colours?

looking good.
Drop me a pm. And send you the monowheel rider as its pose should work nicely
Mark.

Hi Mark, I know I've been absent for a while, but is this offer still open despite my tardiness in posting?

[tin shed gamer]

Not a problem there's literally one spare on my desk right now.
Just Drop me a PM.

Mark.

[Andy in Germany]

I’m rather aware that I’ve been neglecting my modelmaking of late…



I could suggest that it was because all the job hunting of the last few months has been getting in the way…

But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me.



and you know what? You’d be right not to. Its been a beautiful summer, and there’s literally thousands of miles of open roads and places to see that have been demanding my attention and model making has been taking a back seat of late…



But now the temperatures are dropping and motivation to ride extravagant distances is waning, and I’ve been blowing the dust off some of the projects I really should have finished ages ago...

[Captain Blood]

Get off your bike, Andy, and back to the modelling and painting!

(Actually, it looks beautiful where you have been touring, so can’t really blame you )

[Andy in Germany]

I’ve ben working on a silly steam powered mono-wheel because it’s as complex a job as my cold-filled head could handle this week. Here is the progress so far with a placeholder figure while I decide which of the figures @tin shed gamer kindly sent will work best.



I would be the first to admit I probably over did the pipes department here.

I’m guessing the long thin hoses are an advanced control system from the driver, as are the thicker connections to the cannons, which are apparently some kind of fiendish energy weapon, but that doesn’t excuse the mass of pipes infesting the boiler area, nor answer the question that if this is a steam powered vehicle, how do you stoke the fire?

This assumes of course that it would stay upright when you started it, which is… unlikely.

Of course, all of these considerations are secondary, the main question is “What colour should it be?”. Let’s keep our priorities straight.



Originally I thought in terms of military style colours, but lately I’ve been getting ideas, possibly because of looking at things like the Maximilian 1934 games. As the genre starts at about slightly bonkers and works up from there, I’ve got a lot of “creative freedom”. Aside from the military option, current ideas are for a ‘1934’ racing car, or possibly a pursuit vehicle for a seriously “zero tolerance” police force.

Any thoughts welcome...

[von Lucky]

Blue with a white trim.

There does seem to be a little too many pipes - maybe half the number (on the driver's side).

[OSHIROmodels]

Racing Green 

[Digits]

I would agree it needs a little cable /flexible hose management....tie clips or some such.

Oh...and it will need manoeuvring indicators!

[Andy in Germany]

Blue with a white trim.

There does seem to be a little too many pipes - maybe half the number (on the driver's side).

I like the white trim idea, where would you put it?

Racing Green 

That would be my favourite, but unfortunately the tadpole racing car is already that colour, so I'm going to have to think of another. Blue is a possibility, or possibly red/orange because that would work well for weathering to pick out details...

[von Lucky]

Around the boiler and maybe even wheel edge.

[Andy in Germany]

Thanks for the suggestions: I'm leaving the Monowheel for a bit while I decide on a colour.




In October last year I started some model buildings as a “quick and easy” set of models for a “Pulp Alley” tabletop game.

I failed miserably on that score.

This building was the only one to be painted last year and came out a dark brown so horrific it rather put me off the project. It is supposed to represent a rather dingy building in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire, but there’s a limit to how dingy even they would allow their far-flung outposts to get, so I started again with a much lighter base, then added highlights and shadow. This improved matters considerably.

Now I need windows, a door, some grass, a roof, and some kind of water tank, repeat the entire process four more times.

Then comes the hard part: persuading the boys that that playing a tabletop game is a better use of half an hour than switching on the computer and firing up Minecraft.

[Digits]

Not as long as you make it fun fella.....no comparison! 

Good luck

[FifteensAway]

For the mono wheel pilot, are you going to name him Rube Goldbergman?  Seems appropriate.

[Andy in Germany]

Coming from a model railway background I’ve observed that tabletop gaming models are generally less “finescale” than model railways, so making ‘details’ for these are an effective way of getting my mojo back when I’ve tied myself in knots trying to make overly complex rolling stock, going to interviews or just being plain lazy.

The other advantage is that they’re cheap. The boxes that Macpherson and Ramirez are hiding behind above are basically strips of card glued together and sanded to be vaguely square with ‘strapping’ from cornflake packets.

They are destined to be variously things to hide behind, climb on, or contain “mysterious artefacts” (Evil villains for the stealing of).



After this success, I whiled away an evening working out how to make some barrels out of rolls of scrap paper wrapped around very small strips of thick card. I know the ‘ridges’ in the middle should be thinner and tried a few methods, including cotton on the far left barrel, but it made my head hurt so they’re getting thick ridges and can like it.

These will eventually go into service as race track markers, containers of mysterious chemicals that need to be stolen (obviously), and naturally as things to go bang at inconvenient moments, because there’s not much point in making tabletop games if things don’t explode…

[Andy in Germany]

The mess hall now has a roof, door and windows, which will no doubt come as a relief to the unfortunate soldiers who find themselves in this forsaken outpost of the British Empire. With that together it was time to focus on the reason excuse for the tower,  so a water tank was called for. (Obviously, the reason is that a swashbuckling adventurer/dastardly bad guy can use it as a high vantage point)



In keeping with this, the ‘tank’ is an ear wash bottle, the same one as donated the turret for an earlier steam punk tank, come to think if it. I could try and make a terrible pun out of this but I can’t think of one at the moment.

The ear wash was utterly useless so it’s good to have got some value out of the purchase.

The steps are staples and the handle from the ‘inspection hatch’ is from a bit of wire that looks suspiciously like it was from a Chinese takeaway box.

Now I’ve got to make this look like a convincingly rusty lump of metal.