Building a village for Nam

[revford]

It's scenery building day here today, this time it's a Vietnamese village for our FNG campaign.  There is only so long the players can wander through the jungle and never see a civilian. 

Based on the excellent buildings by Matakishi, but scaled down from 28mm to 20mm.

You can see Matakishi's tutorial page here:

http://www.matakishi.com/vietnambuildings.htm

As The King of Cork, Matakishi used Cork board for the walls and BBQ skewers for supports, I used the materials I've got, corrugated cardboard from old boxes for walls and matches for supports.



Step one was cutting the flaps off the box to give me nice square corners to work from.



I have a 1:72 scale rule, perfect for this sort of thing, the matches I've got are 10' long, so I decided that the buildings should be 10' at the front and back, so I don't have to do much cutting on the matches.

Keeps things nice and simple.



It looks a good height against a mini, I've used a converted Weird Nam infantry minigunner as a test model.





So I marked up the cardboard at 10' and checked it was a good fit for the matches.



Then cut a 10' strip of wall.



Looking at Matakishi's plans and the size of the bases I'm going to use, it looked like 18' was a good width, so I sliced down two 18' walls from the 10' tall strip.





Next I measured up our test mini, he's almost 7' tall including his base and that base it 5' wide.  So the door needs to be 7' by 5'.



I marked up the door 2' from the edge of the wall, also marking a line 4' from the ground to be the bottom of the window height.  The window top is the 7' mark for the top of the door and the width of the window was drawn on by eye at a size that looked about right.



The door and window were then cut out.





Next stage was adding the supports, these were glued on with superglue to the front and back.




And there is the end of the first post on this, more to follow soon.

[Mr. Peabody]

Excellent! loving this. I took a much more complicated approach and I'm thinking I should have waited for you to start first!

[Mad Carew Snr]

Looking good - show us more!

[revford]

Here we go with the next stage, I'm building this as I post so there will be gaps between stages as I build, photograph, edit the photos and post them up. 

First up, here is the completed front of building 1, with our models for scale, looks like a good fit so far.




Next to build the sides, these are 10' like the front and back, but sloping up to a point 12' high for the roof.  I marked off 10' and 12' heights then every 9' along, the walls are to be 18' long and I needed the middle points.  The marked in diagonals from the corners of the building up to the middle.



Then cut the sides out.



The matches being 10' and the height of the roof 12', I needed to measure and chop a few more feet of supporting match.




Then glue them on.  Here are the completed sides.



The roof needs to overhang a little, so 11' should do it.  20' wide will give us 1' overhang on each side.



And here are the completed walls for building one.



Next stage is some bases, old scrap CDs, with a bit of paper stuck over the hole with PVA, thanks to the local supermarket for sending some junk mail to use as model making paper. 



I put on a DVD to watch while waiting on the glue.  Once the PVA looked dry enough, which took me to the bit in Aliens where the Marines almost shoot Newt thinking she's a monster, I glued the sides of the building onto the base.

It seemed easiest to stick the front wall on first and work backwards.



One set of walls done, I set about making a duplicate set, exactly as I'd done the first so I won't bore everyone with showing you the same thing all over again.



Two buildings. 



The roofs are made of two 20' by 11' rectangles hinged with card.



Once I've textured the base, I'll attach the roofs properly, here is one held in place for now.



Next stage is texturing the bases with sand and PVA.  Which will take an age to dry, then texture the roofs.

I'm low on PVA so I'll see how far I can get.

More updates later. 

[Mr. Peabody]

This is better than TV, radio or torrents. 

Bravo!

[matakishi]

Good so far, what are your plans for the roofs?

[revford]

Cheers everyone. 

Good so far, what are your plans for the roofs?

I'm going to attempt your towel-as-thatch method, I just need to check with my lovely Wife which towels I can loot out of the cupboard. 


This I guess will be the "And Finally" for tonight, the pair of huts and a small pen, built the same way but from offcuts of the card all sitting in the sand.

They had a heavy coat of PVA over the entire base, indoors and out then coarse sand dumped over the whole lot.



This is going to take hours and hours to dry, so it's all being put aside until tomorrow.

All being well I'll get the roofs sorted tomorrow, that can dry over Saturday night and I can paint the whole lot on Sunday ready for the game on Tuesday night.  

[Mad Carew Snr]

Excellent!

[Yankeepedlar01]

Splendid effort, could be made for Pah Doc!

[revford]

 

Okay, It's back to the project time, the glue has dried and given me an uneven and heavy base.

I've found a thin coat of glue gives a smooth, even finish, and a thick one a bumpy and more natural looking one.

The good thing about CDs as bases is they are very hard to warp.

Here is the finished texture:




And here are the buildings with the base coat slapped on.  All covered in Burnt Umber acrylic, the same I've used on the jungle and the gaming boards.



Now to have some breakfast while that drys then some drybrushing. 

[Malamute]

Looking cool.

[DFlynSqrl]

Nice project revford.  I've been thinking about adding some huts to my 20mm Vietnam as well.  Your project will be a good reference. 

[revford]

Cheers again everyone.

The current plan is to build these two, then maybe two bigger buildings.  But I want to get this pair finished and see how they turn out first.

A little more progress, a first rough coat of paint on the building walls.  Once that settles I'll add a second coat, tidy up the posts and do the bases.



I'm going to do the base last as it's a drybrushy job and I want to get some of that dirt colour on the lower parts walls.  A slapdash job is going to look better than a neat one here. 

Later today I should be able to get some more PVA so I can have a crack at the roofs.

[revford]

Well, other things kept me busy most of the day, but I did manage to get a second coat of paint and then some dirt on the buildings.



The dirt is a mix of black paint and the water I clean the brushes in, slapped over the buildings.  That should dull the bright colours down and break up the otherwise flat cardboard surfaces.

That can dry overnight and hopefully I'll get on with the roofs tomorrow.

[Hitman]

Coming along nicely. Always good to see what others do to make such great looking terrain projects. Thanks for sharing.