City (With plenty of FISHy opportunities)...

[Modhail]

Well, perhaps some preamble is in place, otherwise the pictures won't make sense?
This all started, as usual, with miniatures:
I have a set of Offensive Miniatures Rioters and Riot police (waiting to get prepped for paint), figures for zombie games (mostly painted...) and I'm working (off and on) on some figures inspired by Appleseed (the manga/anime).
What do all these themes have in common?
They mostly take place in a city.
What don't I have?
Guess. 
Most of my scenery is rural and/or GW oriented...
So, a City I will build!
This thread will be my "show and tell" of the process, and hopefully also an incentive to keep going on it.

Here's the plan:
The buildings will be a mix of Overlord-style brick buildings and more modern/sci-fi "slick"/concrete buildings. That way, by varying the ratio of "brick to slick" I use when setting up the table, I can slide from a bit in the past to the (near-ish) future.
Each building will be on a base with an integrated sidewalk.
Because I want the buildings to remain as flexible as possible, I can't have any "street furniture" permanently attached. But I don't like the look of street signs and lampposts with massive bases...
Plus, with permanently attached items or items on larger bases, there is the risk of damage if someone nudges them too hard while moving a miniature.
The solution? Magnets!
I'm painting the sidewalks with so called magnetic paint (paint with ferrous particles mixed in). I painted a set of test-bases and built a street sign and some lampposts (from Fenris Games) and glued magnets to the base of the poles:

Originally I had hoped to use magnets with the same diameter as the poles themselves.
Sadly the magnetic paint didn't have enough pull for that. That is why you see the larger diameter magnets under the lampposts.
Still a lot less intrusive than mounting the lampposts on bases, don't you think?
The street sign turned out to be secure enough with a double stack of magnets.
If anyone nudges them while playing, they will simply move out of the way, or fall over, without being damaged. 

Today I painted the magnetic paint on the majority of sidewalks. Here are the building bases with the magnetic paint drying:


But, what about the FISH?
No, not Innsmouth or Mordheim, but that lovely acronym the US military gave us: Fighting In Someone's Home:
I intend to have all buildings have an accessible interior. Mostly this will mean no more than some interior walls and stairs. I want to keep the interiors as uncluttered and useable as possible. The more I put inside, the less room for miniatures, and the more I pin myself down to a particular era or setting.
Plus, I like to have some of my sanity remain intact.... 

When the bases are all thoroughly dried, I start on the next phase: the buildings themselves.
I've got enough sturdy card and depron for the Overlord-style buildings. I still need to get the foamboard and/or foamed PVC for the slicker buildings, so those will come later.
That also gives me the time to work out shapes and layout for a couple of Appleseed landmarks: Onimal Coffee house and Akechi motors. I really like the idea of building these. Though may build them with replaceable signage, so I can use the buildings themselves for other settings as well.

Phew, more words than I had intended. Time to go downstairs and rip the masking tape of the bases!

[Hauptgefreiter]

This looks promising!

If magnetic paint is too weak, would've sheet metal or magnetic tape been a better solution?

[zizi666]

This looks promising!

If magnetic paint is too weak, would've sheet metal or magnetic tape been a better solution?

My thoughts exactly. also, magnetic paint isn't exactly cheap, is it ?

[Modhail]

The paint isn't actually magnetic, it would be more accurate to call it ferrous paint... But hey, marketing and logic. 
I bought a half litre pot of that stuff at the local DIY for about € 14. I haven't nearly used a third of it on the boards in the pictures.
I couldn't find steel tape at all...
So it was a bit of a case of "take what you can get". The pull is sufficient for my needs anyway.

Paint's dry, just pulled all the masking tape off. I couldn't help setting up a quick "proof of concept" with some of the stopgap scenery I'd been using so far:




Preliminary conclusion: Yeah, this is gonna work. I need more corners, though...

[Hauptgefreiter]

Preliminary conclusion: Yeah, this is gonna work.

I agree

[zizi666]

Preliminary conclusion: Yeah, this is gonna work. I need more corners, though...

Oh yes, I can see some happy zombies roaming those streets 

[Papa Spanky]

Brick to slick. Best description of a wide spectrum of gaming eras/ genres ever. This looks promising.

[DrVesuvius]

Excellent work so far, look forward to seeing more.

By co-incidence I'm in the early stages of my own city terrain project.  Originally intended to be for VSF gaming I quickly realised like you that with a change of street furniture and a few swapped buildings it could serve double duty as a more modern city for Pulp, Street Violence or Zombie Apocalypse games.  Great minds, and all that

Regards

Dr Vesuvius

[Modhail]

Well, got a bit more done this afternoon:

Sadly my camera is on the fritz, hence the crappy image quality...

Only took me an afternoon to cut and assemble, including scribing the brick texture in the walls, but I still need to do the interior walls and stairs.
I'm currently disputing wether to do that first, or to get straight on with the structure of the second floor...

Oh, and figuring if I like this size of brick, or maybe want them smaller after all. But that will be for a next building...

[D@rth J@ymZ]

I like the brickwork so far.  Looks about the right size and the building looks very playable.

[Hammers]

Lovely. Lovely,lovely,lovely. It's been a while since we had a proper city build.

[Modhail]

Hehe, it's a city build at least. Don't know yet if it'll be a proper one... 

Hmpf, it seems the camera is getting worse... Took 10 pics, and the two below are the only acceptable ones. 
May need to put the poor thing out of it's misery.

Anyway: today's progress:

And with a quick 5-minute mockup of a roof:

What I still need to do on this one:
        -scribe the brick on the sides of the roof walls
        -build a proper roof, the mockup is just thin cereal box cardboard.
        -build the inner walls and stair.
        -Oh, and actually build the doors and windows and such....

At the moment I'm considering putting off the inner walls, just to see how the building operates with just empty interior spaces. Or should I just forge ahead and save any modifications on the design for future buildings? Stick to plan on this one, and mark it up as "Experiment 1"?

[zizi666]

Looking good !
I too would go for the exterior first. An interior can always be added afterwards.
Also, do you need an interior ? Sure, it's pure eyecandy if it's there, and you do need it when using the terrain for an RPG, but for skirmish games, it's not really necessary IMO.

How will you tackle the windows ?
scratchbuild or prefabricated ?

[Modhail]

Well, the buildings I'll be making are primarily meant for a zombie survival game that will skirt the edges of RPG (1 survivor per player). I need options for looting/room clearing/siege type situation.
I won't go full out "dollhouse" though, I was thinking of nothing more than a few interior walls to denote rooms. More of a schematic than a fully detailed.
I'll also do a number of buildings that are pure "tablefiller", without interiors.
I doubt players will go "door to door looting" when there's zombies after them.... 
I assume/hope they'll focus on interesting buildings like supermarkets, police stations, stores etc. If they do want to enter a house without interior, I can always swap the houses out.

For the doors and windows I'm thinking scratchbuilt, but very simple.

[Commander Vyper]

Nice ideas all round. Always said if I revisited my own zed boards I'd use magnets for signs, lamps etc...

With respect to your card buildings, all I'll say is it would be worth using foamcore to build the structures, then mount the card pieces onto the solid box, makes for a much more durable building. There's how to's and guides in the begining of my zed thread if you're interested.

Good luck

The Commander