Fallout: Heading East

[Constable Bertrand]

Suitably derelict!!   

I may steal your process. 

[Wyrmalla]

Hey I can stick up tutorials for making any of the furniture if people want them. Though they're really just various rectangles slapped together.

Here's a few of the filing cabinets that I painted up (no use in showing all twelve of them). They're still short of paper scraps, but I don't have any PVA glue to hand right now to add them. The blood stains on the middle one? Well you know that scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels where the guy gas his head slammed in a car door...?



And you lot thought I'd be using those things in a civil setting... 

Barrels. Yup. I've had these sitting painted for a while, I just couldn't be bothered basing them. The yellow ones read "H2o", though I wouldn't be so confident drinking from them.



A very WIP Brahmin. I've only laid out the structure for it right now, all of that needs texturing. Its also missing its second head. I had a search for a spare horse one to no avail, and the results of my sculpting one didn't turn out great. So we'll see what happens. I think the base models (I have five) come from a series of models listed under "Border Reiver" if anyone happens to be looking for similar ones (I can sift out some similar models that still packaged if anyone needs the full details).



Till next time. I'll work on the Brahmin and finishing off some pieces that have been sitting about for a while. The furniture that I made over the week's started being painted, though for the moment I'm leaving off adding any clutter on them bar paper scraps. Future furniture certainly will though (I just forgot to add any before I started painting them). I should make little packs of cigarettes, magazines, lunchboxes etc at some point (though I'd probably have to cast them up for ease).

[Wyrmalla]

I made it through the last of the office furniture tonight. I'll stick together some other bits some time. These bits still need to have waste paper stuck to them, so I'll see about buying some PVA glue and an old newspaper come Monday.



Lavvy/ campfire


Brotherhood of Steel
Circle of Steel Agent


Another one by the same manufacturer as the other female agent (who I actually came across another model of, but in a different pose, but forgot to pick up). She's posing dynamically atop that desk because the model's in a horrible pose for photographing btw.

A WIP of a wasteland knight. I seen a model of a knight with an SVD a few weeks ago, but it was too expensive. The original model for this however was 50p I think. Someone who's looted a museum I guess for a suit of armour. Good at fending off spiked baseball bats, bullets not so much. Perhaps a little more suited to the Across the Dead Earth setting.


Now to go back to my wonderful course work. =P

[Wyrmalla]

Ok, just a little idea I've had bounding in my head. If I were to make a modular kit from which to build shacks from, would it be preferred if the shack's walls were made up for two 6'' x 3'' (front and back) and two 3'' x 3'' (sides) pieces, plus a 6'' x 3'' roof piece, or rather four/six 3'' x 3'' pieces with either one or two 3'' x 3'' roof pieces? Having everything made from 3''x3'' pieces would give more options, but more could be don with the larger 6'' x 3'' face. I'd also have to be a bit clever about how the roof pieces slotted together if going for 3''x 3'' too. I'm inclined towards the 3'' x 3'' faces, but unsure.

The floor pieces would come in 3'' x 3'' segments. Problem here: wall inserts. The way I'm thinking the walls should have tabs on the bottom that slot into indents on the floor piece. Now, what if people want to make larger rooms? These tabs would be exposed. I could include pieces of various sizes to cover up these inserts, but that could become messy fast (they'd only be like 0.25'' across).

And... The way I'm designing these entails that they'd be glued together (you paint them first of course though, otherwise the interiors would be a bitch to paint). It would be possible to have them so that wouldn't be necessary, but that's outside the bounds of my capability (I'm using plasticard and balsa wood, with, if I ever go anywhere with this, the final pieces being made out of herculite plaster ...probably. Its up in the air).

Obligatory crap paint diagram. The shapes with the two interior rectangles are walls. The shapes with the four rectangles/rim are the roof pieces.
<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2hq5tvt" target="_blank"><img src="http://i57.tinypic.com/2hq5tvt.png" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">[/url]

And are those dimensions all right? I was just trying to keep things symmetrical with the 3'' height. My plasticard sheets are 12'' x 6'', so it just makes things easier to have the bits multiples of three. 3'' is roughly double the height of a Hasslefree Bubba model (he's what I use for scaling everything). At that height the doors to the shacks would be set at 2'' x 1.5'' roughly to allow access (I'm still pondering if my existing door style will be easy enough for others to work with, or just to make the doors back of the wall's design; ie non removable).

Ah, anyways. This is purely a theoretical endeavour right now. The idea's been in the back of my head for a bit, I'm just trying to work out how plausible it could be. I've had guys at my club asking me to sell my terrain on a larger scale than I am currently (right now I put together pieces on demand-yes, at a higher quality than crap like the office furniture-, rather than creating batches and placing them on Ebay), this is me wondering if that's achievable. =P

[Wyrmalla]

Need advice. Opening doors. Yay, nae? Yay = more work.

What this design doesn't allow without a redesign:

Interior walls:
There's just too much overlap to use the existing walls between two floor panels. For that to work the floor pieces would need to be redesigned to have a lip along their edges. The walls would also need to have a small detailess area along their lower halves and have their design changed to make it a little more difficult to position them. See Diagram.

* Black represents usable area for detailing. The shapes on the left are the existing design, the ones on the right would be the modified ones. The top shapes represent the floor pieces, bottom are the walls.
<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=taqa12" target="_blank"><img src="http://i61.tinypic.com/taqa12.jpg"  >[/url]

So I could adapt the current design to allow this, but it would create a chequered effect on the floors and lead to these parts looking more uniform. Not my idea of a shack. So separate interior walls pieces would need to be created, not good.

Second Floors:
Possible, but they would need the addition of dedicated pieces, rather than reusing the existing floor panels (there's no rim for another wall to latch onto if a floor piece is put on the top edge of a wall piece). Creating these as well as an accessible roof tile set -low walls, roof hatches, ladders- wouldn't be too difficult though. However they could lead to there being a load of unused pieces if bunched in with the regular set, so I'd either have to include them in small numbers or put together a roof kit addon or something.

Ah, and and the way that things are designed means that a building could be a couple of floors tall and remain stable (hopefully, I'd need to start casting these to see). Again, these aren't snap fit. Glueing the bits together and using the inserts as guidelines is necessary. I'm designing these to be simple to put together, but that's based on my own competence/ willingness to pull out a hammer and hit things if they don't fit exactly.

So in summary a redesign of most of the pieces may be in order. Luckily I've only detailed a few pieces so far.

But... that's all assuming that people would want to do those things. I mean would these kits just being single floor buildings be enough? I'd just not want to have to rework these things down the road to include more functionality.

Here's three test pieces; a wall (exterior face, the interior one will be detailed as well) and two floor panels. I'm debating altering the floor design to include more wood and dirt, and use those two pieces as second floor ones (with a bit of modification).

[Wyrmalla]

And a test fit of the panels to form a shack. That roof piece isn't the final bit, I just stuck some overhanging plasticard to give an idea of what I'll do with them (at the moment I'm considering creating roof panels as a set of corners, middles, edges, etc, as using the same parts for all areas would be needlessly complex).



*The interior wall on the left here hasn't had its tabs finished. Nor are any of the tabs really done. Again, they're just guidelines for where to place the panels, using them alone isn't going to hold the shack together (though uh, yeah, that shack in the pictures isn't glued). Someone with more knowledge on the matter could probably create a snap fit kit, but I'm happy with just glueing together the bits.


Back to work now. And hey, would people be actually interested in these?

[Constable Bertrand]

You don't need opening doors IMO.

The shack seems to high for my taste, but I like the pannels that its made from. You have created a very interesting texture and surface detail there.

With shacks aren't they all different shapes and sizes? I'd be more tempted to cast sheets which can be cut and arranged on their end. Probably what you didn't want to hear, but my 2 cents.

Cheers
Matt

[DELTADOG]

The shacks are a bit to high! but VER VERY Cool!

[Wyrmalla]

Too high? Hmn, by how much? They're that height as I wanted the walls to be used on any of their sides (so each piece can be placed in four ways) for optional variety. Should I cut them down by a fifth or so to make them 2.5'' square instead?

I could make the pieces smaller (like say cut each panel into quarters) to allow for a wider variety in size? Though there's a limit as to how small the pieces could go before the details look a bit too messy. If quarters then features like doors would maybe need to be made up of two pieces (perhaps the upper half of the door could double as a window), which would limit the number of different heights available (though then again, there's no use in a shack being so small models can't fit).

So would something like Hirst Art's Molds rather than the larger panels?
<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=28010m" target="_blank"><img src="http://i58.tinypic.com/28010m.png" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">[/url]

If the smaller pieces then I'll need to look into reworking how the bits fit together. Or I could just remove the tabs that are being used as guides at the moment altogether (ie have everything just made of flat tiles). I haven't the time this second to think about redesigning this properly though, so I'll have to work it out later in the week.

[Messyart]

The shack next to Elvis does look to be a two-storey building.
Someone pointed out to me that in 28mm scale, an inch is about 5 foot. So around 2" high for a single floor would be alright.

[Wyrmalla]

2''? Hmn, that sounds workable. The 3'' was an arbitrary size based off of how large the sheets of plasticard I buy in are. In which case the pieces would be 1''x1'' and "1x0.5''. As a model's base is 1'' across, and roughly 1.5'' tall, a door would be made up of four pieces (as there wouldn't be enough space within a single tile). Would the doors actually have to be workable? Ie yes, they can open and close, but would a model need to fit through them? Its not a difficult thing to do, it just means giving a few millimetres more leeway. Oh, and though doors take up four pieces, that doesn't mean that they would need to be placed in the middle of a building. No, a wall could be made up of six parts, and so the door could be set to the left or right, or whatever.

* Black rectangle represents a model's base. ...Elvis = Elvis.

<a href="http://tinypic.com?ref=2vtzmgx" target="_blank"><img src="http://i60.tinypic.com/2vtzmgx.png" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic">[/url]

[DELTADOG]

The width is perfect! but not the height. If you want to Mold them and cast, no problem. Mold them in this way and Cut down the walls of the casts before assembly. Good Meassurements are: 48-50mm Room height. A Shack is a bit smaller, so 45mm on door side and 40-38mm on the opposite side to get a bit angle in the roofs. No Metalsheetroof on such a shack would be constructed flat. Look on the Pardulon Shacks they show it very well

[Wyrmalla]

If an incline's required then the 0.5'' tall pieces could be used I suppose. The corrugated shacks that I've been seeing on Google from Africa are flat though IRC (not to do with the climate. It rains, if ill frequently there. No, ease more like). Having an incline is problematic though in that I'd need to make all sorts of differently angled triangular pieces for the side walls, which would be a right bugger. So with this initial run I'd prefer to just have flat roofs, with perhaps a couple of angled blocks.

Herculite's a strong material, but cutting its difficult. I'd rather not have to cut down the pieces, nor would I want others to either (you'd need an electric saw to prevent it shattering by my guess). Instead I think that pieces sized at 1'' x 1'', 1'' x 0.5''' and possibly 0.5'' x 0.5'' will be enough to cover a decent variance in sized shacks. If those work out then the addition of 1''x0.25'' pieces could be done, but I'll need to work out how the initial one inch square bits work before looking into those.

Ah, and the shacks could be made to be 1.5'' tall, but I wouldn't recommend it if people are wanting to place there models inside. I'll try and design these similarly to Hirst Arts Molds, but that's up in the air right now.

[Papa Spanky]

Doors that allow a model to go through tend to be way to wide, and look out of proportion. (because of the base accomodation.) If you really want an openable door, make it the correct proportion and removable. In my experience hinged doors are only nice for a AAR photo. You can get by with something removable. Your last post with Elvis seems pretty good height wise. I thinks the shacks are are only as tall as the builder can reach.

[zizi666]

Doors that allow a model to go through tend to be way to wide, and look out of proportion. (because of the base accomodation.)

That. I like the plasticville buildings which are O-scale but have S-scale doors and windows.
I guess it's better to have windows and doorways that let you take a peek inside than an actual functioning door, let alone a doorway that can hold a 30mm base.