Monday 28 December 2009

15mm Scale village










Some pictures of the finished building from my 15/10mm scale village with their base boards attached, they worked out quite well, a couple of pictures showing the buildings together along with one of my French infantry battalions from my War of the Spanish succession forces, to give an idea of the actual size of the buildings.

Sunday 27 December 2009

BF / Background Research




Despite the last few weeks of snow and ice in the UK, its not an overly familiar type of weather in the UK so I thought it best to do some research and gather some reference to work from. The are still lots of decisions I have to make about the exact type of terrain its going to be. My initial idea is that the terrain will not be white out 6' of snow all over but a time when snow has fallen and is still around in large quantity's but the are areas of clear ground, where the wind has blown the snow away. Most of the landscape picture are from photography blogs. The vehicle reference came mainly from this modeling site the are some really great models in the gallery giving bags of inspiration. I just down loaded the pictures and printed them out and put them into clear plastic pocket folders.

BF/ Blitz Freez - the idea

The idea for my blitz freeze terrain and force has been brewing for the past 12 months, the basic idea is to create a 2' square terrain based around a Russian village in the winter of 1941-42. The terrain will be able to be configured in a wide number of permutations and the will have inter changeable section for replacing buildings with shell damaged and destroyed buildings. The picture above shows a scaled down version of the terrain, each of the light blue squares on the white L shaped sections are 3" square in the full version. The idea of this scaled down version is that I'll use it to plan out the terrain and build it up with modelling clay before creating the final thing.

Tuesday 15 December 2009

Plans for 2010




I've been planning for next years big project for a while know, based around an Italian colonial town some where in North / East Africa for my 15mm British Italian WW2 forces to fight over. Some of the items on the map have already been produced, the oil storage tank's and the flying boat station and the coast whatch tower will be used in this set up. The hills have also been made.
The Elements that go to make up the town will as much as possible be Generic, so I can use them in other locations and times. For example the bungalows will be used in Vietnam as French colonial buildings.
It all started from a picture of an Italian Futurist petrol station in Asmara, as featured in the Telegraph magazine, strange how these things start out. It looked like something out of flash Gordon. I thought I've just got to build that, and the next thing you know I've drawn out the entire town, including modernist 1930's government buildings.
Well that's the plan, and you know what they say about the best laid plans!
More plans and drawings to follow.


Soft hills finished




The soft hills are finished with flock added, shown here with some Italian Peter Pig CV35 Tanks in 15mm scale, to give an idea of size. In the bottom picture you can see the cliff section on the bigger base. This type of soft hills would work well with two interlocking sets of hills with matching cliffs, to create a vale, with steep walls. These hills will work equally well with 28mm scale figures for skirmish games.


Thursday 10 December 2009

15mm Village




Some progress on the village, with most of the bases completed, just needing painting up. The middle picture shows the tea leaves PVD'd onto the pan scourer hedges. For the less manicured rural hedges I pulled clumps out of the scourers and glued (PVA) additional bits onto the front and back of the scouring pad to give a more uneven wild look to the hedge. The bottom picture shows the Big house in its formal garden, with most of the painting done, just some details work to do.


Sunday 29 November 2009

15mm Hovels Village


This post is really thanks to Mike, and results from a question he put in a comment, asking if I was scratch building all of my terrain. So hello Mike, and the short answer is no. Just most of it. But thanks for prompting me to finaly do somthing with these models.

The Hovels buildings in this post were bought way back when Salute was still in Kennsington town all, and I was a young fresh faced designer working in London. They were bought with the idea of using them as the center of a relatively generic village which would fit a wide range of time frames and locations in 15mm scale. The central main one being 15mm Spanish war of succession. That original idea still stands, the only real change over the years has been the huge increase in range and quality of 10mm figure ranges available. This has lead to some of my periods of interest moving from 15mm over to 10mm, due to the size constraints I work within and also cost. More bang for your buck, as our American cousin's would say.

From my point of view although 15mm scale these buildings are fine for using with 10mm stuff as well. The building come from the Hovels European range and the Rural range, the 5 half timbers houses are still less than £4 each, which to me seems very reasonable. They are all going to be based onto 3x3 inch art board bases, with the Big house going onto a 3x6 inch base for its formal gardens to fit onto. With the houses I also bought a selection of stone walls, fences and stocks, I have an idea they were from Hallmark figures, but I could be wrong. So these will be used on the bases as well.

The big house was put onto a foam board base within the walled garden, all the hedging is from pan scouring pads, cut to shape with a scalpel, the gate posts are plastic sprue from an Airfix 1/24th scale Hurricane. A nice hexagonal shape and the balls on top are from the daughter's bede tin. The formal fountain is a spindle from a boots floss dispenser. When hot gluing this to the base the glue started to pull up when I was moving the glue gun away. I had one of those eureka moments and thought, that kind of looks a bit like a fountain, so there it stands. Water feature number one. I'm sure other people must have done the same, but hay I was quite chuffed with the result.

Thursday 19 November 2009

Roman Watch Tower



My final 10mm scale Roman post for a time, pictures of the finished watch tower, painted and flocked, based on the ubiquitous free CD base. Palisade made from coffee sticks, tower and roof from ribbed card.

Thinking ahead to the new year, going to have a bit of a re-jig on the old blog, keeping the terrain emphasis, but with a special terrain project I've been thinking about for a while and also posting more of my troops, in a rather pathetic effort at self motivation. I've been so busy building terrain over the past year, that you would be hard pressed to have a small domestic argument with the finished forces I have at my disposal.

Currently ensconced in the snug world of the 18th coffee house, planning out the grounds of my country house. Till next time.

Saturday 14 November 2009

Roman Temple


Two pictures showing the finished temple. Not bad for a deodorant lid and a 25p mini cd. The is a circular plinth inside the temple for a statue to go on. The ivy growing up the right hand side of the building is made up from PVA glue and tea leaves in multiple layers. The flagstones in front of the door is a piece of foam board with the tiles cut in freehand with a scalpel.

Saturday 7 November 2009

The Finished Fort




The finished fort, using the wall sections with the addition of corner towers. to create the fort. I'm pleased with how this has turned out. Just need to post some pictures of the finished watch tower and the temple and then I will be moving on from Rome for a time. Perhaps into 17/18th century Europe. However in the back of my mind the are still lurking native villages, civilian settlement for outside the fort walls, and to go with the breached section of wall, an alternative centre for the fort with burnt out buildings. So in time I'm sure I'll be back to Romes northan frontier.


The Wall


The wall shown in all its 60cm glory, minus the breached section, with marching camp and WIP watch tower in the background. The watch tower and temple are both finished now, just need to photograph them.

Sunday 1 November 2009

10mm Roman Buildings




Pictures of the finished Roman buildings designed to go into the centre of the fort. I always try and add in some final details to what ever I'm building to give it that extra bit of life, if that's the right word. A couple of 15mm metal barrels don't look out of scale, and a couple of vines growing up the garden wall of the tribunes villa.
While looking at a website on Roman Scotland Link I come across a great banner for the Ninth Legion. Great inspiration for some Roman Army sign writing on the Barack blocks.

Tuesday 27 October 2009

10mm Roman Watch Tower WIP






A Roman watch tower is next on my list of terrain for my Early Imperial Roman forces. Again no overly deep research on my part, other than pictures from the book A Gathering of Eagles, about Romes attempts at conquering Scotland, and a quick look on google pictures.

Top picture shows the watch tower in its current state, still needs the roof to the watch cabin, more ground work, the tower and cabin are made from ribbed black card which makes painting that much easier, and helps to create the wood planking effect. The walls are built from coffee stirring sticks and match sticks.
The middle picture shows the soil walls and the base of the watch tower, after being cut from a large block of polystyrene with a craft knife blade. Sand and PVA glue have been put on the tower base and the inside of the walls. You can see on the outside of the walls the soil block effect cut into the walls with the craft knife.

The bottom picture shows the solid block of polystyrene with the wall and tower base marked on with black pen. It also shows the CD it was based on.

Arthur's Oven



Arthur's oven was a Roman temple which stood in Scotland until 1743, when it was destroyed to make a dam for a local iron works. Have a look here for further information LINK it was also featured in the book A Gathering of Eagles. The main part of the building is the lid from a roll on deodorant, with the sky light and door cut out with a sharp scalpel blade. The Stone work was cut into the plastic cap again with the sharp scalpel blade. the top photo shows the cap with the stone work marked on with an indelible pen. The bottom picture shows the temple in position on its base cut from poly board, with the stone flag stones cut into the card, its based on a mini CD 80mm across. The small pieces of polystyrene will be painted to represent natural rock outcrops. The painting of the temple is not finished, its much to orange in colour at the moment.

Sunday 25 October 2009

10/15mm Painting stand


A simple stand to keep models free standing when drying during painted. A small block of polystyrene stuck to the underside of a jar lid. I usually super glue my 10/15mm models to galvanised nails to paint them.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Roman Fort WIP


Two photos showing the Roman fort laid out with all elements in place, two of the three smaller corner towers are still to be finished, and the gats house turret needs undercoating (Humbrol Mat black) and painting. The fort buildings have been stuck onto their base and sand has been PVA'd onto it. No stakes in the defensive ditch yet, I decided it would be simpler to paint the ground work first then insert the stakes (cocktail sticks) and PVA them into the ditch banking.

Roman 10mm Wall section




Three photos of the Roman 10mm scale breached wall section, the bottom picture showing the wall with towers on each end, the larger one for artillery. The top photo shows the use of cocktail sticks for the defencive stakes, only 36p from Morrisons supermarket, and you get a very useful hexagonal plastic container, which is ideal for making pillboxes from. The photos have come out with the wooden walls looking very blue! they are actually grey. The middle photo shows the back of the wall, with the flock glued on in clumps to help with creating the impression that the wall is made from cut sods of soil.


Sunday 27 September 2009

A Sand Bag (A la Lady Bracknell)


When making the 10mm scale hay stacks I had opened a pack of air drying clay I bought about 6 months ago, to keep the clay fresh I rapped it in cling film and put it into an air tight chines take out box, but the was quite a bit left over, so rather than let it go off and harden. On the spur of the moment I decided to have a go at some sand bags.
The water tower from my 15mm scale flying boat station was designed to have a sand bag bunker on the top. I rolled the clay out into sausages to the right size and then started to cut them up with a scalpel. It then struck me that rather than cutting right throw the clay, all I need to do was put the blade three quarters of the way through. Creating long lines of sand bags still attached to each other. Ready to use in future.

Finished Hay Stacks 10mm


The finished hay stacks, with the first completed member of my 1914 BEF forces, on his trusty stead. These were made with air drying clay, I found working the clay quite easy, looking at the finished hay stacks the modeling of the straw could have been finer, perhaps should have used an old scalpel blade rather than a cut down match stick. Generally quite please with how they turned out. Added a lead foil cover to one, to give a covered with a tarpaulin effect.