Merry Christmas, all the best for 2013

Just a quick Happy Christmas post to all my followers and casual visitors out there in Blogg land, and all the best for 2013. I'll be back posting next year, hopefully on a more regular basis than in 2012. In case you were wondering the above picture follows on from my Christmas theme from last year.

Have a good one, and hope you all have a great 2013.

Airhead

Make mine a Coke

Just a quick post about one of those random projects that come out of nowhere, while putting some posters, street names and other random graphic bits onto my recently produced damaged and destroyed houses  it occurred to me that by using one of the Coca cola posters I could make a vending machine or two ideal for adding a bit of a contemporary look to some of my generic middle east buildings. Not sure where I got the posters pdf from on the web, but if past experience is anything to go on it might have been Furts blog, adventures in lead. Where I got some great oriental carpets from.

TTFN

Airhead

Pounding the rubble

A quick post of some pictures of one of my destroyed building showing one of the dugouts with the rubble bung removed and replaced with an explosion marker. You can see on the explosion marker some flying boulders painted in the same colour as the rubble. This also shows the benefits of having a consistent basing strategy. Mine is base around 1p / 2p coins  for my 15mm collections, and supporting terrain items such as explosion markers are also based on these coins.

TTFN

Airhead

Down town Asmara + paint

Finally started to get some paint onto the down town area of Asmara, you can see in the background the black undercoated buildings waiting in the wings. In the bottom picture you can see a couple of make shift sun shades/market stalls on the roofs of the front two buildings, still waiting for some paint to be applied. The idea being that all the flat roofs of the buildings will have some kind of clutter on them. Barrels, boxes, tables and also sat-alight dishes and air-conditioning units to give the town a current feel. All of these items will be free standing. Also last but not least a fine selection of rugs, found as a pdf on the Internet, unfortunately for the life of me I can't remember where from.

On a final note, I'm quite chuffed that this is my 32 post of this year, looking at my posting rate earlier in the year I thought that I would fail to match last years by a mile. Lots of pictures and ideas in the bank for next year, and a couple more posts at least this year.

TTFN

Airhead

Destroyed houses 4

More progress made on the destroyed houses, painted after under coating in matt black Humbrol enamel paint. Working out well if I do say so myself. The bottom picture shows the two dugouts with there stoppers removed, and the small stopper from the semi circle rubble base on the right. One more stage to go, I'm going to add in some more random bits of rubbish to the bases, bits of wire, tubing, wine bottle foil and any other bits and bobs I can think of.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle damaged houses 3

Good progress being made at the moment on a number of projects, it's amazing what you can do in 20 snatched minutes each morning, before leaving for work. The 4 pictures above show the 2 battle damaged houses as they currently stand, I need to add some dark grey/black smoke damage and more bullet strikes to the brick work, especially around the doors and windows. I'm also looking into adding some graphics, posters, street names and general street stuff.

The insides of the houses have to be a compromise between being able to position troops within the building and adding to the inside as much rubble and timbers as possible. I'm pleased with how the green/blue paint has worked on the outsides of the buildings, I have used these colours in picking out some of the rubble on the rubble bases which correspond the the two houses.

Destroyed houses 3

Progress on the destroyed houses which are in the centre at the top of the photograph and also the two battle damaged town houses on the top left and top right. All of the rubble bases now have scrap bits of wood glued into position and have had a scattering of sand applied with PVA glue. So everything is ready for its black under coat. click on the picture for a bigger version. The top row of half circle rubble bases can be seen with their round mini rubble bases removed to show the defencive positions ready to take troop bases.

Small Mosque

Anew building to add to the town, a small Mosque. The top two pictures show the building as it stands at the moment. Bottom picture is my original sketch of the building. Thinking about this building after getting it to this stage of construction it occurred to me that I had done no research on Mosques at all, not even a simple search on Google images. You can also see how the model differs from the sketch, with the number of arches in the inner building and the main door have been changed. The small ball on the top of the tower is a polystyrene one you can purchase these from craft shops. To make up for my lack of research,  I'm going to look into using some elaborate ceramic tile patterns on the inside of the building and main walls, and perhaps a small dome on the roof to go along side the minaret.

TTFN

Airhead

Destroyed houses 2

More progress on the destroyed town houses, the top picture shows one of the houses on its "L" shaped base with its add on bases of rubble around it. You can make out in the right angle of the "L" a cutout dugout with the plug in place. The bottom two pictures show one of the other bases with the two dugouts filled and removed.

On another topic, I came across a great post on the SD painting forum, linking to a blog, showing how to make a gaming matt. Not something that I had ever really considered before reading this post has got me interested in the possibilities. So something to look into in the future.

TTFN

Airhead

Destroyed houses 1

Work in progress on the destroyed houses, the top three pictures show the "L" shaped bases with the foam board sections cut out and in position, ready to be cut to shape. Creating smooth rounded shapes which can then have rubble built up on them. Along side the "L" shaped main sections are the rubble section bases. One of the houses has a 2p size section cut out which will be used as a dug out. The other two will also have dug outs cut into them. Which when not in use can have the plugs replaced, covering up the dug out holes.

The bottom picture shows the first three stages of constructing the rubble bases, the top one still needs the small grit adding.

TTFN

Airhead

Battle damaged houses 2

Progress on the battle damaged versions of the Asmara town house, the top picture shows the 3 areas of rubble which can be added to the L shaped base of the house. Two semi circles and one quarter circle of art board are used to base the rubble on. Health and safety warning!!! the larger bits of rubble are made from smashed up ceramic tiles, this process involves a concrete garage floor, an old bit of carpet (over the tiles) and a hammer. The ceramic tiles can be very sharp when smashed up, I drew blood on more than one occasion. So, best to wear gloves and eye protection when getting medieval on your tiles.

The idea of using the broken up tiles came to me when re-tiling one of the bathrooms at Airhead towers. Funny how the mind wonders when doing DIY. To create the look I wanted for the rubble I combined the broken ceramic tiles with Granite chippings from the local footpath, grit for use with cactus plants and sand. The combination of these different types of material worked well.

TTFN

Airhead 

Battle damaged Asmara town houses

With production going full swing on the 5 town houses for down town Asmara, while waiting for the full houses to dry after getting their undercoat of matt black. I have moved onto producing some destroyed versions, basing them on the same "L" shaped base. I used some off cuts of 5mm foam core board to build the remaining walls, stripping some of the card covering off to expose the foam core and then using a ball point pen to scribe the outlines of the bricks. The exposed bricks then had a coat of PVA applied and the had a light sprinkling of sand applied to give them some texture.

The next stage will be adding in more rubble and general rubbish. The one think that dose strike me about a lot of the damaged building models you see out there, no matter how good they look, is the striking lack of rubble. It always looks to me like someone has been around and cleared up after the artillery strike or bombing raid. So the next stage will be producing some rubble for these two houses.

After finishing these two I'm going to move onto producing some really destroyed buildings, and I'm talking bombed flat.

TTFN

Airhead

Down town Asmara

I've made good progress over the last week with my buildings for down town Asmara, the capital of my version of 1930's Italian Eritrea. I have finished of the tops of all the houses with roof details. I have also beefed up the PVA and sand on the lower parts of the outside walls. Details such as windows with grills over them and general touching up has taken place. The next stage will be to under coat them in matt black paint, and decide on how I'm going to paint them, currently I'm thinking along the lines of having a restricted pallet of colors based around the other buildings I have already built, which mainly involves the use of Greens and Blues.

The next stage in the development of the town will to be the construction of the slum end of town, with lots of small huts and shanties. I'm also thinking about creating some battle damaged versions of the town houses above.

TTFN

Airhead

Finished Fire

A quick update with some pictures of the German para flame thrower, with finished flame and a undercoated para, and below that a couple of pictures of the suppression - bullet strike markers, shown alongside a stand of WW2 Russians for scale. I finished the bullet strikes with a soft spray of grey primer spray paint over the top base earth colour used on the clump foliage that makes up the body of the bullet strikes.

Right, I'm off to the finish painting fritz. TTFN.

Airhead

Small wood on a hill finished

I finally finished my small wood based on a Mod Rock mount, to go onto one of my soft hills. The top picture shows the hill in its bare state. The two lower pictures show the trees in position on the Mod Rock mount from different angles. The leaf litter under the trees is made with tea, from a tea bag, with some small twigs and rocks. I used two different types of clump foliage on the trees to give the look of different types of trees in the wood.

I did this piece as a test of the idea of using Mod Rock as a method of basing additional items of terrain to go onto pre-existing terrain items. Its worked out well and it expands the number of scenarios that I can use my different hill for.

TTFN

Airhead

Small wood on a soft hill

I've been working on a small wood to go on top of one of my soft hills, I first posted on this in January this year, showing how to make the mod Rock former that sits on top of the contours of the soft hill. The tree trunks are garden twigs from the estate, hot glued into position on the mod rock former, small rocks and grit were PVA'd onto the base. The foliage for the trees is a chunk of polystyrene  painted with black acrylic-paint and stuck onto the twigs, it will them have clump foliage glued onto the polystyrene former. As I have done when making my other woods.

Next up is to paint both hill and wood, producing this addition to one of my hills, and it working so well, has prompted me to thinking of other versions that could be produced, hill top villages/forts/fire bases/temples etc...

TTFN

Airhead