15mm scale Work Shop

Some work in progress pictures of a small work shop, made from the ever useful toilet roll centre, the roof is covered with masking tape. A tip picked up from the great Lead Adventure Forum. Works very well in creating a typical 1930's tare paper style roof. The front face of the building is made from colour flute paper from GF smith to give the effect of corrugated iron. The building is based on a 3 inch square base, with PVA glue and sand on. The top picture shows the front with the door in place and the corrugated iron distressed with holes and chunks cut out to represent wear and tear.

Free stuff

Just a quick update, extolling the virtues of free stuff on the web, prompted by the last issue of Wargames Illustrated and the Vietnam buildings article. Great buildings, with lots of different uses. Link I've built two of the jails so fare and will be using some of the larger buildings to create the sea front of my WW2 Italian colonial town from N/East Africa.

For the barrack buildings on the airfield and Government buildings Ebob miniatures have a great free to down load range of buildings for their 28mm scale POW game, Scroll down the page to the bottom for the POW camp buildings, which make great 15mm scale barrack blocks if printed out at 50% size of the PDF. Link

Petrol station & Start of the old town

Some pictures of the petrol station and the start of the Old town based on the sketches from my last post. Finished the tower on the petrol station and the window on the top floor has the frame finished. Started the old town basing all of the buildings on 3 inch square art board bases with a 1.5 inch squares cut out of one corner of each board to make the tessellating "L" shapes, which fit together well. Trying to make each of the buildings unique to a certain extent.

The old town

Sketches used to work out the building of the old section of the town, based on the idea of tessellation, prompted by an article from David Bickley on building terrain boards in Wargames Illustrated many moons ago. The idea was to create an complex street pattern of winding streets. The top sketch also outlines the idea that its possible to create slot in sections to go onto the roofs with satellite dishes, air conditioning units etc... to create a modern day look to the town.

Naval HQ WIP

Some WIP photos of the Italian Naval HQ building, based on a 3x6 inch art board base. This building will also be used as a casino the British version of the my African colonial town. Different size tubes used to create the rounded sections of the building. Need to work out how to build the alternative lift of sections of the building, to change its use from HQ to Casino. I'm thinking lots of aerials and communication stuff on the HQ roof, and a small plastic fish from a packet of sushi for the casino.

15mm WIP Pertol station

A couple of work in progress pictures of the (futurist) Fiat petrol station from Asmara. Based on the article from the Telegraph magazine. (see previous post) The model is based on a 3x6 inch art board card. The top picture shows the front of the station and the bottom picture the back. Still needs lots doing to it. The two small vertical posts either side of the building in the top picture are the start of the petrol pumps.

Thinking about the idea of the WW2 African Italian colonial town, I've decided to make it usable as a British colonial town as well, looking ahead to a possible future campaign set up. I just need to make sure that I make any overtly Italian/British elements, such as public statues, bill boards stand alone elements, free standing. And keep any building graphics slit 50/50 between the Brits and Italians.

B/F Building sketches

Some sketches I've made of Russian style buildings for my Blitz Freeze board, the idea will be that the will be doubles of most buildings so they can be replaced once hit by artillery fire or bombing. the top picture shows one of the terrain tiles which would in this case be 6" square. The trick with this terrain will be to get the snow effect to look believable on the buildings and surrounding terrain.

All the best for 2010

Airhead