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