November plans

It is well into November already and I have finally planned what I have to do. This is a post summarising the jobs and introducing them and then I will post with individual updates as each project progresses.
I surprised myself when I realised I have 9 jobs on the go this month! I don't have to finish them all by the end of the month but they all need to be started! Saying that, 6 do need to be finished by the end of November as the London Toy Soldier show is on at the beginning of December and they are all for then.
I will be detailing progress of 4 of these jobs. The largest is re creating a Normandy village in 28mm and that will develop over the next 15 months, ready for Salute 2013. The second is another 28mm job but for Salute 2012 and it is for Karl at Crooked Dice and I need to make a snowy mountain hide away for a James Bond type game. Staying in the same scale, the third job is building a Sudan town from a mix of scratch built, laser cut and resin models. This will go into next year I am sure as there is a alot to do. Finally, the forth job, that has to be finished for the London show is a 54mm snow scene that will be used to display various WW2 vehicles.

You will be able to follow the Normandy village development by looking out for posts headed, not surprisingly, Normandy village. The village will be built up over time with me making individual modules that can be placed on top of a cobbled area so creating streets and lanes. The first module I have just started is 24" x12" and is a series of small houses and shops that surround a courtyard. It struck me when I visited the area a couple of years ago that there are alot of gates and entries that must lead into courtyards etc so I thought this would be a good start.

a rough sketch to start with

I have found it difficult to visualise how all the buildings will fit on the board so I cut out the base board and started to sketch some ideas down. You can see the result above and at this stage I decided to build the bottom left sketch and then revisit the plan after the first house was in place. I flicked through my collection of photos I took of Normandy buildings to get some inspiration and came up with this. I cut it out of foam board and used laser cut windows

Once I cut out all the pieces and glued the windows in place and glued the whole thing together

I haven't glued the building onto the base yet as there is alot of detailing to add (this will be a stone building) but by placing it on the base I find it alot easier to see the space I have to add the next building. I hope to add a couple more building carcasses this week to the layout and finish off early next week ready for adding detail etc.

The mountain hideaway can be followed by looking out for the mountain base project header in the future. I have been given a very good preliminary sketch from Karl at Crooked Dice so you can see from it what an exciting project this will be

This will be a 4 foot square table to give you an idea of the size and will be snow covered. I have the bases ready and have had the cable car made by the laser cutter. It looks great so will post a photo of it next time. I have found the cable car a very important part of the design as I now have something to design the rest of the place in relation to the car. It sounds odd as the car plays such a small part in the overall layout but it just gives me something concrete to work from. I often find the more complicated projects need something small to kick off the rest of it.
We are currently discussing a few changes so should finalise that soon and hopefully you should see regular signs of development over the next 3 or 4 weeks.

The 54mm snow scene is a 2 ft deep by 4feet long display. There will be lots of snow and ice with the highlight being a ruined log cabin but nothing too over powering so it takes nothing away from the vehicles it is designed to display.

This is the sketch I have to follow. It should look pretty good when it is done. I can see me working on it fairly steadily for the next 2 weeks and then accelerating with it as deadline approaches!

The final project I will be keeping you up to date with is the Sudan. When this is finished it will be spectacular. The challenge I have is to blend the laser cut carcasses, the resin flat packs sets and my own scratch built buildings into a town that all belong together. The laser cut models are beautifully done but are perfect so will need some roughing up. The resin flat packs will have alot of joins where the pieces meet so will need some careful building. The scratch built stuff can be modified to fit the other building style so they should be fine.  You will be able to follow this project under Sudan village. I will give details about the resin and laser kits later.
I had better stop now and start model making as I have a busy month!