Mountain base project Pt3

The project is just about done now. I left it at the end of part two just about looking like a base but otherwise you needed alot of imagination to see the finished job.
The three big jobs I had left was to paint it, add the snow and do the railings.
 The painting was straight forward with a base coat of a mid grey, all washed in raw umber. Once that was dry I dry brushed with progressively lighter tones of grey with a last dusting of white. I also painted the ground work to look like mud so if I missed any areas with the snow it still looked good.
The railings ended up being worth it but each 30cm of railings was made up of about 65 pieces so patience was the word- it took me about one hour a foot to complete!

base coat added. Raw umber wash improves the look- sort of!

before the snow

a good shot of the railings

The snow is snow flakes from Deluxe Materials. I painted diluted PVA glue on all the areas I want the snow and then sprinkle the flakes all over the board. To help seal it and make it tough, I then spray it with very watered down PVA glue with some surgical spirit added to help it mix with the snow. I keep going with the process until I am happy with the look. It means the board is very wet so leave it to dry for a good 24 hours. Once it is dry you should have hard snow. If you have missed some areas then just repeat the above process.

 The cable car was finished as well with me building a steel support structure from plasticard. I have added some icicles to this but the photos haven't worked so you will just have to imagine them or come and see them at Salute this year at the Crooked Dice game.

 You can see how the cable car works in the above picture. A wooden dowel painted black is pushed into a hole in the villains lair and then it is supported by the steel structure at the other end. The cable car then rests on top of the cable so it can be moved during the game. The car has movable doors so you can get figures inside it so it should catch the eye during a game.

That is just about it for this project. I still have to work on the interior design for the lair but I am coming to the conclusion that this isn't my strongest skill but hopefully it will look suitably 60's in style.
Once I have delivered it to Karl at Crooked dice, the next time I will see it will be at this years Salute. I understand the figures are being painted by Kevin Dalimore so the whole thing should look terrific.

Normandy village part 5

I thought part four would have been the last post for a while with this project but my customer has very kindly sent me some photos of the buildings in action. The figures in the photos have been painted by Artmaster and the vehicles done by Troop of Shrew. The whole thing looks great. I don't think there is anything else to say so here are the photos:

probably my favourite photo.

Normandy Village pt4

I finished part three off by saying part four would show the finished job so I have waited a bit longer than I had expected to post this final part but I have finished the models!
The last stage has been all painting really and adding a few little details.
I started with the usual base coat of yellow ochre and then washed with raw umber. The result at this stage is scary as it looks terrible-

Could it look worse!

Once you start adding dry brushes of cream, buff and other colours you like then it soon starts to come alive. I then start to paint in the details such as the windows and shutters. I give them a wash of brown as well and then go over them again. I find this blends them in with the rest of the building.
The final painting touch is to add some brown staining just to age it and add more colour variety.
Once I was happy with the paint job I added the street lights. These are plastic kits. They are 1/35th scale so over sized but somehow look right.
The very last thing was to add some telephone wire from house to house. I wanted to add them so they wouldn't be too vunerable during gaming so I made them detactable.
That is it!
Pictures tell the best story so here is a pile of them-
The first set are of the single house with the ornate front and front garden.

28mm Tiger I there to give you an idea of size.

This second batch is of the 'island' of houses. You can see the telephone wires, the street lights as well as a few house numbers and street names.

I used two styles of window shutter

Different colours for the shutters add variety and colour to the street.

Street light and telephone wires.

The wire over the court yard is detachable so won't get damaged in play.

Street names add detail

This is the end of the first part of this Normandy project. Now these two pieces have been built we can now decide what to do next. I won't be adding to it for a couple of months though but when I do you will see progress here.