As part of my 'Jono's World, Sideon IV, 'Army Men' project, it seemed to me appropriate to build up a small, generic set of buildings in the appropriate scale. At a pinch, I guess the OO scale cardboard buildings familiar to us all might have done the job. But it was whilst finishing off a packet of breakfast cereal that I saw the opportunity to knock up some simple buildings.
First effort - a simple cardboard house. The cladding is 'brick paper' downloaded so long ago I don't recall the source. The roof is corrugated packing cardboard (which I seized before it got thrown out, its potential so obvious the opportunity was not to be missed).
Rear view. The house has a door at either end and along one side. The doors and windows are glued on, rather than cut out of the cardboard. The glazing or door is drawn on one piece, then a frame glued around it. The whole then applied to the wall of the house. The roof colour is from a damn-near 40-year old tin of Rowney Fixed Powder Colour - great for roofing. As the corrugated cardboard then looked rather like corrugated iron, the tiles were suggested by drawing the horizontal black lines.
A second building tipped up to show the type of building material used; a Rice Pop packet.
The same house. Like the first, is has been built to suggest possibly two dwellings, or two parts, each of which might be occupied and defended by a squad of infantry or a machine gun section, say.
Here is the
Cock and Bull Tavern, the local hostelry and purveyor of the finest brews and distillates, not to mention the produce of the regional grape harvest; but also serves up the fieriest stew and dumplings that settles in the stomach like a slab of concrete. If you think that's a load of cobblers' , you'd be close to the mark...
For this edifice has been constructed from a shoe box, painted yellow and the windows and doors drawn on. This thing can and will still function as a box.
The following pictures show a rather more ambitious example of Sideonian architecture - a cruciform dwelling, made from a rather smaller cereal packet. I added casement windows and other little details.
You will observe I wasn't overnice about 'accuracy' of construction or finishing.
This last is some kind of manufactory awaiting construction. Those two sheets of grey brick will provide the cladding for the walls of the shoe box. There will be inward and outward dispatch doors at either end, and somewhere a lean-to with smoke stacks. The stereotypical rip-saw roof will (I hope) create the illusion that this is a factory or foundry or something reasonably important to the local economy.
Since taking those photos yesterday, I added a bit more 'finish' to the cruciform place - extra windows with tile awnings. The cladding is also downloaded stonework pattern that I had intended as cobbled street. At that, I accidentally printed sheets in different scales. Can you tell?
Different angle. This thing was fun to build - and it's rather fun to try and imagine its interior layout. One suspects that the whole dwelling is about two feet sunk into the ground.
The next 4 pictures are of a column of Raesharn troops marching through a Kiivar village.
My acknowledgements and thanks go to 'Prufrock' and 'Tsold2100' - 83rd and 84th followers respectively of this Archduke Piccolo blogspot.
great stuff Ion. they look fantastic. shoe boxes are one of man-kinds great inventions! they have a million and one uses and are easy to get hold of. (especially when you wear through shoes like their made of chalk)
ReplyDeleteActually, Gowan, my daughter tended to be the source of shoe boxes. Now she's living in Oz... The shoe box buildings will be able to accommodate spare bits and pieces as well as performing their terrain function.
Deleteah... I'm the one who gets through shoes in this family. size 11 1/2 -> 12 feet and dispraxia (leading to an odd walking motion) means I have a tendency to kill shoes off.
DeleteWell... look at the upside! Plenty of building material (not to mention storage containers...).
DeleteBoy oh boy! Breakfast cereal and shoe box card buildings really takes me back to my early days in the hobby (early 1970s). These look really effective and aside from the effort involved in putting them together must be the cheapest source of terrain imaginable.
ReplyDeleteVery nicely done and they look really good.
All the best,
DC
Thanks, DC. I have a few home-built buildings for my more usual 1/72 or 20-25mm scale stuff. The four larger buildings you see here took maybe three or four evenings whilst watching TV.
DeleteGood work here Ion, they look the business. Al should make some of these up as he is short of buildings at present.
ReplyDeleteThese buildings are overscale for 25mm or 1/72 scale figures. What scale does Al use? They might be OK for 28mm to 40mm. For something nearer the 1/72 scale check out this article from 18 months ago:
ReplyDeletehttp://archdukepiccolo.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/diy-terrain.html
Mixed with a Railway model and a plastic single storey place, are two of my own. The grey place was made using brick patterned card often used to make railway tunnel entrances. The other is the good old cornflake packet with the ground floor brick card left over from making stone walls. That building did take me a long time on account of cutting out and fitting the black timbering. It could have been drawn on much more quickly, but I wanted the 3D effect.
Great stuff Ion. I do like the home built brand. The roof colour is wonderful!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if Rowney still makes this stuff - or even if Rowney still exist. The Colour is 'Burnt Sienna', which is about as good a terracotta colour as you could get. Mixed with a little water you can get a sort of textured effect.
DeleteNice work! Are those pantile roofs made from peeled corregated cardboard, drinking straws or something else? Good work on getting the various papers and materials to all fit together so seamlessly. Mine tend to look like a 5 year old had been sub-contracted.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ross. I didn't make a huge effort to marry up the patterns - which were fairly irregular anyway. Maybe that's the trick. I've begun on the factory with a much more regular pattern and made an obvious glitch there - not that all that fussed!
DeleteThe pantiles are from 'peeled' corrugated cardboard, though in fact it was masked(?)/backed(?) only on one side anyhow. I removed the backing only for the tiling over the small windows. I did use drinking straw for the ridge tiles on one of the buildings though.
The brickwork Looks Really effective
ReplyDeleteCheers, Paul. As time goes by I download any kind of brick, stone or cobble pattern that I encounter in the course of my internet travels. I can play around with scale and colour as the fancy takes me. Reproduced on my excellent inkjet printer it ends up as buildings, walling for gardens and fields and paving. Very versatile.
DeleteNot to say cheap.
Truly inspired by this one Ion. I have a bunch of 54mm ish zombies that my son wants to play with. We've used shoe boxes in the past and it seems like this would be the way to go to make it more "realistic", as my son likes to say. I'll be looking at your old 1/72 post as well as I seem stuck on that too.
ReplyDeleteHi Sean -
DeleteI recall the very first buildings I made - lightweight white card, smallish scale (for our Airfix ACW armies) the only colour being the terracotta coloured roofs (the same tin of powder colour I've been using this week), and with doors and windows drawn on. Quite effective and functional.
The 'Cock & Bull' tavern was made from a small shoebox - probably from when my daughter was very small. It has been used as a spares box until now. The factory, now under construction, is from a much larger shoe-box. Having done the roof, using the box lid as a basis, I find that this alone would look OK as a factory in 1/87 or 1/72 scale (a little underscale for the latter, but not noticeably so.
Shoeboxes can hust as well be made into flat topped CBD buildings for World War Z type games. You could just about stack them, glueing the top of one lid onto the bottom of the box above. Depending on the size of the boxes, each could represent one or two storeys. As the lids remain unglued to their parent boxes the whole edifice can be used for storage. or for that matter, interiors for urban fighting.
You could clad the whole thing in brick paper, or simply paint it with spare house paint or something. The yellow walls of the Cock and Bull are painted with some left over wall-paint being used for my daughter's room.
Cheers,
Ion
Great buildings!
ReplyDeleteCheers Chris.
DeleteIon,
ReplyDeleteI think you should now call it Ion's world as you have added so much value to it you should take credit for it.
Cheers
Paul
For some reason, Paul, this message got spammed. I've only just found it. I retain the 'Jono's World' appellation because I kind of like it - it's not merely an acknowledgement of its creator. I've always thought of it as 'Jono's World' rather than Sideon IV, and it's hard to shake the habit.
DeleteCheers,
Ion