More on Jono's World...

It is amazing sometimes how, in the middle of a project, it begins to accumulate stuff almost of its own accord.

 To begin with: a couple of vehicles and a little something else from 'A fist full of plastic' Brian.  Over-scale for his own projects, they are slightly under-scale for mine - which means, of course, they are just right.  The TEXACO label has to come off, as you'd expect, and the vehicles will be painted some sort of military colour-

 I was thinking of putting a tilt on the flat-bed truck and removing or disguising the crane.  I've changed my mind.  It will be left as is, a supply vehicle, with the crane handily in place.  Very inventive, these Raesharn. The dozer blade will most likely be attached to a cardboard scratchbuilt bulldozer, and attached to an Engineer platoon.

 Meanwhile, the search has been ongoing for aircraft.  I thought the Disney 'Planes' merchandising might supply suitable war birds, but what I have been able to find in that line are too small.  However, I did find these.

Made in China (isn't everything these days?), they are obviously modelled  on the WW2 Spitfire, and come as simple kits in about 1:72 scale.  About 10 pieces, including a 'friction' motor, clip together, and a small screw holds the motor in place and the whole kit together.  The thing comes with its own little (Phillips) screwdriver as well (I now have 4 of these).  The colours are the tan and green and the green and yellow as shown above. There are no decals. Still, at $4 the time, they seem to me a snip.

A Flight from 147 "Pandion" Squadron.

 These are toys, but with a certain something.  I painted the spinners and rudders red, added the White on red roundels (still tossing up whether to add a sable device within the white circle), and the numbers on the fuselage.  Mathematicians among you might discern a pattern in the numbering.

147 Sqn again.  The near aircraft obviously slipped
through the Chinese quality control.

 To outline the details I washed overall with Nuln Oil, wiping off the surplus before it dried.  Although it adds a grimy effect to the whole, methought that it gave the aircraft more character somehow.

A flight from 63 "Falco" Fighter Squadron.

In certain cases, Flights will stand in for  entire Squadrons.

The green guys I haven't outlined, though I probably will around the yellow patches.  I find the added red and white details - though simply painted on - have a very handsome effect on these green aircraft.

This is the packaging the aircraft came in.
 You can see that at age 62, I fall very much
 within the target demographic
 for this product.

 On a whole different level, friend Brian also shoveled my way some magazines.    The Military Modelling ones I already had, but I'm glad he did, for, flicking through one of them, I found this (see infra): 

Beaver Bug Light Armoured Cars under production.

 Scanning the page onto a picture file, I resized the thing from 1:35 scale to 1:48 and printed it to provide a template for the parts shown.  Five little Beaver Bug armoured cars are now in production for the Army of Kiivar.  Most will be armed with a light cannon and a co-axial machine gun. At least one will have twin-MGs instead, I think.

The Navies of Sideon IV

Reorganising and relocating my stuff, I've rehoused my Jono's World navies into one box.  At the top is the exiguous Kiivar Navy; in the middle the colourful Navy of Saabia; and the sinister yellow and dark grey belong to the Raesharn Imperial Kriegsmarine.  At the top right hand corner are landing craft, a few aeroplanes, and several merchant vessels.

An example of the kind of foliage that one finds on Sideon IV,
especially in the regions of Kiivar and Omez.

 On a more general note, here's a box of Jono's World trees, hacked from an abandoned artificial Christmas tree.  I was originally cutting them off a stalk at a time, but I have discovered that with a bit of effort I can cut them nearer the stem for larger trees with actual branches.  

A generic pond, lake or mere.
Not specifically designed for the Jono's World project,
I thought a pic appropriate anyhow...

Ecclesiastica

Continuing to build some sort of infrastructure for the 'Jono's World' project, one needs of course a place of worship.  The limits to my imagination and constrictions imposed by modelling skills that will carry me so far and no farther, led to to construct this ecclesiatical edifice - rather more Western in style than I would have preferred.  Never mind.

 As usual the construction is from cereal packet and stonework pattern printed on paper.

Showing the 'lift-off-able' roof  and 'storage space'.
A real church would not, of course, have that partition
down the middle.  The boxes kept their fourth sides
 simply to add strength to the whole construction

The thing was simply constructed from the bottom parts of two cereal boxes glued side by side.  One was cut in such a way to allow for the addition of the corner tower.

The stone pattern you might have seen before in earlier articles on this subject.  However, this time I altered the colour, giving it a more yellowish tinge before printing.  The doors and windows were made from what was left of the cereal packets and simply glued on.  The doors are 'self coloured', that is to say, I cut them out from bits of box that were a solid red colour, and then glued a door frame over it to give a 3D effect.  I drew on the black lines to suggest timber doors.  Not sure yet what to do (if anything) about door handles. Door and window frames were painted white.

I made the roof lift-off-able so that the interior of the thing could be used to house a garrison (not important) and to provide storage space for figures or models (very much a consideration).   This is actually quite a large building model, with a 'footprint' of 23cm x 17 (not counting the 'buttresses'), and a height of 17cm.   Note that the thing is designed with function very much in mind as much as form.

At this point I reckon the other constructions I have in mind for this project - Town Admin/CBD block, Aircraft hangar, Airfield control tower, and maybe some further vaguely 'Industrial Wasteland' type impedimenta - can wait a little.  All I have to do is wait until the weather improves for these to be taken outside and the war to begin...

Infrastructure...

A couple more buildings for the Jono's World project.

I needs a railway station... The usual materials: cereal box
and laundry wash packet.  I use the natural dimensions of both...

The laundry wash pack has a double layer of cardboard.
The interior on becomes a 'floor' through from the
street-side entrance to the platform.
The platform is made deliberately short to minimize
the 'footprint' whilst retaining the right sort of look.

The whole clad in brick, stone block and paving,
downloaded from various internet sources and printed out
 on paper.  

The overall effect is a little rustic, but I rather like that.
The windows were simply drawn on cardboard,
 cut out and glued onto the brickwork.

H'mmm... still a little bit of work needed...

A small barn, or grain storage facility,
 used also to store a couple of tanks.

As requested, photographed with 45mm figures to
illustrate the size of the buildings.

A comparison with a couple of HaT Austrian Grenzers.

A view from a different angle.
Since these pics were taken, window sills
and barge boards were added to the station, giving it a much tidier look.

The barn has also received more timbering, painted dark brown,
as you will see in the subsequent pics.

The town of Dohremi - or maybe it's Miredoh - somewhere in
Kiivar.  The railway is HO/OO scale - much too narrow a gauge
 (I feel) for the size of buildings here. 

A couple of vintage cars I bought last century
 that will no doubt be pressed into service as staff cars
 for the Raesharn and Kiivar military.

A locomotive I found in an odds and ends shop, rather larger
than HO/OO scale, though still underscale for the size of
buildings.   It will do, however, if I can supply similarly
scaled coal tender and rolling stock...

 Acknowledgement:
Thanks to Mike of Mike's Wargaming Blog for following this blogspot - the 86th to do so.  As is my wont these days, I have a look at what new followers have been doing.  I think Mikemight be another who likes to construct his own terrain features.

Cogg, Sprockett & Splyne (Kiivar) Proprietary Limited.

Almost finished: the factory building for my 'Army Men' project that I have been calling 'Jono's World'.  I don't know what the factory makes, but it seems that Horatio Cogg, William Sprockett and Abraham Splyne hold several patents in their home country for machining machinery.  The Kiivar Branch has been established, of course, for tax avoidance purposes...

As the thing is a shoe box clad in brick paper and roofed with corrugated cardboard, I could have called the firm Fibb and Lye Cobblers Ltd, or Shoehorn, Last and Sole Co.

Early in the construction.  Brick cladding yet to be completed.
Windows for natural lighting drawn on card strips and glued on
before the roofing.

Another view.  The corrugated card will not this time be drawn
as pantiles, left as unpainted or maybe painted dark grey or near black.

The shoe box lid built up into the factory roof.
 It comes very close to being  large (high)
 enough  for 1:72 scale  war games.

The factory very near completion.  my original smoke stack
looked too short and spindly, so I remade it.
The stack and burner lean-to was left unglued to the main
building.

Factory front with inwards and outwards loading doors.
I had intended a raised loading dock, with the doors
accordingly raised from ground level.  But I forgot.

The view of the other side.
The hinges have been added to the double doors because I'm quirky.
I'll probably add a loading dock with a ramp down to ground level

The building disassembled.   The space inside is available
for storage of figures or terrain pieces.

Another view of the disassembled factory.
The corrugated cardboard is what I have been using
 for roofing my Sideon IV buildings.

Acknowledgement:

My thanks to 'Maj. Guiscard', Governor General of Sector Six, as the 85th follower of this blog.

The Maj. Guiscard has developed a fantasy world peopled with some strange but engaging personalities, including the eponymous Major.  I recommend a visit to this place.

Sideonian Architecture...

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.