Thursday 12 January 2012

Building the city of the future (or past, or present...)

To keep up with the resolutions I listed in my last blog post, I need to keep blogging, make more terrain, and work towards a "Triples ready" version of Flashbang, amongst other things. So, to that end, my target for January is to paint my two Sarissa Precision buildings. I'll still have more work to do on them after this, but getting them painted is the first stage.

As we're almost halfway through January already I've got these underway, so let's have a look at what I've done so far.

I started by laying out all of the interior walls, then I used the paints that Andy had mixed for me to paint them and add two layers of drybrushed highlights. This took a long time but was very easy, so I was able to watch a couple of films while doing it...

The walls laid out

Walls with a basecoat


This picture shows the levels of highlight I used - the basecoat is at the front, with the two layers of highlight behind.

Having done the external walls, I moved onto the windows - using a basecoat of grey followed by a white drybrush.
Grey basecoated windows

Windows with white drybrushing

The internal walls with the windows painted were then glued into place on the external walls, and the overall effect looks pretty nice (even though it's ruined here by me lazily using my phone to take the pictures).


The residential building
Since I'm lazy, and i wanted a textured but even effect for the flat roofs, I used black sandpaper cut to size and then glued down. I'll need to go around the edges to fill those in, but I like the look of these. I've also begun painting the outsides of the floors to finish off the wall exteriors - for some reason two coats of paint are needed on the cut edges, even though a single layer seems to work ok on the flat sides.


The "bank"


I still need to do the interiors - I'm not sure what colours to use, because I want to keep the buildings appropriate for as many time periods as possible. This is actually going to cause a problem with flooring - a modern carpet will look out of place in the interwar period! Worrying about this too much is going to lead to madness though, so I think I'll just go for a modern look (to suit Flashbang) and pretend it isn't a problem for other times (which will probably be focused outside the buildings anyway).

I've got some ideas on how to make the outside looks of the buildings fit different games, but I'm saving those for another day...

8 comments:

  1. Thanks, and well done for finding and commenting on this post before I'd even written it :)

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  2. That's remarkably effective! I feel inspired to have a look at doing something like this myself when I've got the space.

    I take it your different periods ideas include street furniture? Have a look at some of the stuff Armorcast do - Victorian lamp posts, US mail boxes, etc.

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    1. Probably will at some point, but I'll focus on the buildings themselves in the first instance I think.

      I'm likely to get at least one or two more of these buildings as well, but yes I have plans for period-appropriate extra bits and pieces as I go along.

      Also, I've noticed that the buildings around WFC's new home look pretty similar to these in style, so I'll be looking there for inspiration!

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  3. I've changed templates now, that looks better!

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  4. Nice bud. I remember always seeing this stuff as a kid and wanting it but never having the money. Now I do its a bit small for 40k :(

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    1. Eh? It's 28mm scale, would be ideal for 40k (in fact they've just added some very nice looking modular sci fi bits to the Sarissa Precision website).

      They're lasercut buildings, were those around when you were a kid?

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  5. Wow, these look amazing! Are these the same ones as featured in Kieron's latest battle report?

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    1. Thanks! Indeed they are. More work to be done on them, mostly on the insides, and I want to get more of them too...

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