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Should be cool. I like this.

This stuff looks really good.

I am going to shamelessly copy your work here to make some of my own. If I can get it 1/2 as good I would be happy with it.

Wow! You're getting great results there man. Very Inspiring!

*mutter* Copy *mutter* *mutter* Name as own work *mutter**mutter*

I did a rough paintjob on the 3rd section & put some "water" on it. Rather than use "Water Effects", I bought some polyeurethane gloss varnish (for 1/4 the price). It looked good on some small test pieces, so we'll see how it turns out on the terrain.

Look forward to seeing pics after it's dry

First of all, I LOVE the article and will likely take bits of it to make buildings, that is, not a full cityscape YET.

While reading your article I had a pretty good idea how you could do a large building which isn't demolished... This is merely theory and hasn't been practiced.

If you took 1/2 inch foam insulation and crafted the floor and four walls as you wanted, that is, 4" tall with 1 1/2" windows ect... and kept the entire floor whole. Then, in lieu of toothpicks, use bamboo kebob skewers cut down to about 3 inches. Place a skewer at each corner of the structure wall.

Then, build another floor the same size as the first. The idea is you can then stack the individual floors and the skewers at the four corners of the structure will help anchor the floors together so there's no accidental tipping of the buildings.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how to integrate the technique for a smaller-scale rural environemnt. The biggest issue is how to transition from ground to building without it looking out of place.

2000 Volts wrote:*Great idea for stackable buildings*

Thanks for the compliment, and I like your idea. A friend and I have discussed similar concepts for building a stackable building (I usually fall back to magnets being the ultimate modelling cure all & the discussion falters...). I like the idea for skewers, but my concern would be for the durability of the foam around the hole (might tend to crumble & crack). Maybe if the hole was lined with a thin coating of Gorilla glue or something... Along those lines, though, I've worked up a quick sketch below for a variant of that idea: what if inside each corner of the building, you glued a section of narrow PVC pipe. In the top of the pipe, you could glue a piece of dowel rod that could be inserted into the PVC of the piece stacked on top of it (or even reversed, with the dowels on the bottom to insert into the PVC below).

I think your idea would work great. I don't remember tho what the smallest guage of PVC pipe is you can get at the store. The smallest I've worked with is 1/2 inch but remember that's the bore size not the actuall pipe. If there's even smaller it would be great.

I'll keep on the idea myself. Actually, I'm going out today to pick up some materials and I'll look at what hte options are. The biggest PIA on that project would be cutting four... wait... stop that thought.

If you had one dowel to run the entire building (which would make it more laborous to remove individual floors {unless said dowel could simply be extracted before removing floors and easily removed}) then you actually odn't need to worry about the pvc sections running the entire height of the floor, only a small bit of tube will do.

By the way, congratulations on the baby. I've found since my daughters were born I've had a lot MORE time to model and such. Mostly by merit of the fact I can't leave the house these days.

Have fun and remember: A DVD player in the car will be your best friend. As soon as she turns 9 motnhs old BUY ONE!!!! Seriously. I know people frown on TV being a babysitter but when the child is stuck in a car seat for any length of time they tend to get mad.. aUnless they have that magic TV playing their favorite Elmo's World.

how did you do the paint????

2000 Volts wrote:If you had one dowel to run the entire building (which would make it more laborous to remove individual floors {unless said dowel could simply be extracted before removing floors and easily removed}) then you actually odn't need to worry about the pvc sections running the entire height of the floor, only a small bit of tube will do.

That might work even better. It'd be easier to transport & store, too.

2000 Volts wrote:A DVD player in the car will be your best friend.

I've heard this from a few people. It's something I'll definitely need to consider- just no @#&% Hanna Montana...

ricekake87 wrote:how did you do the paint????

All drybrushing. I basecoat the section with H2O (foam safe spray), then a flat black cheapo primer over that(for a rougher texture), then I do a heavy drybrush of whatever color I want the building (usually a dark grey). I use cheap acrylic paints that I get from a craft shop (they look good & are 1/10 the price of mini paints). I use a paper plate as a palette and a 2" or 3"(depending on the sixe of the building) house painting brush with the softest bristles I can find. After the 1st drybrush, I do a light drybrush for highlights.
I used a similar method for the water above, but with green. To give it a less "painted" look on the smooth bottoms of the vats, I pushed the brush straight down to create more of a stipling effect.
I doesn't hold up to miniature painting standards, but it looks real good as terrain.

YOu won't have to deal with Hannah Montana for about 10 years and by then it'll be some new obnoxious girly show. For now you'll be going crazy with the obnoxious yet catchy tunes of Elmo's World and the it's *gasp* Dora the Explora. It's sad, I find myself singing dora songs quite a bit now even when I'm not around my girls (one is 3 and the other is 9 months).

Bravo, good sir.

Very simple but very cool, I am favoriting this post.

Bravo.

Over 48hrs later and the gloss varnish is still not quite dry. Where it is dry, however, it looks good. Pics below show progress so far. Weird problem I hadn't anticipated, though- in the last picture below, notice the reddish line under the varnish. This is where I drew a red reference line with marker on the foam before I started construction- the varnish somehow pulled it out from under the primer. Not a big problem, but definitely something I'll be careful of in the future.

Wow, simple yet visually, very effective.

The water may still be wet (& white), but I couldn't resist getting some pictures of all 3 sections together. I fit them in a few different arrangements and took some pics for your perusal. I plan on doing some more painting on the board (specifically, getting the "roads" to look about the same shade of black- as you can see, each section has a slightly different color & sheen).

Also, I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone who's followed & encouraged me through this process- all the wonderful feedback really helped keep me motivated to finish this project. While I'm far from done with "Luigiopolis", I've reached my goal of 3 board sections before the baby with time to spare (maybe now I can get my Greensteela Kult finished )

Beautiful work, sir.... I see much potential here, particularly with some foamcore work....



Consider your techniques stolen by yet another fan of your work here.

LuigiX: I bought the same foam cutter at a local craft store and when I turned it on it totally melted its own casing then didn't work at all. Did you have a similar problem?

unclehomefries wrote:LuigiX: I bought the same foam cutter at a local craft store and when I turned it on it totally melted its own casing then didn't work at all. Did you have a similar problem?

No, I've never seen that. I'm on my second (the first I broke the wire on because I was putting waaay too much pressure on it), and I've never had anything similar happen. Sounds like you got a defective model- I'd take it back. Maybe they screwed up the wiring during manufacture. That's a pretty severe(and potentially dangerous) flaw- makes me want to ramp up my safety precautions when using mine.

Dig the work man, kudos. I've always hated having to cut foam, impossible to get good clean shapes with heat or razor. I like the liquid effects going on, my next project involves industrial ruins-I'll have to remember that varnish technique.

Awesome stuff, very inspirational!

This is seriously, seriously awesome. I am new to the hobby really and want to get started on some of this terrain in the next couple of days. I just have one question before i get started, would a soldering iron work as well for cutting the foam?

forgive me if im being stupid

I don't know, I've never tried with a soldering iron- my fear would be that it may get too hot & burn the foam. I'd try it out on a scrap piece first, just to make sure it doesn't destroy a good piece of terrain. Keep in mind that the fumes from burning foam can be VERY harmful- you don't want to breath that in, so work outside or in a well ventilated area.

Im thinking if i attach a short length of copper wire to the end of the soldering iron, that should keep things a bit safer - just have to try it and see i guess....point taken though i will try it outside first!

I wouldn't suggest using a soldering iron. It gets too hot and is a very massive heat source. Generally a foam cutter has a very thin wire which can heat up and recover very quickly. I've got this foam knife which is huge, it requires a lot of power to get hot and it becomes very hot (stop top hot). It melts more than it cuts.

Well, my wife had the baby last week, so diaper changes and sleep deprivation have put all current projects on hold. I did manage to get a picture(low quaity though it may be) of the dried water in my algae choked canal. I'm happy with the look of the gloss varnish, but definitely a warning: in a few places where it was poured thick, it shrunk a bit & left cracks when fully dried. Fortunately, they are in hard to see locations on this board, but in the future I will be sure to pour very thin layers and let them each dry for at least 4 days before pouring another on top.

Well that is a nice little bundle of I am going to give daddy grey hair when I turn 18. You know girls are punishment for us being men.

Great looking terrain, and the baby kit came together quite well it seems!

One little niggle/suggestion about your buildings: a little ledge at the bottom of each window would go a long way to making the buildings look more real. Either just a little strip of card board glued under each window or a strip going the whole way around would add some of the detail one usually sees in buildings and add a little visual interest.
Also, there are some nice textured spray paints one can get now in a variety of stone colors that have worked well for me in the past. Those might be nice to put over your glossy primer to help grab a dry brush.

The baby look as thought he is swearing lol any back on topic do you have any measurements for your buildings or even for the whole thing would be good.

sonofruss wrote:Well that is a nice little bundle of I am going to give daddy grey hair when I turn 18. You know girls are punishment for us being men.

QFT (I've got 3 she-grots of my own, but my 2 boys are DEFINATELY easier to work with !)

On topic : Nice work, though I agree sills would add to the look of some of the windows. I'm liking the algae choked water-way tho