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Fantastic project, really enjoying it

You could try painting it again, but on a piece of transparent plastic and with thin paint. That might look really hologramy

Thanks Kid_Kyoto. Good to hear.

Thanks Cam'. I see (about the watch); Sadly, like the stadium, there is not enough room for a 1:1 watch, and for something like that it'd be best to have an infrastructure built around the watch to show that it's supposed to be there, and that takes even more room.

Camkierhi wrote:... to indicate it is a hologram...

weetyskemian44 wrote:... That might look really hologramy

It's interesting that you both mention it being a hologram. I've always see the one in Bladerunner as more like a tv screen (possibly made from many lights on the side of a building), rather than a transparent, floating hologram thing...

I do have plans to cut down the piece of plastic it's painted on; the side that the tweezers are holding is not square.
And I may cut down the top edge too so it's closer to the top of the eyes, as seen in the reference picture.

With that, I did think of adding light points around the edge, and maybe some kind of framework to make it look more billboard-y (or tv screen-y) and less a single flat piece of plastic that's been painted.

Cam' - It's possible I could add some osl effects, I had planned to add quite a bit of this about the place. But the city has gone more towards a daylight setting (pretty much from the point that I painted a blue sky on the skyscraper), so too much "glow" would not look right.
I have less "important" places planned where I can test osl, and if it works I can use it here.

Weety - The problem with making it transparent is how to deal with the fade to black, and it would probably need a different way of painting the face to what I did here (base in dark brown and build up to highlights through "skin", cream and white and adding details with black.
And I wouldn't be able to tidy up the edge of the face with black.
And the added problem may be of how to deal with the rear side of the "hologram" that is slightly visible with it being mounted at an angle on a cylinder (rather than flat against a flat building).
I may give it a go before deciding, but I had to work myself up to this one, and it looked horrible up until I took the above photo.
This is really at the very limit of my 2D painting skills; faces are hard enough with the uncanny valley, but this is small enough to fit on my little finger's nail...

Still, there's plenty of time to decide and to collect more ideas and opinions.
To save you going back a page, here's what we are discussing:

Does this...:


... Look enough like the advert board from this:

I would say yes it does... it even looks slightly like a little meme.

Just needs a pill to make you happy aces mate

Thanks Comrade and Graven'.

In the mean time, the building continues.
These may look like tiny buildings, but in scale they are still pretty large, multi-floor apartment blocks.
And a clock tower.


And I finally got around to the motorway service station.
The billboard on top is not painted yet (obviously), and yes I know it's pointing off into the hills, but hills need advertising to too...
And to avoid traffic problems on the bypass (gotta build bypasses ), it needed a bridge to get over the oncoming traffic.


Onwards...

I got the movie reference! If possible I love this even more now.

Thanks Gits'.

I've now got all the little buildings into this area and the roads painted in.
There are some green areas to add and, of course, the buildings need painting.

The purpose of this area is to show the scale of the skyscrapers, so these go right down to terraced houses.
Those are made from either parts of the corrugated plasticard that was used for the "main" skyscraper, or from a piece of plastic that I've cut the rooves into.
The rest are mainly pieces of sprue and/or plasticard, cut to size.

You are a very special kind of crazy.

Smaller buildings really do put things into perspective.

inmygravenimage wrote:You are a very special kind of crazy.

Nah, crazy would be attempting to add blended shading to these buildings.

I managed basic layered shading on many of them.

Gitsplitta wrote:Smaller buildings really do put things into perspective.

Good good. I've not yet calculated what scale I could call this yet, although it's not all consistent.

I've now painted this neighbourhood (and gone nearly cross-eyed in the process):


And white picket fences, just for Camkierhi.

See, now all I can imagine is Mr Burns and his plan to block out the sun...
Tiny houses are just too cute! Fab stuff.

Whatever you do, don't picture Ned Flanders in his aerodynamic ski suit. It's like he's wearing nothing at all...

Progressing nicely. Going to put a shantytown on the hillside? ( such things tend to end up on hillsides for some reason.) With the Rio De Janeiro Olympics coming you be able to see a world class shantytown. ALthough the Brazilians call them Favelas.

inmygravenimage wrote:See, now all I can imagine is Mr Burns and his plan to block out the sun...
Tiny houses are just too cute! Fab stuff.

Exxxxxxxcellent. Thanks Graven.

Red Harvest wrote:Whatever you do, don't picture Ned Flanders in his aerodynamic ski suit. It's like he's wearing nothing at all...

Exxxxxc....Ergh.

Progressing nicely. Going to put a shantytown on the hillside? ( such things tend to end up on hillsides for some reason.) With the Rio De Janeiro Olympics coming you be able to see a world class shantytown. ALthough the Brazilians call them Favelas.

There will be something up on the hills (apart from trees).
Thanks.

The "twins" are now on at the front, and I've built the other bridge.

Went more low-key with this bridge. Thought about something like tower bridge, with the raise-able road, but didn't want something too "busy" here as the harbour next to it could go either way, and with the harbour out front there's no need for large boats to go up the river to nowhere.

See this as the traditional, old, original bridge for the city to contrast with the newer, fancy bridge up-river.


Next, I think I'll work on the factories on the left. They've been partly built and unpainted for long enough.

The smallest big city ever! it is amazing the work at that scale you are doing!

Thanks Shas'.

I've been working on the smaller factory, but first I had to sort out the grass, paths, roads and car parks.
And the road markings and cars.

And I started deciding on what the coastline will look like.

I'm also pretty pleased with the item I chose for the factory building (brown one).


There won't be any progress before Sunday as I'm off for a couple of beers with friends in nodnoL.

Enjoy your beers. Go see the Sensational Reverse Brothers gas tower / factories ace.

Thanks Graven.
Unfortunately the Reverse Brothers weren't on; something about a fight.

The second factory is painted, and I've added the fence/walls around both factories.
Factories being factories they are not very excitingly painted, and hopefully that contrasts with the bright glitz and glamour of the city skyscrapers.


Next job with either be the forest etc. at the back, or the oft-mentioned harbour at the front... Will have to see how I feel tomorrow.

Very much approve of the white picket fence. All looking amazing. Insane level of detail. Factories fit nicely. Great work.

Good good, Thanks Cam'.

And the forest it is...

This shows the highly technical method for producing trees at this scale;
tear off a piece of foam,
dip in green paint,
let dry,
glue on...


The final shot there shows how much (little) of these will be visible once the city is positioned in it's case.

This is only the base coat of green. They will get a variety of highlight tones, and there will be a few gaps in the trees to show the ground etc...
And there will be a few free-standing trees added in more prominent places.

More trees!
And a little hut in a small clearing.

Painted the ground/hill/mountain, but the trees still need highlights etc.


Tree painting and planning the harbour is next.
But first, I'm off for a bit more drinking for the weekend. See you Sunday.

CD city is looking awesome!

Took me a minute to spot the tiny hut of tiny. Truly awesome.

It's really coming together now. Im particularly impressed by the reflective look on that sky scraper. Apart from the sea its looking nearly ready.

Are you going to do anything special on the underside of the case lid?

This really reminds me of watching a city grow in Civilization.

Great job with all the little vehicles!

This is becoming a truly breathtaking technical masterpiece. It's the scale that is mind blowing, the cars can't be more than dots yet you put even smaller dots for headlights! Your insane!

Interested to see what you come up with for the ocean.

Amazing

Back again, work has commenced, and I need to catch up on blogs...
But first...

Thanks Shas'.
Thanks Graven. Yeah, it's not meant to be easy to see. I'm hoping this to be an art piece that has many things that you can spot the longer you look.
Thanks Weety. Yep, the skyscraper has worked out well. Hopefully that will continue when I add the "sky". Water is being planned (see below), and there will be a few added details here and there towards the end, as usual.

Gitsplitta wrote:Are you going to do anything special on the underside of the case lid?

There are plans, yes. The clearer (I'm going to have one more go at making it clear, but may have to settle for "clearer") parts will have some clouds added; so they look as if they are hanging in the sky above the city. The non-clear area, behind the hill, will be painted up to show more hills going off into the distance... is the plan (this will be difficult as the lid is very much attached and immovable, and being at an angle will require perspective-painting on an angle).
These are all jobs I'm putting off for the time being as they are all make-or-break items.

Thanks Brian.

Thanks Cam'. The scale is the interesting part of this project; it's really pushing the limits of what can and can't be built in a model. A very good learning experience, I would recommend this kind of thing for any scratch-builder that worries about making everything for a scale model, it forces you to accept that some things just can't be done.
Without the headlights for the cars they just don't stand out on the roads.
I'm now at the stage that I have to come up with what I'm going to do for water, so we'll all find out soon.

Thanks Llamahead.

Progress for this week (mostly just today):
The trees have been highlighted in 4 different shades; I say this because, as usual, it's not very obvious
I built the harbour, including a protective wall, two small jetties and a larger jetty with an overhanging crane.
You will also spot that I've installed the big-giant-head advert board. There's still some more to do about this, but it's now attached.


With the jetties of the harbour in I can now add water (as they are supposed to be IN the water, and boats and things are ON the water).
I have an idea of how deep the water needs to be in certain areas about the model, but I don't know if these are actually of the same height as it is built.

I don't currently know how I'm going to achieve the water. I have a few things that I'm going to experiment with and see what sort of water I can come up with. Again, due to the scale, things are different to what is "usual", it's got to be blue enough, not too clear, give a sense of depth, and show the river to sea (which may or may not be important, research is the next step).

First, get an idea of what I need to replicate.
Second, find a mixture of paint, glue, varnish, etc. that will achieve the effect.
Third, Add to model...

For water at that scale consider gloss heavy or super heavy gel medium for "sculpting" and a glazing medium (gloss) for other effects. You can "float" colors in the glazing medium, which is a nice way to give the illusion of depth.