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Thanks Graven'. Yeah, I was sorely tempted to do the windows 3D, but thought that I'd manage it with paint. Good to see I was right.
Just a layer of gunmetal as 2 sets of parallel lines and then broken (or dashed) black lines to shade them and make them more uniform in thickness.

Thanks T'Horde. Maybe I overestimated the Noisy Cricket's notoriety, I thought everyone and their dog would recognise it from the profile. *shrugs*
You could, and probably have, google'd it but see below for a film still for the cricket in context.

No worries Gits'. We've all done it. I frequently read a blog's progress and then pause and scroll up to see who it is that has actually done the work.
Thanks.

Noisy Cricket is now smoothed, primed and blacked.

I used a different shot from the film to guess the scale and then fit it to my hand.
Unless Will Smith has extremely large hands this should be close enough to the "real" thing, and I can hold it comfortably enough.
It's less than 4" long, and that's from the back of the "hammer" to the tip of that extended tip...
The grip doesn't reach back to my thumb and instead rests on the "base" (there's probably an official term for it) of my index finger.

Bard's tower now with finished smoke effects.

Just Bard himself to paint.

19 days to go. Feeling better about getting it all done now.

Noisy cricket always reminds me of the piercing/tag gun we used at Builders Square to price the rugs, almost identical shape. You’ve done a great job making it to match the photo.

Bard is looking desperate at the top of that tower. Maybe he should have played nicer with the locals .

Wait.

WAIT.

WAIT.

WAIT.

DR H. IS CAM?!?!?!

--B.

Brilliant cricket build dude

Theophony wrote:Noisy cricket always reminds me of the piercing/tag gun we used at Builders Square to price the rugs, almost identical shape. You’ve done a great job making it to match the photo.

Knowing how many movie props are made, it's likely that one of those things may have at least donated parts to the original. Thanks.

Bard is looking desperate at the top of that tower. Maybe he should have played nicer with the locals .

It's not the locals that are causing Bard's issues, it's an entity called Smaug.
Much like people living in glass houses, throwing stones, if you live in wooden buildings on a lake, try not to anger the nearby dragon.

Hello Brian. *waves*

Thanks Boss Salvage.

Progress on Bard.
Browns and skin.
Blues and reds to do...


That's all for now.

Bard is done. Just need to tidy up around the base. But you'll all see that later.


The Cricket has had one layer of paint, more to come.
The earring box is nearing completion and the earrings are made and painted (just need varnish).
And the final present is in the planning stage.
2 weeks to go (although I'm "loosing" next weekend to booze)
Should be fine to get them done in time.

Apologies for the radio-silence. Weekend was lost to booze, and I've been trying to finish off the final present this week, so no time for posting updates.
I also fell behind on keeping up with all your blogs, but have caught up now, will try to comment tomorrow.

I did, however, remember to take wip photos and I can now share them to keep you all entertained until Christmas (final photos afterwards).

Final present is again something N-gauge (1:160 scale, ~10mm), but not particularly train related.
I dug through the box of buildings to see what grabbed me and found a bungalow and thought that would look nice with a garden and some added details inside.
These photos show the thing as-found, and the plan for the interior (mainly based on the window positions:

It was fairly solid and tidy, so no repairs were needed.
But a few sizeable windows meant an interior of some description was "needed".

Once decided on what room was what, I made a list of what should be in those rooms and set about making shapes from lumps of foamboard and added some card to clean up the open sides of those.
I then spent quite a bit of time seeing what would fit and what could be seen through the windows.
The garage was closed off, so that was to be left empty.
The bathroom's window was small and the curtains covered most of it, so that is also left empty.
The bedroom has some visibility, so minimal furnishing: bed, wardrobe and a "mirror" (painted on a wall).
Kitchen has a fair sized window and as the first build got quite a lot of things added: sink, fridge-freezer, cupboards, cooker, washing-machine and some over-the-head storage....
...but most of it is various rectangular cubes arranged next to each other...
and the living-room / dining room has a large window and many smaller ones. This got a couple of cupboards, sofa and comfy chair, dining table and chairs, and a tv.

First job was to create the interior walls and see what space was available.
I then build the kitchen as practice for how the create tiny cubes and to see what is visible through windows.
Then I build all the other furnishings.
And found some patterned things to use as carpet. Flat colours would be a bit boring so went a bit '70s with the decor.
Then I found out how to arrange the items within the confines of the house.


Stay tuned for installation and painting, next time...

I am messing about at that sort of scale as well at the moment and can really appreciate the effort here, brilliant.

I love the carpet

As always, your level of detail ASTOUNDS me.

I have seen, Cam'. Doing well yourself. Thanks.

Thanks Theo'. Was a handy piece of cloth I had laying about.

Thanks Graven'.

Painting the interior, I decided to keep to high-contrast to make sure things were visible through the windows.
Bright colours, black details. No need for shading and highlighting. (really, you'll see at the end that many things can barely be seen)

Once the interior was painted it was time to install the items into the house.
The comfy chairs(!) were glued to the base, as was the dining table (now with chairs in the shape of some bent card pieces).

The rest was glued into the house first and will be glued to the base as one item.

The base then got some grass (grass on paper and some flock) and concrete (card).


The exterior was painted,
Garden added (those are pieces of sponge, and some pieces of dried paint on the end of lengths of paintbrush bristle)
Fence built,
And a car pulled out of the collection. I was interested to see that they bothered to base it on a real car and name it on the bottom.


You'll see this finished, along with the other presents, after Christmas.

I'm now going to focus on recording footage for my next Fallout 4 settlement walkthroughl, as that is also finished.

Not long now. If I don't see you all before have a good Christmas, one and all.

Oh wow those houses look great, the interiors are awesome!

Nice indeed. Always fun to work in a variety of scales, eh?

And a Merry Christmas to you, Doc.

Great work Dr. H , I don’t know how you get all these gifts done. It inspired me to do some for my kids and I’m struggling.

Nice work on the house, seeing a car chopped up reminds me I need to work on Gaslands again at some point .

Very nice house Doc.

Merry Christmas bud, hope you have a great one.

Thanks CC.

Thanks Red'. Yeah, it's good to work at a variety of scales, mediums, materials, and themes. They all help each other too.

Thanks Theo'. It is the busiest I am all year, getting 4 projects done together. But I do start them in November and work on them in tandem (as one dries, cures, etc. I'll work on the next). It is stressful and tiring though.
The car didn't need cutting, the top and bottom are just press-fit, but in attempting to remove the windows (a solid lump of clear plastic, glued in) I did snap off the front of the car and had to fix that (plastic glue and some putty for strength).

Thanks Stormwall.

Thanks Cam'.

and yes, a Merry Christmas to you all. Hope it was pleasant, productive/relaxing and fruitful.

I did well this year,
Load of music: Bjork - utopia, Chase and Status - Brand New Machine, Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold, Jamiroquai - Automaton, Pendulum - Immersion, and The Prodigy - No Tourists.
Books: The rest of the Sin City graphic novels, Batman - The Killing Joke, and a couple of Stephen King books.
Some sweets, biscuits and chocolate.
And some new toys...

A box of Dremel accessories (12 unique things).
And a tool stand thing for the Dremel:


The main aim I wanted this for was for holding the Dremel still as I use it for sanding things flat, but it will prove useful for many other things together with all the new bits I have for sanding, polishing, cutting...
and I can use it to drill holes straight.

I'll be back later to show you all the finished Christmas presents, if someone would be so kind to interrupt the auto-append.

House looks good for neighborhood, or Nuclear Test target.

Dremel station looks sharp!

Great stuff DrH and a nice crimbo haul, I've been eyeing up the dremel stand for a while - just need to get a proper dremel first (I have a knock-off version bought from Woolies before they went belly up, but it's not very good...

That house is shouting out for some LED lights though - maybe next time?

Thanks Shas'.

Thanks Ruglud. This one states that it's compatible with most rotary tools, and lists;
Dremel,
Black & Decker RTX
WEN
Chicago Electric
DrillMaster
ToolSharp
MasterCraft
Milwaukee
Hitachi
"and more"

So long as you have a screw thread at the head of the tool, above and around the spinning bit (I'm full of technical terms), this stand has 2 rings to attach them (see the red thing in the 2nd photo); one with a thin thread and one with a coarser thread.

Yeah, maybe next time (if I have somewhere to put the battery).

Speaking of the house, here's the finished piece:

and some close-ups


This is the earring display

and matching earrings

Oh, I forgot to include a model for scale (and valid DDakka gallery privilege ) so these may disappear soon.

This is the finished Noisy Cricket


And finally, the finished Bard the Bowman piece.

high angles

Close-ups of Bard himself and the lighting differences


and as a special treat, a video showing the lighting in action.



I'm still working on the video for my next Fallout 4 settlment, but I'll let you know when that's done.
Thanks for sticking around.

 Dr H wrote:
...Load of music: Bjork - utopia, Chase and Status - Brand New Machine, Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold, Jamiroquai - Automaton, Pendulum - Immersion, and The Prodigy - No Tourists...

But, but, no Breunion Boys? Doc, U wuz cheated.

Gifts all look amazing bud, hopefully grateful recipients all round. certainly a great deal of love and effort put into them.

Red', I didn't notice how political those album titles looked together until you mentioned the "leave" thing (I think Brexit sounds more like a breakfast cereal than something as important as a country shooting themselves in the foot).
"Utopia" - what we hope to achieve (and will get the opposite),
"Brand new machine" (working as well as a well oiled machine...without oil),
"Concrete and gold" - If we can hold on to it all.
"Automoton" - would work better in the gov'nt.
"Immersion" - only one that doesn't immediately fit the theme, insert something about being immersed in water... or sinking...
"No tourists" - all those horrible foreigners that have been ruining the country...not.

No, I'm only interested in music I like (I try to avoid labelling music as "good" or "bad", it's a matter of taste). Any hidden meanings are purely coincidental.
I'm now 4 short of 500 CDs. Will have to make those 4 extra iconic / classic / "good" to celebrate.

Thanks Cam'. All well received indeed.

Fallout 4 settlement video edited and rendered. Will try to upload tomorrow.

Walkthrough video is up, and I got the blueprint done too.

This settlement is first found as a greenhouse inhabited by gardening robots.
Therefore I decided to keep it all robots and build a factory to produce more robots.
Stuff goes in (armour, weapons, raiders...), junk is produced, junk can be used to build more robots...

However, I wanted it to look really busy, so I have conveyor belts running all over the place and there's switches and wires all over the place, and if you leave it running long enough there's junk all over the place.

You can watch me walk about the settlement here:



Or you can download the blueprint and add it to your own game and walk around it yourself (only for PC, via the Nexus and "Transfer Settlements"):
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/36662

Thanks and have a good new year if I don't see you before.

I wasn't trying for the political. I just thought the idea of a band called "Breunion Boys" to be silly. Since I had just read about it, and saw your post about music, I saw an opportunity to make a potentially humorous remark.

As far as foot shooting goes; ahem. A lot of that going around the various Nations o' Earth.

'tis a silly name indeed, Red,

Have had a bit of time off from the usual modelling, so not had anything to show you all. I did post a year round-up in my other blog if you haven't seen that yet and want to see what I've produced this past year, all in one place.
Link for ease: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/4230/471119.page#10292941

Normal service here shall be resumed shortly, but in the mean time I did some more woodwork to augment my dremel stand.
The one thing I felt it was missing for my intended use case is a flat surface to rest items on for it's sideways configuration, so I made this:


Using the part of the stand that is used to mount the plunger and tool vertically, I added the rod at the back that means the whole jig is aligned with the Dremel even if I don't position the Dremel perfectly with respect to the base.
That rod can move up and down a slot (that I made a mess of when the piece moved during routing) in the upright to allow height adjustment of the Dremel (to account for different tool diameters).
The rod can also be moved into or out of the stand to allow adjustment of the tool above the support plane (to account for different tool lengths, and for sanding top vs. side, etc...).

And I added the rear shield to "catch" dust and (hopefully) reduce it's spread towards my tv/monitor and PC. The bottom of the tool, as seen here, is moving towards the rear.

I still need to add some runners (to be done in plastic for reduced friction) to allow the sled to be moved forward and backward and remain at 90^o to the Dremel.

Incidentally, that tool shown in the first photo is a beast; it cuts through wood like a hot knife through butter, no burning.

With that done I can reclaim my workspace and resume the Nurgle chap, and with the cutting and sanding of wood done I can resume painting of the flying m'reens too.

I had an idea of how to progress with the plaguecaster...
What's better than a vague cloud of blobs (vanilla)?
Tentacles! *

What's left of the base around the edge will get broken earth to show them being called fourth from the ground.

*I mean, tentacles are better than practically anything. Except more tentacles, more tentacles are better...

That's excellent!

Might need to steal this idea for my my second plague caster. Damn you vile woman! Or something...

A entailed tidal wave , maybe the next guy needs to be riding a tentacle that comes out of the ground