I'm going back ... Back to the Blogosphere!

Back to Blogging

It's fair to say this has been a neglected blog, of late. Mostly, because I have focused in the past year on posting on my Instagram account Models From Scratch. 

While the crafting community on Instagram and YouTube are a wonderful bunch, and it's a great platform to display your work, blogs provide a great opportunity to give more detailed posts and (importantly) somewhere to record your techniques. There is nothing worse than nailing a colour scheme only to go back a year later and not being able to reproduce it! 

Anyway, I hope to get back to more regular blogging with a focus on posts about scratch building terrain and even some gameplay (shock, horror!).

Iso projects

As it is for all of you, life has been dominated by social distancing for a couple of months now. In Australia we've had a fairly easy run with COVID-19 (thanks to decisive action by all levels of government). That said, the financial impact on many has been horrendous. Luckily I've dodged that so far with a job that translates well to working from home. But, the crunch is yet to come in my sector (higher education).

Over the next few posts I'll give some updates on the following projects:

1. Building an Old West mining settlement for some Cowboys and Aliens - Old West / Weird West skirmish gaming;
2. Crafting terrain and miniatures for an antipodean setting for Of Gods and Mortals;
3. Building a shanty town and waaaay too many shipping containers for a post apocalyptic setting!
4. Update (25 July 2020) ... and, a 2mm Biblical Armies project that has sprung out of nowhere!

 Here's a taster of the upcoming posts:

A shanty town well suited to modern setting and post apocalyptic gaming made of cork sheet using methods learned from Matakishi and Platypus Scotsman. Kulpunya - a giant spirit dingo (scratch built) and Denisovan minis from Eureka Miniatures for a planned display game of Of Gods and Mortals (Osprey) at the (sadly) cancelled Little Wars Melbourne 2020. My growing Old West town. After binge watching Deadwood (for the first time) I could not resist painting my favorite characters using the Al Swearengen and Wild Bill minis from Artizan recently purchased from War and Peace Games.

Scratch built Nissen Huts, road barriers and shipping container 28mm

So often I find that terrain ideas are the motivation for new projects. Currently, I'm working on some  items that lend themselves more to a Cold War era post apocalyptic setting than the classic Pulp that he’s been my recent focus.

'The Road' (Source)

My hope is that this will inspire some 'Apocalypse Alley' gaming using Pulp Alley rules based around the aftermath of a nasty biological weapon exchange. The leagues will give me the opportunity to use some of the Eureka Cold War era moderns in like thev 28mm US and Soviet lines they have in NBC/MOPP gear. Link

Keeping to my (nearly) zero budget terrain philosophy, I have been working mostly with cardboard, cork and wire mesh. Here are a few of the creations and the inspiration for them.

'The Base' - a quick layout of the components I have built so far. At the moment I'm working on roads, finishing the perimeter fence and helipads.

I love the look of these old Nissen huts built using 90mm postal tube and corrugated cardboard. The construction process is set out in a great article by Dennis Berwick

This bird's eye view of the base shows the mysterious generator spewing out toxic goop on the bottom right. Ultimately this will be outside the perimeter of the base.

These street barricades are simple to make and will be useful for a range of modern settings. I used a cool tutorial by FearDaAlien. They just need some ballast in the bottom as, being made out of foam, they tend to fall over easily.

I've wanted shipping containers for ages - always been looking in toy stores etc. At last, I've found a great tutorial on Panzerfaust Nostalgia for making them out of card. I'm very happy with the result. Now for mass production! The container made out of 1mm card stock with craft store corrugated cardboard glued to the outside and plastic tubing for the locking mechanism.

Thant's all for now. Study and work are weighing heavily on my crafting time - but the light is at the end of the tunnel!

Just as an aside, I found this nice little article on post-apocalyptic ecology: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/ecology-and-the-post-apocalypse/