Scenery: Sheds and Warehouses

This is a quick post on some storage buildings, based on parts I have found recently at one of the second-hand stores in the area.

I managed to find a bunch of parts for some Ertl farm buildings, as well as some more Hot Wheels street building sets. 

Various plastic buildings

First, the Hot wheels building.  I wanted to try something a bit different with this building, I have made it into a garage or shed before.  I didn't make the top removable, so it was hard to have play on the interior.  I sawed off the top before painting or any other work.  To help with locating the roof, I added a piece of plastic card to  the front.

Top sawed off

Top with added front card

I cut a piece of hardboard for a base.  It's painted up as a concrete slab.  I just give the interior walls a quick black spray and then some touch up with a neutral brown.  It's really just to give some coverage of the bright blue.  I add a couple of plastic numbers to the front after I painted it up.  I also managed to not take many pics, so we jump to the finished product.

Front view

Jack checks the garage

Jack just inside the door

Garage door open, roof off

For the Ertl buildings, they are just straight builds.  I paint one up with a red oxide exterior and green roof.  It is mounted on a sheet of plastic card, painted to look like a concrete slab.  I keep it very thin for the red building.  There isn't much to show for in process pictures, it's just painting really.

Jack checks the warehouse

Jack in the warehouse

A look through the open doors

The other garages are still work in progress, but they will look about the same.  I haven't decided if I will grab my older small Hot Wheels garage and open the roof up like the first one I did here.  For now I will just leave it intact I believe.

If you get a chance to find any of these buildings, I definitely recommend them.  The Ertl parts can be used for larger or smaller buildings, or for ruins.  Especially if you can get them cheap.

Scenery: Water Tower, Walls and a Supply Crate

This is a quick post of a few small items I managed to finish this week.  These are mostly recycled toys I found at a local resale shop.  These are meant to be scatter pieces, just to help fill out a table and add some interesting or useful bits.

Jack, Dawn and their car for scale

First is a tall piece, it's meant to be a water tower or similar.  Probably at a construction site or a farm or something.  It is a recycled Play-Doh dispenser, the base had some decent texture that came out with some paint.  I went for just a few colors, and lots of rust.

It's a tower...

Jack and Dawn check and see if there is any water...

Tower and weapons crate

I also have a Weapons Crate from Dark Heaven Bones.  It painted up very quickly, it's just a box after all.  I may get another couple of them and paint them in different colors for use as objective markers and such.  It's a bit large, but works well enough.

Jack is perplexed by the digital lock

That can hold a lot of weapons...

Finally, I have a couple of low walls.  These are hard plastic toys, no idea where they originally came from.  I picked them up with the tower, I love the second hand shop, the stuff is so cheap!

Some cover is better than no cover...

They should be useful on some tables

A bit of a slow week, but I was happy to get a few items off the work bench.  I love repurposing toys, these were easy to use - just some paint!

Scenery: Ruined Gas Station (Flo's V8 Cafe) Finished

The detail work for the gas station is complete, I'm hoping a "less is more" effect is better.  I added some various cans, newspapers and such scattered around the pump areas.  The truck has been replaced with a die cast pickup truck that I destroyed and added some various car and truck parts to give it a ruined feel.  I decided to leave the roof alone (for now) to make it easier to get to the inside of the building.

On to some pics!

Top View

Burned out truck (with a box/crate in the back)

Top view left side

The sign is removable, makes it easier for storage and if it gets hit during play, it *should* just breakaway where it connects to the toy base.  I hope I don't have to prove out my theory!  I tried to add some fun details, like beer cans, newspapers, an out of gas sign, tires, etc.  It was pretty fun to start putting junk on the toy set, it would have been very easy to go overboard!

Ruined truck, damaged overhead

They're out of gas

Dawn shows the front of the station

Dawn stands at the entrance

I considered adding handrails to the entrance ramp (in real life I am certain the government would require them!) but they were a bit too fiddly, and would just get in the way of moving figs around the area.  The various items added were just to add some junk feel to the ruins.  Most of the items actually came from this toy.  The various tires are from a box of tires I have from stripping them off various toy cars.

Some sort of vacuum?

Pile of tires (some Fallout influence here)

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Hopefully I'll get to place it on a table soon.

Comments and questions are very welcome!

Scenery: Ruined Gas Station (Flo's V8 Cafe Toybash) WIP

This starts with a CARS play set of Flo's V8 Cafe.  When I got it, it was already in rough shape, so I figured a ruined gas station was the best way to go.  The set was already missing one gas pump, the top was broken, the sign was missing and some various parts were missing.  It's not the largest building, but the overall look and feel of a gas station was easy to start with.

The original out of the box (not my pic)

The one I found was in pretty bad shape (which to be honest, is the way I love to find these toys!) but still had the main parts intact.  Normally I wouldn't post until I had the build completed, but I am hoping to use this in one of my next campaign games.  With luck, showing something half done will encourage me to finish it more quickly!

Some WIP pictures:

Front view, still pretty clean

Front and above

The first shots I have are pretty clean still.  I'm adding junk to the base, as well as show a little more damage.  The interior I have added some fallen shelves and other bits.  There are some cans and bottles, plus a cash register salvaged from a Polly Pockets play set, just painted up.  I'm pretty pleased with the interior, although I may add a bit more debris before I call it complete.

Interior Details

I have some crushed glass beads I have used for simulated broken glass.  I was hoping they would pick up the light a touch and give that 'broken glass' glint.  It works, but not as well as I had hoped.  I have a ton of beads, so I'm going to play around with them some more and see if I can get them to work better.

Side view, open access plate behind

I placed a wreck where one pump was missing from the original play set.  I'm not pleased with the wreck, so I am making a new one.  The pictures show what I was thinking at least.  I'd like a much more "skeleton" wreck I think.  Hopefully I can make something work.

Wreck where a pump should be

It's a wreck.

The toy was missing the sign post, so I need to come up with a new sign.  I'd like to make both a sign post as well as something for the roof of the building.  There are various details on the roof, I think it should lend itself to a collapsed sign structure once I have a design.

That's it so far, comments and suggestions are welcomed!

Scenery: Rusty Car Wreck

There is a hair spray-salt rust effect painting method that I have seen demonstrated a few times on the web in a few places.  I decide to give it a try.  If you don't know what this method is, in short it is painting a model rust, spraying it with hair spray (yep) and covering areas with rough salt.  You then paint over the whole mess with a top coat color.  Then you soak it in water and brush off the salt which breaks through the top coat, leaving holes to the base coat (rust).  Then just some detail work and sealant.

I found about eight older plastic toy cars for ten cents each at a yard sale.  They are not really any scale, but they are close enough for 28mm.  While not very detailed, nor any particular real world design, I figured they would make decent empty husks of cars, useful for cover and not much else.

To try out the painting method, I am just going to do one car, the others will follow (and show up on battlefields!) as I get a chance to get them done.

Starting out

The car is molded in a softer plastic, but still pretty strong.  It's a very bright green, and has a few molded details (door handles, door lines, engine grill, etc.) but no interior whatsoever.  The wheels are actually pretty strong, and are a good size.  I'm going to add those to the bits box.

Removal of some parts, basic undercoating

First, I removed the wheels, they came off very easy.  The rear window was solid, so I cut it out.  that was a bit more difficult, as the rear axle supports ran up to the window.  Luckily, this is going to be a wreck, so it getting hacked out and it looking a bit rough is fine.  The body is ready, and I start undercoating black, I focus a bit more on the inside getting it coated.

Rusty undercoating

After the black, I add a red oxide (rust) and a terracotta spray coating.  The terracotta gives a nice orange  look over the red oxide, like an active rust.  The idea is to get a decent coverage for the rust to show through later.  Next I get some hairspray (its just a cheap small can, donated by my wife) and some salt.  I am using a mix of table salt and sea salt.  The sea salt is larger and rougher pieces, but I hope to get some interesting effects from the smaller salt as well.

Salting the car

A salty snack!

So several other people have posted videos and guides, they warn about too much salt and also too little.  I figure I am going to go for too much to start - this is supposed to be a hulk.  I don't think it can look too rusty and nasty.  I try and get a couple of areas of just the table salt and the coarse sea salt separated.  I want to see what the different salts give for effects.

Watch your eyes - the topcoat is next!

POW!  Yellow!

Sorry couldn't resist, I used a gloss yellow and the camera flash made it...glow.  Here's a couple toned down shots:

Yellow over the salt and rust

Side view

After the topcoat was dry (I left it alone for 24 hours or so) I dunked the body in warm water.  I found out it was actually buoyant, so I switched from a tray to a drinking glass (disposable) so I could keep it submerged.  I used a pretty nasty old brush to knock off the salt as the water worked to dissolve the salt.  I didn't realize how much of a mess it would be, but luckily it was mostly water that made it a mess.

If you try this, be aggressive when you knock loose the salt, BUT, be careful as you can scratch right through the base coat rust color if you are to heavy.  I had a few spots that I went all the way through, but I figured I could cover those up easily enough.

After the wash and brush cleaning

Some touch ups but it looks pretty rusty

Overall, I was pretty happy with the result.  The car is still too good looking for a rusty hulk, so I add a black and brown wash (very similar to my zombie wash) to dull the paint and bring out details.

The wash darkened it a touch

In the end, this is a decent effect, and I like it.  I am going to try it on the remaining cars I have, I will go a bit heavier on some of them, or at least in certain areas much heavier.  My goal is just some rusty looking wreckage, which this definitely looks like.

In comparison, I have the new wreck next to the VW bug wreck I did recently.  The bug is paint over the existing paint job, not the salt method.  They both look like wrecks, just different.

Two wrecks

Wreckage

This method does not save any time for rust effects.  It does give some pretty interesting paint effects, as the paint is really peeling away from the model, it gives a feel of rust showing through.  I think it is better used on models that are more 'active' such as tanks and cars that still in use.  I could see applying the salt and then a finished coat, then using the salt to reveal rust, that would be a very cool and dramatic look.  If I can dig out a model to try it on I'll post some pics of what I mean.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Second Hand Finds (Scenery)

I found a selection of Hot Wheels City Sets at a second hand store for very cheap.  These are play sets with a bit of road and a small building or two.  The buildings all look grossly undersized for 28mm, but actually have pretty decent details on most sides, and the doors look good.  I started with a few sets.

So many bright colors

Some decent textures

Most of the buildings are glued or ultrasonic welded to the streets.  The light blue parking structure was held on with screws, which made life easy.  I don't recommend disassembling the glued buildings, they can be a pain, but they will come off with some bending and prying.  (and some liberal swearing...)

Pieces removed from streets

Survivor Anna for scale reference

You can see the texture on the purple building.  The door looks really good scale-wise.  I am curious what to do with the buildings.  The purple one will make a good shed.  The blue parking structure will make a decent raised platform for industrial or docks or something.  The others can wait for now.

I picked these two to work on first, the blue platform required just some glue and paint to make useful.  The purple shed needs a bit more effort.  I cut around the door, to make it functional.  I am using a simple card hinge (piece of card glued to the wall and the door so it can bend).  I have some black corrugated card from scrap booking supplies that will work as a roll-up door.  This leaves me with a bit of a quandary, do I cut off the roof (making it removable) and mount the rest of a floor, or do I leave it without a base or floor?

For now, I leave it without a floor.  I can always cut the roof off later.  Some paint and drybrushing is all it needs to be ready for the table.

Door into the shed

Roll up garage door

I found some terracotta color Krylon spray paint for plastic at Walmart on clearance for $1.50.  That made a great base coat for the brick.  I'll be using that on more structures in the future.  I will keep an eye for more of the city sets as well.  They didn't cost much, and for a couple of hours work (including drying time) they make good quick buildings.

Anna uses the door

Roll up door removed

Possible floor

I do with the garage was larger, it is not big enough for a car.  It will make a decent storage shed or add on for another building (like a maintenance shed) or a utility structure.  I have a few more structures to work on, but I got the couple finished pretty quick and easy.

Two structures done

I'd have more done but the Walking Dead season finale is tonight, plus I managed a little more of the road scenario (I'll get the bat reps up soon).  I'll share the other buildings as I work on them.