Some Small Projects

Just a quick recap of a few items from the workbench.  I have a couple of scenery items and a couple of Horrorclix zombies.  These have been staring at me from the workbench for a while, I was glad to finish them off finally.

First thing I did was build a Plast Craft Games building I got for Christmas.  It's from the EWAR 28 line.  It's listed as a grocery, part of the WW2 France building collection.  It is printed foamcore that basically snaps together, with some parts getting glued.  It built very quickly, I think I had it done in under 30 minutes!  It has a basic interior, and as a bonus, it comes with a destroyed version as well.  It's not spectacular, but it makes a nice building for the table.

Nice small package

It will work best as part of a wargame, like Bolt Action.  As it has a destroyed version, it fits nicely that wherever it is located on the table, if it is destroyed, you have that version ready to go.  Nice idea, and it works well enough.  I had hoped for a ground floor, but I can deal with it being a single large room on the ground.

Some of the parts

It comes flat packed and is very clean and very well printed.  I'd love to see some other buildings like this.  If I get a chance I'll look at getting a few more, they have some townhouses that would be good for urban filler.  I have left off the French sign for now.

Dawn checks out the building

Interior Upstairs

The ruined base

In addition, I painted up a Dark Heaven Bones dumpster.  I'm happy with how it turned out.

Dumpster in blue

I had a busted toy van I found last summer and it's been just sitting.  I finally based it and turned it into a wreck.

Toy car wreckage!

I love taking old and broken toys and making them scenery.  This car was busted up for me already, no wheels and a crushed top.  Some black and rust paint makes it a decent wreck.

This van has seen better days!

Finally I have two zombie cops from Horroclix.  I just did some painting, added some gore and based them on smaller bases.  The Horroclix line has some fun models, and they make for good additional zombies in the horde.  Too bad they are getting hard to find.

Two zombie cops

That's it for the update.  I'm hoping to get more productive, as well as figuring out how Dawn and company are going to handle their prisoners!

Lady!  You can't park that here!

Wasteland Cruiser

I found an older muscle car toy at a second hand shop, and it inspired me to create a post-apocalyptic ride.  It was red and beat up pretty bad, the rear window was missing, wheels damaged, chipped bumper, not a wreck, but in bad shape.  I'm sure you all know the inspiration for this vehicle...

Mad Max anyone?

I added some fuel tanks to the rear window area (taken from a truck) as they fir the space pretty well.  The front end has a reinforced bumper made from wire and sprue parts.  I also added wire mesh to the windows, they need some protection.  Overall a rust and dirty paint job finished the cruiser.

Ready for a rough road

Improvised front ram

Rex stands in for Max

Pretty much straightforward, a rusty beat up muscle car.  Some reinforcement and extra fuel tanks for the long empty roads...

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!

Rusty but Usable - Vehicles

I have a few of these die cast vehicles I have found at yard sales and second hand stores.  They all have been played with - some very destructively!  These are all Tootsie Toys, and a few of them are the same model, just different colors.

As I looked at them, they inspired a bit of Fallout feel to me, and having wasted much time on Fallout 4 recently, it was easy to see them as rusty hulks.  I figured these could be some old workhorses for some survivors.  Some of these have broken parts, which made me think of wrecks first, but they could also be just well-used and worn.

All I did was clean them up and give them a heavy weathering finish.  I chose to leave whatever paint scheme was left on the original vehicle.  They all had flaking, damaged paint so it fit with the post apocalyptic feel.

Jeep and "Utility" truck

Utility truck and Ambulance (?)

Dawn gives a sense of scale

I was just wanting to get some generic vehicles I could use for some survivors, and these feel like they fit the bill.  I haven't decided if I want to customize them with armor/spikes/etc. or just use them as is.  I have a few more, I'll have to decide what to do with them.  This was a quick project to get the year started!

Merry Sithmas! er... Christmas!

I want to wish everyone a safe and happy holidays!  Merry Christmas!

Last year at our house we had a village under zombie attack.  This year, with the release of the new Star Wars film, we decided to recreate a special edition scene from the Battle of Hoth.  (I think this was in the special edition...)

Everyone has fun in the snow!

Han and Leia have a snowball fight as Chewie skis by

A rebel trooper finds out why not to throw a snowball at a wampa!

Vader has some father - son time with Luke

I'll be spending some time with my family, I hope to have some gaming related posts up soon.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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!