Modern and future civilians

Yep it's been a while since I posted on this blog. My blogging tends to come in fits and spurts. I have all the excuses, busy with work (I got a promotion yay), busy with family, redid my hobby room, etc. etc. but all you really want to know is what I've been doing hobbywise!

Okay the first thing I have to show you is some more civilians for the town of Gray Haven.

These are all prepainted figures that just have a wash on them. Most are hero clix, but a few are characters from the Saturday Night Live trivia game. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on these as they are basically just fodder.


Here is another group of clix miniatures that I am using as futuristic civilians. These also have been shaded with a wash.

I didn't plan it when I bought them, but these minis kind of took on their own persona. The group on the left looks like pilots, the two guys in the middle left look like some type of business owner, the middle right guys are just random citizens [Yep that's a conehead from Saturday Night Live] and the five on the far right look like working girls and their "manager ".

The Devils Work

There is a saying that the devil is in the details. Well after the amount of time and energy spent on these seemingly little "details" I can see why.

 

Lets see what we got (Sorry about the jumbled picture subjects, I just took them as they were sitting on my workbench):

 

Fire hydrants, straw bales and some fall decor;

 

 

Dumpsters, trash cans, a beverage counter and more fall decor;

 



Chairs couches, and ice cream cooler (unfinished) an arcade game and some diner booths;

 

Lastly, these are going to be the streetlights that will be at the major intersections. I built and cast these, filling in the light with a 5mm half round jewel. A completely unnecessary and fiddly process to be sure, but its these little things that will hopefully make this board an exciting backdrop to my games.

 

Thanks for looking, questions comments always welcome!

Papa Spanky

Casting call

Remember way back when, I showed you some items I was going to cast? Well I did it finally. These are the simpler one piece molds, I will have some of the two piecers up later.

Couches, chairs, flat screens and computer monitors as well as trash bin lids and some pumpkins getting a paint job in the background. There are a few miscasts in there as well.

Till next time,
Papa Spanky

Hardware and Halloween

Despite not having posted a regular update, I have been pretty busy hobby-wise. Today I present to you the last three buildings for Gray Haven.



 

These are the "Value Hardware and Sporting goods" and "Halloween 24/7". Sorry for the bad pic, lighting was horrible and the flash ruined most of the others.

Anyway, the Hardware store is an Ameritown police station and the Halloween store is a converted Plasticville firehouse.

 

 

The front of the Halloween store with the giant spider decoration and the riot cop and zombie costumes on display. I sculpted the pumpkin for the sign and the foam scrapbook letters were placed crooked intentionally. (honest!)

 

Some of you keen eyes might have noticed the stop sign in the first picture. Here are examples of a few more.

 

I purchase these from Scale Like Industries, you can find them here:

http://stores.ebay.com/scalelikeindustries/

They are really nice signs printed on thin styrene. A few words of caution working with them though:

-Seal them first if you mask them off for any reason. I ruined my first batch of these with a liquid latex mask when I painted the backs of the signs.

-Too much styrene glue will melt/ warp them. This could be good or bad depending on the effect you want to create.

What else? I have corn. Yep corn.

 

These will be combined with pumpkins and hay bails for fall decor around town. I had to spray these with Army Painter desert yellow because they are supposed to be modeled as a live crop.

http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/o-scale-corn-stalks-496976/ corn stalks

 http://shop.thearmypainter.com/products.php?ProductGroupId=2  desert paint

 

On the actual playing games side of things I got a lot of games of Zombicide in with some co-workers, played a few games of Operation Flashpoint with the family.

 I picked up three copies of X-wing that were on sale at 60% off and will be posting about that, I will have some examples of my castings I finally did, and will post/talk Deadzone in the next few days, so don't touch  that dial!

Papa Spanky

 

Gray Havens Finest

I finished up the police officers the other day. I really like these models, my only complaint is they all have Corpral or Sergent stripes on the sleeves, and I had planned on painting one up as a Lieutenant to be the supervisor. I didnt notice this until I was sell underway painting. Oh well.

Two more buildings will complete this town, its taking me forever and I really want to get done.
Till next Time,
Papa Spanky

Fall Cemetery aka the zombie playground

So this is where the zombies are all coming from! I finally decided on how to finish the one short board edge for Gray Haven. I was going to make a separate board in the future that was just a cemetery, but this worked out nice to put it here. On with the pictures!

Here is the overview shot. Lets look at the details a little closer...

 

 

Zooming in a bit on the left side, we see the main concentration of dead folk. The tree is removable for storage, and the gates are magnetized for storage or when they get smashed down in-game by the undead hordes.

 

Zooming in more we see the detailed weathering on the grave markers. I make full size prop headstones for Halloween, and these use some of the same methods for painting, only smaller.  

 

 

Back out and move to the right, and we find the entrance, some more dead folk and the entrance to the mausoleum.

 

Here's the mausoleum and the back part of the property. About this part of the board: I put the power module for the lighted sign (seen in a bit) inside the mausoleum. I was going to run the cord under the grass, but had forgotten about the pumpkin patch the crazy old groundskeeper had planted. I had to put in a electrical "drop" over the patch. I tried to hide/integrate it the best I could, I think the crows help. Why is there a casket out back? Maybe the groundskeeper has his garden tools in there. Or fertilizer...

 

This is the welcome sign that sits outside the cemetery. It lights up, that's why I needed the power cord run. The little mound and rock is there just as a natural element.

 

 

I took these two shots to help if you needed a little perspective.

 

 

The Grass is teddy bear fur, all the leaves, bushes, and vines are Woodland Scenics products. I used lots of Sil-for clump foliage as well as dyed birch seeds. I picked up the walls and fence at Menards during Halloween last year. The pumpkins are from JTT, the headstones are from Renedra and GW.

 

Questions and Comments are welcome!

 

Papa Spanky



They're coming to get you Barbara...

I finished up my second round of zombies a few weeks back. There are 4 Zombiecide zombies and the rest are Mantic ghouls and zombies mixed. Everyone is painted the same dull tones as before, with exception for the Zombicide ones.Those guys will be "bosses" so I put a little color in these so they stand out a bit.



This is a group shot of all of my finished Zombies so far.

Tomorrow: Just where did these zeds come from anyway?

Papa Spanky

Municipal buildings

These are what have been holding up most of my building progress for the past few months.

The Gray Haven Fire and Police stations. First the fire station- Its scratch built (still only 90% finished) and was a bit of a pain. The roof paper shrunk and warped the corrugated plastic I used for the roof. Making the roof removable was tricky; I didn't want it to have an obvious seam. I also "guesstimated" the entrance door size, and made it too big. The garage door does "roll up" and that's cool.
Then we have the Police station. This too had roof warping problems that took forever to figure out. The roof was based from card stock with shingles cut from watercolor paper. The paper shrunk after painting, and I had to straighten and re-enforce it with wood. The main building is a Plasticville Police station Glued to a Plasticville Fire station. The fire station doors became the rear "sally port".

 This is the inside view of the firehouse. Its still missing things like hoses and ladders, modern 1/4 scale fire hoses seem to be in short supply, so I'm making my own. I also am working on the sign for the parapet wall in the front.

 The front of the PD has the watch desk and the main desk...

while the rear has the lockup an processing. Its still a bit sparse, but furniture is slowly making its way into town, so you might see things in later posts or battle reports.
The cell is made from this  Fencing.

Post your questions and comments!
Papa Spanky

Watching the Detectives

I finished the Detectives minitures from Road Kill. They turned out pretty good considering they are marginal sculpts with horrible casting. However finding modern US police and detectives not kitted out in SWAT gear is not easy, so these are still a good find. They will also double as FBI or some other Gubmint agency in some games. I still have no names as of yet, so if there are any good suggestions, shout em out.

Papa Spanky

Casting Couch Diaries

I'm getting set to mold and cast my couch and a few other things I made, so I will be keeping track of progress (or lack of it) here. What did you think this post was about? Pervert.  Anyway there is a highway light post, a overstuffed chair, a couch, a trash can, a dumpster and its lids, (it still needs a bit of work) a computer monitor and flatscreen tv, and three turrets for Car Wars. I'll let you know how this turns out.
Papa Spanky

Dark Knight, Hunger Games minis

I got a few Dark Knight Clix models and several Hunger Games "Clix" models a few weeks back. The HG ones weren't really Clix, they were mounted on a pedestal but are the same figure wise.
Anyway, I re-based them and gave them all a wash of GW delvan mud and Presto! More fodder for the town of Gray Haven. I think they turned out pretty good for what they are and the time invested. I did have to add a hand swap on the big guy who is hunched over as he was holding this weird rock/ball looking thing in one hand and a sword in the other. Oh and that IS Bruce Wayne. As fodder. Yep.

Comments welcome!
Papa Spanky

Im coming (back), and hells coming with me...

or just a zombie horde. That look like hell. OK so they are not that bad, but I'm getting ahead here.
 Sorry for the lack of updates but when life goes up against blogging and hobbies, life wins, every time. It sucks, but that's the natural order of things. I wont bore you with the details though.
 So here it is, my craptastic first zombie horde:

To be honest, they are exactly as I expected them to be and I'm really actually happy with them. The craptastic part is the fact that they are made up of GW and WF zombies, and the GW ones were originally done a long time ago for Necromunda. Some of them still have weapons. (I let the one guy keep the second edition Ork pistol on purpose, he earned it)
 As individuals, most of the models are pretty bad. But as a horde, they make a great character. To me the zombie horde has always been the character, not so much the individual zed. I painted them (with help from my daughter)  with that in mind, sticking to 4 colors and a wash.

It also will help me differentiate survivors from zeds more easily, as the survivors will stand out more.

Speaking of survivors, I got  a few more to show ya. 

I didn't give these any names yet, and I dont think I will. These fellers will be part of my "catch all" group of models that will fill in when I need thugs, gangers, protesters or any other nameless fodder in a game. 

Till next time,

Papa Spanky

Streetlights, people (oh oh ohhhhh!)

Today I finished up some streetlights for my town. I originally was going to cast my own, but for my own sanity I decided to purchase and modify some of the plasticville ones.

 Heres what I did:
 I clipped off the plastic bases from each pole. After that I used a dremel to smooth down the rough edges left from the base. Once those were done, I went about epoxying magnets into each base of the lights (fortunately they were hollow). After they dried I drilled tiny holes in the sidewalks of the boards at predetermined areas, and glued magnets into those. This was the hardest part as you need to keep the orientation of the magnets correct so the don't accidentally end up repelling each other. A quick rusty wash and a dull coat finish and these were done.

I will cast several of my scratchbuild lightpoles to put on the main drag on the south end of town. I just thought the plasticville ones were more subtle and saved a ton of time!

That covers the streetlights; now for the people. Two more for the population sign.

This gentleman is Danny Ling. A retired army reservist, he has lived in Gray Haven since he was 7 and will defend his home from all threats- foreign, domestic and other worldly.
Another stock Foundry model, I hated this one at first but when the paint went on it really grew on me. 

This guy is Dmitri. Just Dmitri. I thought he might kill me if I asked anything else.
Another stock foundry with some birch seeds on the base. Made em from my own tree! Honestly I had trouble with a back story for him, so that's why his is kinda lame.

There was something else I wanted to show you guys, what was it...

Oh yeah I finished the massive Mysterious East building!

This an import- export business located right next door to the Hydracorp building, and it opened about 3 months after Hydracorp moved in. Coincidence?...

I thought this building/ business would do good to forward many pulp or horror story lines. Practically anything can show up in town from all over the world and now have a plausible reason. Sometime in the future I might do a basement to this building and have it connect to Hydracorp and an underground bunker/lab/facility. This would all be on a separate board of course!

The front office. clear acetate line the windows. 

The rear storage and shipping area. Frosted acetate back here so no one can really see in!

The roof is in two separate pieces, one for the front and one for the back. I made it that way because it was easy to build and now i can use it to hide the storage area from players if needed. 

The rear loading area. 

Those following along will remember this building was made from storage crates, like the Hydracorp one was. It was a bit more persnickety having difficult cuts for the L shape. 

 For my parting shot I give you Gray Haven in its unfinished glory. I added a few things that might become permanent for the shot. 

Don't stop believin'   

Papa Spanky