VSF for a change

I thought it was about time that I showed some of the rather large VSF project I've been working on for the past few years.

The basic premise is that the major powers are competing for the resources that have been discovered on Mars.

I will write a more detailed back story as we decide on the details but for now all you need to know is that my chosen faction are the Japanese (no surprises there then :-)

The first thing I'm going to show for this project is a defense platform. The idea of which is that it gets towed into place, say, along a trade route and is armed with three heavy machine guns with crossing arcs of fire.

Now, the initial pictures might not make much sense but it will be come clear as the post progresses.

The basic construction was with lasered acrylic (after finalising the design) clad with wood of styrene for the finished surfaces.

The turrets are cast from resin and will soon be available on my website, along with (hopefully) a whole range of VSF goodies.

The bottom shape was just simply styrene wrapped round an inverted cone frame and stuck together, using strip styrene as pretend joints between the panels. The top railing was made from brass rod cut to size with dressmaking pins pushed through a fine chain and lightly glued in place. It's actually quite robust unless you drop the whole thing on the floor... (guess what I did).

The ladders and portholes were taken from my ever expanding bits boxes along with the hatch on the top.

The whole thing was covered in rivets, and no, I haven't counted them :-) The top surface on the command deck is textured styrene sheeting.

The whole thing was given a coat of Halfords grey primer (probably the best all round primer going).

Then came the fun bit...

The paint scheme was chosen to match historical Japanese ships of the time (namely 1900-1905), the main influence being the battleship Mikasa.

There was also an Japanese style emblem added to the cone base (better picture below). The main hull and tops of the turrets were painted dark grey with the superstructure and upperworks a light grey. The whole lot was washed with a mix of brown and green GW inks (god knows what they are called now).

When this was dry a light drybrushing of very light grey was added and then plenty of washes of thinned orange ink for the rust. Occasional topdeck areas were also given a light drybrush of sliver to represent the worn metal surface.

The emblem was painted gold and then treated in the same way as the rest.

The base is a disc of arcylic with a 10mm clear rod sticking up that fits in a respective hole in the bottom of it. The anchor was a late addition and might need some more weathering. 

I'm amassing quite a collection of 28mm neffs at the moment and at the last count I had five complete, two nearing completion and two more just started.

I do have plans for plenty more but as you'll see in the coming months, this is a massive project and so everything in time.

ttfn

Hollywood Hood

A little bit of whimsy tonight as I'm going to show you the progress on a project a couple of us are doing at the moment (although it's gone by the wayside somewhat, what with holidays etc). Some of you may have seen this on LAF a while back but I though I would post it here to help give me some more inspiration to carry on!

On the left we have F**king Massive John, a monster of a figure from Foundry, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head he stands a whopping 38mm :-0

The idea for the campaign was to have a Hollywood version of Robin Hood and all the cheesyness that comes with it, being predominantly a terrain builder I'm making the buildings but I am painting some factions to play with (one shown on the left)  and I'll post some more in another blog post in the near future.

The initial buildings were to be kept quite simple, thatched hovels for the most part which are quite quick and 'dirty' to do. Below you'll see various building shots.

Simple card walls with balsa timber and textured paint for the panels and teddy bear fur for the thatched roof (you can see here the size of FMJ next to a Perry monk.

After a few of these were made a church was needed. I've already made a couple of these so the template was ready to go but I added a small cemetery and a rather large tree.

The colour scheme was kept broadly the same as the hovels and the groundwork was done in the usual way.

The graves were just lumps of acrylic that were the right sort of size with a small mound in front and the wattle fence used bristles from a brush and were placed on randomly to help give a village feel. I actually haven't got a close up of the fence but will do at a later date).

The windows were backsprayed acrylic and the frames were laser cut. It has been suggested that I use the mesh you can get from Halfords to 'lead' the windows a bit more and I think I'll do it. It will help to make it look a bit busier.

It was heavily weathered and I added a few more growies around the church than I would normally. 

I'm also in the process of making a upperclass house with a walled garden and a monastery that will fit on a 18" x 24" base with removable roofs (but this is a long term project, like so many others!).

We've got a fair amount planned for this campaign including an archery contest (very quick but fun rules), a deer hunt, wolf attacks, sheep rustling, an attack on the castle (which I have to make as well) and just normal scraps.

There will also be the Green Knight, Ivanhoe and many other characters from the Robin Hood tales. I myself am fighting for the King but that might change if I keep getting beaten :-)

We have even played a quick game to refresh ourselves with the rules (a disaster on my part where my entire faction was pretty much wiped out). There are photos of this and a few other things below.

ttfn

Stupa

A smallish post today as its a small project. A very nice chap on various fora has had several buildings from me in the past and for his next gaming project he wanted (along with other things) something that 'said' Nepal. The first thing that came to mind was a stupa, and if you don't know what one you soon will :-)

A stupa is basically a reliquary holding religious items on the inside or it can be used to signify an event in the life of Buddha and they can be found all over the Indian subcontinent and surrounding countries.

It seems that most of the small ones tend to be built on mountains or hillsides, which could prove difficult without building a mountain for it to go on. The layout to the left shows the way round this that I came up with. A simple oval base with a small cliff on one side and the stupa on the other with a suggestion of a path in between.

The cliff is cork bark and it has been blended in with normal household filler. The platform for the stupa is insulation foam and has been similarly blended in to the base.

The small wall was carved out of the foam and it helps to define the path and give a sense of usage rather than the stupa being completely left alone in the wilderness.

The base of the stupa was simply made from various thicknesses of materials, cut square and stacked on top of one another, it was then given a light coat of textured masonry paint to help bring it together. I unfortunately didn't take a wip picture of the very top but you can see it on the finished item below.

The ground work was done in the normal way to begin with but I didn't  use a lot of 'growies', just a bit that was slightly brown to help convey the feeling of a piece mountain terrain.

The cliff was painted in the same range of colours as the groundwork to help bring it all together. Various washes were implemented over the base as well.

The actual top was made on a lathe out of acrylic rod following the style from the images that I had gained from the internet.

The stupa itself was painted white and dirtied down a bit with some more washes. The top was painted a generic bronze colour and weathered accordingly.

The next part to make was the prayer flags which are a prominent feature in the Nepalese landscape. A dead tree was attached to the cliff and a piece of fine cotton was strung between that and the top of the stupa, it was held in place with thin super glue. The flags were cut out from thin coloured paper and stuck on accordingly representing the blowing wind.

I'll leave you now with the finished photos.

ttfn

Lower class samurai house

This is going to be a work in progress post as I'm taking my time with this one. You might have seen it on LAF a while back but I've only just thought of blogging it.

It's a house for a lower class samurai with a 'value' of 40-60 koku (the samurai, not the house).

A koku was the amount of rice it would take to feed one man for a year and generally wasn't taken literally in the later periods in Japan but was used as a bench mark system to calculate a mans worth.

The house has a very simple, small footprint which is actually be smaller than the real thing would have been as it's always easier to downscale wargaming terrain (otherwise it would never all fit on the table!).

There is an entrance hall that comes in at ground level and then raises up a bit to the rest of the house (for taking your shoes off basically, a habit which is still prevalent in most Japanese houses today). The next room is the main room and is a tatami room. Tatami are Japanese mats made from rice stalks and they smell quite nice.

Most of the house's daily activities would go on in this room including sleeping. The next room is just a general usage room, probably used for preparing food, storage etc.

The building is raised to help prevent flooding and also to give a slight sense of superiority (even lower class samurai have pride).

The house is made from mounting card and I'm going for a full detailed interior with a lift off roof and shoji for the doors and windows.

The timber work and shoji frames are done but they don't slide ;-)

The house will be surrounded by a bamboo which I am still working on to get it looking right, it's an absolute b**** and I haven't really seen anyone who's got it right on a model apart from in Japan. I'm nearly there though.

The main roof will be thatch with hipped ends and the gabled extension will be out of wood, the two will be joined together and might contain LEDs.

There will also be a small outhouse and a vegetable patch.

As I mentioned before, this will be a long term project and I'll have sporadic updates as and when I work on it. The idea is to get this one just right and work out the best way to make it so I can make more, easier. Increasing the size and layout accordingly.

That's about it for now, the groundwork has been started but it's not worth a picture yet.

ttfn

Boxer Japanese

Time for a proper post after the long quiet and for today we have my Boxer Japanese figures that have been painted for me by a very nice chap in Scotland, Brian Phillps (who's website linky is on the left)

He's done a cracking job on them and I'm slightly ashamed about the quality of the photos as they don't really do the figures justice (I blame the weather... Well, not really, poor skills on my part more like). Anyway, if the weather is good tomorrow I'll go out side and take some more along with the boxer building that is the start of a new range.

I'm still not convinced about using the pad for post do I might revert to the old steam driven desktop (it's easier to see what you have done/messed up) but I'll leave you for now with a few more of the better photos.

Slight edit on the original as I've reverted to the desktop (damn sight easier if you ask me).

ttfn

 

Doh!

I've just deleted the apology post trying to figure out how to post from my iPad. Most annoying and I'm sorry :-(

The upshot of which is that I know how to post from the pad so I'll be able to post far more frequently from now on as I won't have to warm the desktop up and spend hours loading pictures etc.

First "pad post" tomorrow :-)

cheers

James

Salute 2012 (picture heavy)

Well, firstly an apology for not posting this sooner and secondly another apology for not posting more progress posts on the boards itself. It got rather busy towards the end, what with stock, pre-orders and boards but hopefully the amount of photos here will sort of make up for it.

I will also have a bit of a write up on various elements that were on the boards and a few thoughts on the show in general (not many though). I warn you now, there will be a lot of pictures at the end of this post :-)

For the board itself, it was decided long ago to make a town, or a portion of a town, that would have been typical of the period and location. Obviously for gaming scale reasons, the town itself had to be foreshortened somewhat but the elements were there.

Japanese towns were typically laid out in a grid pattern, altering around whatever terrain got in the way and having various districts such as a merchants one, a samurai one etc. There were also small religious districts or compounds that popped up.

The other reasons to have a town board was to show off the items available in my catalogue and the fact you don't normally see this sort of Japanese game being displayed. It also gave me an opportunity to try some different models for Japan instead of the normal fair that I have been doing recently.

All in all, I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, much better than previous years which I thought were rather lacking in some way or another.

The boards themselves were a mix of previously  made ones that I've had for many years and specially built ones for the town itself.

An interesting fact about Japanese towns is the thought that goes into the planning, they don't just 'grow' but are laid out and constructed to an overall masterplan (of sorts).

One of the elements that must be included is the addition of drainage ditches that surrounded the various compounds.

They can be seen on some of the closer photos and were basically cut into the boards and either clad with stonework for the richer areas or just left as normal groundwork for the poorer areas.

As I mentioned, Japanese towns were laid out in a grid work, this made the designing of the town a little easier as all my boards are 600mm square so it was quite a simple case of having crossroads, tee-junctions and straight sections made. The only thing to be aware of is the different road widths depending on the location.

Generally, wider roads were in the more affluent areas and had a cleaner look about them, whereas the narrower ones were in the merchant districts etc.

The painting of the boards was kept simple and normal groundwork techniques were used but on the roads themselves, more drybrushing was implemented to give the impression of well worn thoroughfares.

A few bits of greenery were added here and there just to break up the monotony. 

Most of the various elements can be seen in more detail in other blog posts (roadside shrine, building bases, village base, paddyfields etc) but one thing I wanted was to have a pagoda in it's own little compound.

The construction of this was kept as simple as I could get away with but still with enough detail to make it 'work' as a recognisable structure. The top roof was from the roadside shrine that is in the catalogue but everything else was made especially for it.

Pagodas usually come in either two story, three story or five story. The two story ones are different to the typical looking three and five story ones but I'll be making one of them in the not so distant future...

The actual layout of a pagoda is quite straight forward, ever decreasing floors with projecting roofs but the trouble lies in the details, of which there are many! Most of the detail is in the roof supports so I had to find a way of keeping the feel but making it easy to build and paint (as time was running out).

I solved this by only having one 'strut' coming out at each wooden 'grid line' (you'll see what I mean from the photo to the right). The floors were simple enough to do, normal box construction, keeping the woodwork simple but retaining enough basic elements to be identifiable.

The roof were cheated a little bit and kept flat, whereas the slope was achieved with the corner pieces making the whole thing a simplish construction. Turned OK in the end :-)

The board got a lot of praise from those who saw it  (from what I can gather) and there always seemed to be a large crowd around it taking photos, which was nice. A few people came over to the stall (which was nearby) to comment on the board, which again, makes it worthwhile :-)

I've probably missed out quite a few things that should be mentioned about the board so forgive me if this is the case, if you have any questions then just leave a comment and I'll reply the best I can :-)

All the figures were Perry's, the vast majority painted by myself and a small faction by 'Janner', a nice chap who frequents various fora and whom I have gotten to know quite well (even though he does take the piss quite a lot :-)

As for Salute itself, it seemed a lot busier with more of a buzz than last year although of course I didn't really get to see any of it although what I did see looked good with a large variation of games on display (many, many pictures on the net now, for which I am rather thankful).

It's good to see our hobby progressing the way it is, ever onward. I'm not going to delve into the reasons and wherefores as others have done before with more clarity than I ever could, I'll just say that it seems to be a good time to be a wargamer :-)

My own little offering (Oshiro) is growing steadily and it's been a pleasure to be able to do what I can and coming up with new things to make and hopefully expanding the niche that I've found myself in :-)

I'm looking forward to the coming year as I have quite a few new things on the horizon and hopefully they will prove useful and popular. Just to be a bit of a tease I'll just say that there will be a new figure range (other than the Boxer Rebellion) and a couple of new building ranges (other than Japanese).

Anyway, I'll leave you now with a fair few more pictures of the game on the day and a big thank you to all those who came by, said hello, had a brief chat with and those I managed to inspire :-)

ttfn