The Pathans are watching

I recently finished a commission that'll be winging its way to its new owner this week.

A Pathan watchtower.

I was given an image of such a watchtower to base the build on but I thought it looked a little regular for the back hills of wherever it might be so I altered it a bit...

I started off with a blue foam base and sculpted the stones and rocks into it using a fine ball point pen, quite a simple task but you have to be careful in not letting it look like it's been drawn on. After doing the block work a few stones were picked out with some filler on top to bring them above the flat plane of the building side and then a thin wash of filler/glue/water was applied to the whole of the bottom to help tie it together.

All of the lower floor was painted in a grey/brown and about eight different shades were used to pick out some of the stones to help break up the monotomy. The ground work was done in the usual way, sand, then inked with brown ink and brought up through ever lightning shades of tan. I made it a bit lighter than I normally do to help represent a more arid atmosphere found in the back end of nowhere. Then various growies were applied around the nooks and crannies.

The upper floor took me a good couple of weeks to decide on the best way to achieve it. I was going to use the normal route of cutting textured sheeting and painting it but I thought something a little different was needed... I therefore spent a good few hours cutting up hundreds of little bricks from blue foam. I didn't use a ruler or a straight edge, just a steady hand and a good eye as a little randomness was what was required.

These were then stuck on a layer of thin tape and then built up course by course. The tape was used to enable the top floor to be removed when all was dry and complete as interior access was required.

I built up the layers two or three at a time and fortunately, due to the hot weather, it wasn't taking that long for them to be touch dry and another couple of layers stuck on.

I found it a very pleasing way to build and although it's not as quick, there is more control and a definate 'built' look to it. 

The roof was mainly conjecture but the natural look of it should help to blend it in. A wooden frame was built and then painted, I then used some fine bristles and literally stitched them onto the framework. The fortunate thing was that the bristles were already a decent natural colour and e only thing to do (apart from ink the thread) was to drybrush them. In hindsight, I should've made the roof wider as it's a bit short, but not detrimentally so.

The whole thing stands about 235mm from the bottom of the base and the base itself is about 150mm square.

I'll leave you now with some 'beauty' shots but you might see it on the net somewhere in the future as I believe the new owner is going to get some serious use out of it :-)

ttfn

The talents of Alex Youngwood

I received an email from a chap the other week wanting to show me a diorama he had made that included some of my products and it was so good I felt I had to share it (after asking permission of course).

His contact email is below if any of you have any questions on techniques etc but I'll just leave you with the photos; suffice to say, it really is stunning work.

juxtimon@hotmail.com 

ttfn

Intervention...

Just a small post for tonight. I bought a few of the newish Perry British Intervention Force figures with a view to using them in Japan for the many small actions that were fought between the Japanese and the international community (mainly Britain, France and America).

Obviously the Japanese will be from Bac Ninh figures, of which I have quite a few now,  and several terrain items have been started. I've only done two figures for now but more are primed and ready :-)

The 31st (The Young Buffs) were based in China so it's not implausible that an element were transported over for possible land action. Conjecture certainly but I haven't been able to find anything on the British land units in Japan at the moment. 

On to the pictures, officer first, and I must admit I'm rather happy with the hat number on the infantryman, here's hoping I can do it again...

ttfn

And the Japanese keep coming

Finished painting and rebasing some more Perrys from their samurai range. Two small units of Wako/Ikko Ikki and a few more Murakami.

I'll be using these together in the game to help bulk out the Murakami forces.

Really hoping to get a game in in the next week or two, got the figures, the rules are sorted (well, first draft of changes for Sharp Practise) just need to get the Big Man cards sorted and we're away :-)

ttfn

Now for something a bit silly...

I have always liked pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads from the latter half of the 19th century, the Japanese battleship Mikasa being a particular favourite. There's a post lower down about the Mikasa so I won't go into it here, suffice to say I've made a start on a 28mm VSF version.

What's this, I hear you cry, why not a proper version! Well, I want something that can be gamed on and a 28mm version of the real thing would be over 2.5 metres long! Bearing this in mind I started to draw a VSF version over six months ago, using a proper set of plans as main reference (scanned colour reference chart from one of the kits).

These were literally dragged into autocad and drawn over and then scale down to a manageable size for 28mm, although it's still over a metre in length! Obviously the shape is still the same but some elements have had to be reduced or left out to make sure that it all fits.

First off the main hull deck was cut out along with the veneer decking. I'm using veneer as it is an awful lot quicker than laying down balsa wood and given the nature of the model I want it is more in keeping with the style that I'm after.

The amount of detail will be simplified but will still keep the main elements and feel for the ship.

All the smaller guns are from HLBSC (well recommended) and the larger ones will be scratchbuilt. It's taken a bit of jiggerypokery to make sure that even though it is smaller it still 'works' and one of the ways I've been doing this is draw a small selection of parts, cut them out and fit them together; if anything doesn't work, re-draw and cut out again. This way I'm limiting the amount of re-cuts as the drawings can be altered in progress.

The crew are from my Japanese Boxer Rebellion range and I've got about 40 primed and ready to paint...

Still along way to go and the most difficult bit is yet to come which is the lower hull and it's 'look'; as with all neffs you can't just copy the hull shape as it looks wrong so a fair bit of thought will have to go into it.

This is a long term project and I might not do anything on it for a while but I have been pressured into getting it ready for Salute next year... We'll see :-)

ttfn

A bit more Akira

Prompted by a recent comment on the Akira post below it reminded me that I've actually done a bit more on this.

There's another flat design (that will be for production) and a couple of air con units that are cast up, painted and attached to the buildings.

I've also started on a small office block (larger than the flats) and am currently drawing a more 'slick' office block. More on these in a week or so.

I've also made a very small start on a small truck that will also be available at some point in the near future.

I do have the slight intention of having a four foot display table at next years Salute with all the buildings tarted up and a fair few extra bits but this will be a wait and see thing.

Anyway, onto the few extra pictures...

The crab is from a Japanese gacha gacha (capsule toy machine) and it's on one of the new frontages that is more for a restaurant than a shop. The figure is a Copplestone Future Wars one I think.

This is the very wip of the truck. The cab, chassis and load out on the back will all be separate and I've got three load outs planned so far.

Here area couple of shots of the aircon units in position. They will be available separately in multipacks and look quite the part when in place.

And finally, the second flat type in place next to the original and the parking tower. I think I might change the height of the bottom floor to add a bit of variety.

That's it for now. I've got vending machines and shop interiors to think about next along with more aircon unit types and possible some more civilian vehicles.Hopefully the next time I post about this project the blocks will be complete :-)

ttfn

Some boats...

I've had a hankering for some Japanese Sengoku naval warfare for a while now and with the master for the smaller fune complete and moulded, this is now imminent :-)

First off, I've completed two of the larger kits as the main backbone of the first fleet. The mon is for the Murakami clan who were well established in the Inland Sea.

The right hand sail has been sewn and I intend to do the same with the other.

Below are the pictures of the smaller fune master before it went into the mould, I find painting them helps keep the detail and can also pick out any major defects that would be a sod to sort out afterwards.

I'll probably do four or five of these for this fleet and the same again for the opponants (on whom I've yet to decide).

It'll have a slightly smaller mast, rudder and sail and all the sails on all the ships are removeable for ease of transport.

I've started limited work on scratch building an o-take bune which were the monsters of the fleets, three or four stories high with a castle on top. The model version is about 20" long at the moment.

I'm also working on some smaller craft that could be used for river raids and transporting cargo etc, probably about half the size of the small one above.

cheers

James