Wednesday 25 March 2009

Grand Designs (2) - Initial Thoughts

I tried to sketch out a plan for the palace building, I found this could be potentially very large and make for storage problems. Another problem I thought of was if the rooms had ceilings then taking photos might be tricky. So initial concept is:

1. Exterior - A low relief model of the front of the palace, main entrance with portico and some part of the gardens.
2. Interior - build separate rooms, corridors (with optional ceilings), easier to work on and also makes it easy to add another room if I think of one. Also these can be stored more easily.

I'll be trying out putting a clear plastic base on a spare figure next.

4 comments:

ColCampbell50 said...

Why worry about the ceilings. Most were very high in palacial buildings so if you keep your camera angle low, the viewer will presume that the ceiling is just out of the shot.

Jim

Gallia said...

Thank you Mon Ami,
for your kind comments about the rooms on the Germania blog. I appreciate that a lot! Here is what I did:
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Motion Picture Sets:
Rather than build a permanent building or room, my rooms are sets with a floor and two or three knock-down walls. Everything collapses down flat into a storage box.
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Rooms can be individual and disconnected. This makes for a kind of flexibility.
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Nothing wrong with building a palace building though. That would be really interesting to see and no doubt satisfying to build and use.
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Basswood Walls Or:
4" high and could be up to 24" long. However, I think foam core boards would be easier than wood to cut and use. Art supply stores can supply foam core with colored paper on the outside. Same could also be temporarily pinned together.

When painted my basswood walls warped. Uh oh! I placed them under a flat weight and the warping disappeared. That was a close call!
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Floors:
I recently came upon single floor tiles at a hardware store in 9"x9" or 12"x12" sizes. I opted for the larger size just in case I needed more space and because the larger one had a design I really liked.
Cost = $1.00 approx.

One floor I built for the Colonial blog is a wide-plank floor. However, on the Germania blog the hallway floor is actual flooring for building model railroad homes made to look like clapboard or a wooden floor.
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Ceilings:
None for the reason Col. Campbell states.
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1/4" Scale - O Gauge:
Get a Walthers Model Railroad catalogue plus another from Scenic Express. In same you can find furniture, doors, windows and other things to buy. These are on line but hard to use in my view that way. Some of the miniatures companies who manufacture cowboys for western gunfights have building interior items.
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Good luck with your project. I'm eager to see what you do in this form of expression.

Bon Chance,
Bill

old-tidders said...

Jim - good point about the ceilings, definitely not absolutely needed.

Bill - thanks for all the info and the ideas - the motion picture set concept has lots of flexibility.

-- Allan

Fitz-Badger said...

Looking forward to seeing how you get on with this grand plan! :-)
Yeah, I've long thought that for gaming purposes we should take a page from Hollywood's book (or even from legitimate theatre sets). Make buildings for "exterior" use small (especially their footprints). And with buildings for interior use ease of access should be a key feature (removable roofs and even removable walls from at least some sides, modular rooms like some of the 3-D dungeons you see on HirstArts and other places - I have long wanted to do a maproom, probably a library, and other rooms and hallways). Great ideas in the previous comments. Has got me thinking again...