Saturday, February 26, 2011

Temple: Base Phase One

Phase one of the Temple base building.

I went to the local hobby shop and picked up this piece of wood. A simple and small piece was selected due to the small footprint of the area I had to work with. Again, this is the headpiece of the N scale set i have on my dresser, so I didn't need a massive piece to work with.














I'm just using plaster gauze to build the small hills this temple will sit on.

I wanted to get a little height for the main buildings. This will get everything up a little above the rest of the set. I don't want too much height, however. This is N scale and I don't want my figures to have to scale cliffs to get to the temple. :)

My friend foam core came into play again here. I'm slicing it a bit and building up areas that will be the main stage for the larger buildings.










Carved and ready, I glued the foam core pieces together to avoid slippage. I've also placed the buildings to make sure I allowed for enough area for the buildings and paths.

I plan to lay out the plaster tomorrow and call it a weekend for now. A lot of project time!

The area's where the buildings sit will either be the same sand used for the rooftop garden paths or a simple paint job on the plaster. There will be a path running from the small entryway at the bottom right up to the main buildings. Shrubs and trees will be placed after I lay down some grass areas.

Above all...I have to make sure I take my time.

Comments welcome as always!

Friday, February 18, 2011

LED lights


"Ok, lazy Malcolm! YOU NEED TO LOOK INTO LED LIGHTS AND HOW TO DO IT!!!!! Then....DO IT!"

The image above is from the always awe inspiring QUINNTOPIA blog.
http://quinntopia.blogspot.com/p/buildings.html

Impressive work. Again, a lot of it is just 1. Sitting and doing the work and 2. Knowing what he's doing with lights and bashing.

I guess baby steps are the way to go for me. Complete some more simple bashes, feel like I've done something, then move on to upping the stakes.

YUP!

TOMYTEC shot from Flickr

I found this shot while searching for TOMYTEC items and thought it was rather cool. The guy who took the shot has a rather large collection going!

Tomytec
Tomytec

I love the 1/150 diorama collection, especially the cars, the quality & details are the best compared to other companies.

They are very colorful as well, that is why I like them.

Temple: Pieces


The main parts for the temple arrived from Japan the other day. I put them together last night while watching TV with the Mrs. :)

These TOMYTEC kits are VERY easy to put together. A simple snap process. The construction is solid and, like many Japanese kits, there's no glue required. They are painted well, too. Nothing additional is required, but I may toss a little more weathering detail on for fun.

The base piece of wood I got should work. Just. The pieces all in all are taking up a little more room than imagined, so I may either upgrade the wood to a larger size or downgrade the overall plan of action to accommodate the size. Adding a little path area or parking lot area may do the trick as well - extending the wood piece with additional bits.

Now the next step is (after finding time to work on this) planning out the overall layout. Where the buildings, trees, paths and the like are going to live. I have the plaster gauze to build a little hill area as well, so once things get set, I'm good to go.

Another thing to think about when doing the hill is...N scale. I don't want a mountain, just a hill. And, I need to take the figures in mind. I have traditional garb figures for this part of the scene. I don't want them scaling cliffs to get from one point to another. :)

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Miniatur Wunderland - Vol 23

Talk about dream jobs!

Imagine the money he has to play with doing this stuff.

"I need a few more thousand deutschmarks - I have to build tiny rail platform displays."

I just love the details and small elements they place into the scenes. And, of course, it would be AMAZING to have this kind of space. If I had just one table area like this parking structure area for my N-scale, I'd be SO happy. Heck - HALF this space would be amazing.

I really do need to make it out there one day to see this. Luckily, my wife has a friend in Germany, so the trip may be warranted in the future! :)

Subtitles available by hitting the CC button in the menu bar.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Temple Plans

Yet another idea for my N-scale KATO layout - a temple area!

Currently, I have a theater in the layout and I love it, but the overall look of the layout is an older style, Japanese feel. So, I'm porting the theater over to the office layout and I'm planning out a temple theme.

The temple pieces I've found are from TOMYTEC and will work nicely with the buildings that are already in the layout. I plan to build out a small, grassy hill for the larger building with paths leading to it. Two smaller buildings will be in the surrounding area with a small, wooden fence around the whole of it. I might even add some figures in traditional outfits to seal the deal! :)

This should be a fun addition and I look forward to spending some time piecing it all together and working out the fine details.