Some scenery (2D and 3D)

 Well, I'm back! As told in the previous post, I took some days off with the family, but unfortunately it's over! We stayed some days in the Canary Islands, in Lanzarote (Lanzarote is the Spanish for Lancelot; how cool is to be in an island called after a guy named Lancelot? BTW, totally unrelated to the Arthurian cycle). I wasn't able to paint (only made the silly videos you already saw!), but I managed to produce a few of my infamous doodles. As I have no shame left and have exposed my puny art before, I'll share my view of the little fortress of the capital town, the Castle of St. Gabriel, a small fort on a rock and connected to the land by a stone footbridge:

Not impressive, but it's only some minutes' work

 Ah, there goes my last recollection of summer vacation!

Back home again, I've been working on some Adeptus Titanicus scenery, something I was long overdue for, to be honest. I took the chance to join in and take part in Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery event too! (Mate, whenever you get round to reading this, I hope things are going well. Sending loads of strength your way!).

The bundle I bought from my friend included the scenery from the starter box, plus an extra set of buildings and the Manufactorum Imperialis box. On top of that, another friend gave me his own scenery — poor guy realised he was never going to use it. That’s the stuff that’s already built and primed:

This is like *a lot* of scenery! Glups

To get a feel for the kit, I started by building one of each type of building following the instructions. That way I could figure out how the pieces fit together and what sort of possibilities they offer:

By the book, like a good boy

But once I’d seen what the kits could do, I dared to get a bit creative. I mean, the whole point of having loads of scenery bits isn’t just to build loads of buildings — it’s to go a bit mad and put together something massive:

And now we're going crazy

My first idea was the building as you see it above, with a terrace in the front part; but very soon I was convinced that this other configuration looked in fact way better:
 

It's kind of Notre-Dame, but with the arms of the Sphinx of Giza

 

The trick here is keeping that good old concrete grey monotony (this is the Imperium, after all) while still breaking up the colour a bit — but without straying too far from a coherent palette. I decided to paint the rooftops a darker grey… but I definitely overdid it, and now they’re almost black.

I don’t care —they’re staying like that.

 

I'm most definitely not repainting all these

To bring in a bit of variation while sticking to the overall vibe, I went with a simple rule: treat absolutely everything as concrete wherever I reasonably can (handy excuse to make the most of the grey primer spray!), and then add metallics mainly in the bronze or copper range for contrast.

The windows… well, they’ve been both a challenge and a bit of a nightmare. I had to accept that doing full-on multicoloured gothic stained glass was just too much (even for me!). In the end, I went with classic dark blue with highlights to give that glassy effect. Not perfect, but it’s the only way I’m going to make any progress on this project. Honestly, the level of detail on these buildings is insane. This is the one I used as a test piece for the colour scheme:

Dull, boring, grey... Imperial

Oh, and by the way —the window grilles. Right, Brits, we get it, you love the Union Jack. Fair enough, no issue. Honestly, it’s fine. But seriously… you don’t have to stick it on literally every single window. Painting that over and over again, window after window — it’s absolute hell.

Hell on Earth. Oh, I hear you, it's just a couple of windows, no big deal...

[Redacted for verbal abuse. Sanctioned by order of the Inquisition]

Well, if you look too close you'll see all the mistakes. But at tabletop distance and at this scale I hope this will do.

Right, so with this setup, you’ll see there’s now a door on the upper floor at the front that just opens into thin air, doesn’t lead anywhere. I figured I’d cover it up with a couple of banners to add a splash of colour and stop it looking totally daft.

Then I thought, well, that space between the two wings of the building looked painfully empty. Perfect spot for a little plaza. My first instinct was to go big and make a fully paved piece to fit snugly between the wings, integrated into the building itself. But then I remembered: storage is a thing. So I went for something way more minimal, but it still does the job:

Notre-Dame of Giza

Those of you who already know me will know I’m not a fan of scenery being just a LOS blocker. I like everything to have a purpose. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m building here, but one thing’s for sure, this isn’t a city. Not yet, anyway. These aren’t residential buildings, not homes. They’re clearly administrative, unmistakably Imperial. This is architecture meant to project power. That’s where the idea of banners and a plaza with a statue of some long-forgotten hero came in. Yeah, I know, there’s a bit too much green for proper Imperial vibes, but come on, indulge me, at this point I needed it.

I wanted to add some benches, but that was definitely pushing it too far

No, I’m not adding a name plaque

 Here’s a shot with a Warhound for scale — just so you can get a sense of the sheer size of this beast:

Now I realise I should have added an Adminsitratum icon somewhere

A final shot with all the pieces I've already painted:

Seriously, this is crazy

I haven’t finished all the buildings I started, but to be honest, the whole experience has left me a bit burnt out. I think I’ll park it for now, switch to something totally different for a bit, and come back to it later with fresh eyes. Look, the buildings are absolutely brilliant, the level of detail is stunning, but it’s seriously repetitive work on a very small scale. You’ve got to take it slow and chip away at it bit by bit.

I guess the smaller buildings you can see in the pic will eventually end up as parts of bigger structures, but for now I don’t have any solid plans. I want to keep experimenting with the bits I’ve got and build a proper Imperial admin district full of ridiculously monolithic nonsense. Then I’ll move on to that Manufactorum box. As for housing and other infrastructure, I’ll leave that for later, but as you can see, I’m definitely not ruling it out.

But that's for another day!