Ads of the future

I've been thinking lately, and I've come to a resolution. I need to place some ads on the blog.

...

More exactly on the buildings of my board :D

When I posted this pic some weeks ago it was so obvious:

Fifty shades of grey

This city looks too dull and dark. You could argue there's nothing wrong with that given that, even in a RT setting, all the WH40K environment is supposed to look gritty and gloomy. Yes, I'm OK with that and it's an essential part of the ambientation. But that doesn't mean I have to play on a boring board! Part of this project is bringing a city to life, not having just a generic board with generic obstacles. Visually I need this board to have some more colour, and background wise I need it to look like a real city (or at least as a plausible one; I pretty much prefer that adjective). Dark, anguishing, oppressive, yes whatever you want. But part of modern life in any urban environment is advertising. That works for sci-fi too.

I had done one sign when I made my follow-on milk building, so I just had to follow the path:

This actually exists, it's Chinese toothpaste. Honestly

I then rescued a couple of pieces I had forgotten. When I got my LaserCutcard buildings, they both had huge billboards, but I never placed them, as I didn't know what to do exactly. Now it was time for it. I gathered a few card tokens. All of them actual labels from clothing (the wife got kinda suspicious when I volunteered to take all those card pieces apart for her...). They are rigid enough and some even have nice shapes. I then painted over them and got this:

Suber art unleashed

Well, I didn't need them to look nice or realistic. They didn't have to accomodate to our current vision of advertising nor even look visually pleasant. They serve a purpose, which is giving the impression of actual ads in a sci-fi context.You may notice a Blue Sun sign and other Mandarin inscriptions. If I ever dare to begin my Firefly/Serenity project, I wanna get sure I have some proper settings ;)

OK, so now they need some weathering. That's the dirty Warhammer touch. The first big billboard is one of the LaserCutCard ones. I wrote Ludi (Games in Latin Gothic, for a correct 40K ambientation) on one side and the same in Mandarin (according to Google Translator) on the other. If any Chinese speaker ever reads me, please correct my mistakes!

Ain't a rusty, dirty sign a perfect invitation for games and fun?

I'm not even trying to pronounce that

I really didn't know what to advertise on the other big billboard. I thought of a giant Arbites sign and something in the "we are watching" mood; but I thought it would be preposterous being the size this sign is. I went for something more universal...

Adeptus Mechanicus approved. It also works fine for any post-apoc setting

For all the rest I used pieces of card, as told before. No serious planning, just the first thing that came to mind for each one:

Oppidum. Obviously a construction company

I've used the white/orange scheme before, so I thought it would be OK relating it to some port company

Absolute retro looking. No idea of what I'm advertising, but seems to work here

Kind of an late 80's/early 90's look. Works for me

The label was already 'B' shaped. If it's good enough for real stuff, it's good enough for me

My concession to Firefly

All this large space just for this. Less is more

Oh, come on! This is totally justified and needed

They needed somewhere to stand. Cheap & easy solutions, as always. For example:

Others were made of wood pieces and rubbish stuff

So the final result was like this:

Casual bystander for scale

They all look like reliable companies and products

Not only I can use them for my urban setting, but for any post apoc wasteland fallen into oblivion

They were supposed to encourage customers. Yikes

Oops! I didn' t take a solo pic of the one below

Sorry, yesterday I had no time to deploy my whole board and buildings again for a proper shot. What I did is just taking a pic of some buildings so you can have an idea:

When on a complete board these are supposed to look better

Of course this is but an approach, I'd like to make some more stuff in this fashion. I'm thinking of signs hanging on the walls. They are much more usual to see and will also add visual impact.

From Ghost in the Shell. You get an idea of what I envision in my mind

 This is all for now. The town keeps on growing...

Metro line inauguration

Well, this is finally coming to an end :) After some deliberation, the monorail is finished.

You'll see that the paintjob is quite rough this time. I really wanted to get this ready and move along to more pending projects. This is going to be a piece of scenery (though quite a significant one!), so won't get as much attention as the characters. So the gritty appearance doesn't bother me this time.

I finally used the servitor head for the driver:

Anyway, the coach will need some further touches

Cut some blisters for the windows and that was pretty much all it needed!

Ready to depart

Ready for some oldschool train robbery

Next thing to think about was the railway and the pillars. Easy thing, just spray all over and that's all!! I added some posters and signs to add some colour.

Urban jungle

Really shouldn't do this on the sill...

Well! Time to see how this fits on the board!!

Enough for two railways and I still have three pillars left. Damn, this is big

I'll add some more stuff so you get an idea of the real size of this (the board is 120x120 cm, 4x4').

OK, it's official. I need a bigger board.

If I deploy all my buildings and minis, won't have a game. I'll have a protest

Well, at least it gives the impression of an overcrowded hive, I guess that was the purpose!

Jokes apart, I'm happy with the whole monorail structure, it gives another dimension to the board, the 3D approach is usually underrepresented, as is the interaction with moving objects. I think this can be a funny element for quite a number of games!

Waiting for the train

I'm still greenstuffing muties. Desperately long and slow process. In the meanwhile, when the greenstuff is curing, I can take some other projects back. One of them is a big box full of MDF kits I got ages ago. MadMechaGuy makes some really sexy scenery (15 and 28 mm) and quite reasonably priced too. I got a number of kits and I hadn't even begun with any of them.

I decided to start with a different, iconic piece. The elevated monorail station. I fell in love with it when I first saw the piece. I thought it would fit in my urban setting.

Ehhm. You may need better pics

Unfortunately I didn't take any WIP pics. That is because of a reason. The kit is sweet, but I'm afraid the assembly process is not the most intuitive one (I'm being polite). The fact is that you don't get any instructions and your only reference are a couple of partial pics on his web. I mean, I'm no new to the MDF kits world, and I've spent some time assembling some pieces of scenery from a number of manufacturers. But man, it took me some time to make this work. So sorry, I didn't take pics as I was just trying to guess what was where.

The painting was ultra easy. Green spray all over, and grey for the floor. That's it. For the weathering I recurred to my old trick. Lacking an airbrush, I used primer spray of different colours. That made it look dirty, as you can see above!

Then it was time to customise it a bit. The kit is a great main body (despite the assembly problems) but it needed my personal touch to make it fit in my ambientation.

 

Station props made of card

I added some rust effects and additional weathering and it begun to look like this:

The station is really big!

The access ramp is too steep, I'm afraid

I added a sign at the entrance with the name of the station, using MDF spare parts.

The ticket validator is an old stormbolter magazine from the Leman Russ kit

The final touch was adding some signs and posters, from the collection I have already used (still uncredited, if you happen to know the source, I'll be glad to edit the post):

Why are we waiting for the train? We don't even have a railway!

There is some space for ads I could use here...

The main kit is complete with these two shelters. The first one is for the ticket vending machines:

One works, the second one has an error blue screen, the third is out of order. Usual stuff

More signs on the rear part

The other one is just a bus stop/plain shelter/whatever. I simply glued some signs front and back. Here you have both of them:



The moment I'm taking the pic I'm realizing...

...I glued all the signs upside down on one of the shelters. F$#@&

So this is the main part of the train project. I still have to put stuff together for the railway and the train itself. You know, I'll be jumping from this to any other of my open projects randomly. I hope it doesn't take too long!

Colour up the town

Time to bring some colour upon the crazy big building I showed you last week. Ehm. Well, that colour will be mostly dark grey. Ahem.

First step is just spray it all over. I also created some dirt effects and stuff with different sprays. In the pic below you can see I also had hand painted the window frames.

Looks like a cozy place to live in, sure

The process here is really very simple. I painted the windows (I had to use a darker tone than usual, as the building was asking for a gloomy, dready aspect) and added some pretty basic graffiti. I also used some street signs and ads (I got them from the internet ages ago; I've been trying to source them back again and I haven't been able to do so. If anyone knows where these came from, I'll gladly credit the guy who offered them; thanks!)

Roughly 30x30cm. About 20 cm high

Bulky stuff indeed!

The tiny stuff is what really makes any project come true. So I think it's worth of trying to add small details here and there. You have to reach a balance point, of course. I'm not trying to recreate a perfect, movie-standard reproduction of anything, but just to achieve an interesting piece of scenery, above the dull ubiquitous ruin-stuff.

The compromise between quick'n'cheap and some appearance

A touch of colour!

Let's go for some close-ups. The archway stairs:

Gloomy!

I also added some wiring. Not as chaotic as I intended, but I'm learning and will hopefully improve in the future. I tried to show some messy electrical stuff over the streets. Just my first experiment.

I'll be needing some more meters of that!!

I also added a religious icon over the arch (from the Bretonnian command group). It enhanced the medieval aspect of it, a Saint's image over the entrance; you can find stuff like this in several actual medieval gates and I thought it wasn't out of place.

Eclectic, yoou may say

Urban art and graffiti also played a role here, that's the modern-ish approach here.

Bloody Eagle. Imperium is not that well perceived here...

An Arbites. Ha-ha. So funny.

Colour? Someone here is... happy? The Governor will not suffer that!

A few posters come from this wonderful NASA link. Right, a number of retro-futuristic images, totally delightful. For example:

You may have noticed another ones, more WH40K specific. I designed them, thought it would be fun. I had to make an English version (so the pun was recognizable) and then a Latin Gothic translation, as it seemed logic that the Imperium printed this in the official language:

Well, so this is it. I've learned some things about what to repeat and what not to do ever again, hehe. It's been a fun project, so I pretend to do some more buildings in this fashion. But first I still have to attend the lead mountain!