Welcome to my blog, the story of my continuing journey into the World of Zombie Wargames.

Monday 3 August 2015

New Build

BOM Downtown Office.
You may think the title should read new building (I've no doubt you've looked through the photographs first and seen 'a building'),  but as I worked on this it started to take on a life of its own. The idea did start off as a single building, but I realised that it could be viewed as three building 'stuck together'.
The picture on the right shown the original two sheets of the WorldWorksGames BOM (Bits of Mayhem) Downtown Office which was the start of this build.
It could of course had been a straight-forward build with little effort, four walls and a door would have been adequate enough for a reasonable sized building (the two sheets shown above fit easily onto an A3 sheet for example).
Main building
On the other hand a little bit of jiggery-pokery with photoshop makes for a far more interesting (and larger) building.
Most wargame building are smaller than I prefer and couple that with the size of bases most gamers seem to opt for it makes them look even smaller.
I decided to enlarge the buildings using the original two WWG sheets.
The changes to what would be the front of the building can be seen in the bottom right of picture on the left.
I've increased the width of the building by two windows and added a vertical strip at each edge, rather than having the neatly cut edge of the original.
Similarly, what would be the rear of the building has been modified so that the ground floor now as a pair of doors marked 'Fire Exit' (seen in the top right), the remaining portion of the ground floor rear wall being 'blanked of with panels, cut and
 pasted from other bits of the original sheets.
 The second part of this build was originally intended to be an annex to the main building above and was given a few similar features.
The walls all have similar additions of extra windows; in this case 'blocks' of three windows instead of the two-three-two arrangement of the original and the 'front' door windows are not of the dark variety, but have been cut and pasted from the lighter ones.
This was originally intended as an add-on to the original main block and the second main entrance was an afterthought (more of which later).
The Fire Exit doors were also  added, but this time in the centre of the longer building  side , as can easily be seen in the photograph to the right.
Working from just two very similar sheets proved to be quite a difficult task making any significant variations. The fire doors came either from another WWG set or possibly from a Fat Dragon model, but I can't remember which.
Second 'Wing'
A second annex, or probably more accurately, wing to the building was also always going to be added, but what started out as a duplicate of the one above grew a life of its own when I discovered that I had far more pieces of one type than I did of another. This error of mine was due mainly to the time lapsed between being able to work on this build and getting the printing done.
I put it down mainly to my complete confusion as to what pieces I had asked for, which ones I needed and which ones I had got.
The most notable feature of this 'wing' is that the longer sides are based on the main building's front and rear  pieces (count the windows on each floor), whilst the front has to be re-designed to fit the main building - if this hadn't been done I would have had walls abutting directly onto windows, which would have looked complete pants.
Bonus building made from left-overs
You may have noticed that the photograph above shows only four sides, again this is a as a result of the confusion of what I had printed and what I needed printing, leaving me needing one more building side, which will be rectified this week (hopefully). The result of all this was that I had several bits left over from the various mistakes I'd made (including the very first cut I made being in the wrong place). However, I realised that these various left- overs could be utilised into making yet another building! (Shown in the photograph on the right).
Roof Trim and roof-top building
Luckily (?) I'd also managed to print off an extra sheet of roofing which should fit the 'extra' unplanned building.
The remaining pieces needed were the roof-trim  for the inside of the roof 'balcony'.
The roof trims available from the WWG set weren't adequate for the job and I designed some, once more, from the original two sheets as well as a small roof -rop building that would act as a roof entrance/ exit.
Of the actual flat-top roof bits, three are plain grey concrete monstrosities  but the one for the main building has a helipad.
The most interesting of the roofs
Over the last week I only managed to really snag two  days during which I could work on this, but I did manage to buy glue (and I've already gone through three of the five tubes already), to glue down the  various print-outs (after black edging them) to foamboard (of which I've used three A1 sheets so far) and cut them all out. Considering this was done despite two hospital visits, some minor surgery (and the constant administering of painkillers over the weekend as a result), I think this has made some inroads into my inactivity of late.

That's it for this week and with a bit of luck I'll get the last print-out that I need this week and get started on assembling all the bits together - fingers crossed.

I've also updated my other blog, which can be seen here. 



14 comments:

  1. Nice customization of the originals they will fill a decent chunk of table :)

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    1. Thanks Brummie, you're right about how much space the final model will occupy when all three of the main pieces come together - four foot by two foot should do the trick.

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    1. Thanks Michael, but nothing oriiginal I'm afraid.

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  3. Nice use of the building parts. This should make a nice addition to the table!

    I hope you get feeling better soon (and just get better!)

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    1. Thanks N667, I'll refrain from commenting on whther or not it's a good use of resources until I getit on the table!

      I'm feeling a bit better each day but I'll be happier when I'm completely off the painkillers! Thanks for asking.

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  4. If I ever need a run down office block I now know where to get one. It looks great in component form and I shall enjoy seeing it erected and on the table.

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    1. Thanks Clint, I hope the ends justify the work done so far - it will be a big model though.

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  5. Nice work Joe! You do like your urban builds and that's a corker. Looking forward to seeing it completed.

    I hope your recovery is a speedy one.

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    1. Thanks Bob, on both counts, but at y age I never do anything speedy!
      My urban office-type terrain is just about complete and I'll be turning my hand to another subruban/rural scratch build or maybe a Shopping mall ?

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  6. Is the interior playable ? Will you add staircases and (functional) elevators ? ;-) Just kidding.
    Nice piece of terrain you got/made here !

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  7. Hi Ulu, unfortunately the interior won't be playable, (unlike some of my other buildings) but I am thinking of making interior plans to play on.

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  8. For the risk of sounding cheesy yet again, I just have to keep pointing out how awesome you are with your terrain work. I understand fiddling with the photoshop is "easy", but I can imagine I'd be messing it up at some point sooner or later.

    The town you are building for yourself with these huge buildings, albeit unplayable, is coming out fantastic and it can only be my job to keep pointing that out. One day, I'll have one just like it, but with less paper!

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    1. Thanks Mattyoo; photoshop is 'easy' once you've bee at it for a year or so ! I still keep making stupid errors with the things I try and this build has been no different. I also realised a good while ago that there's no point in having a lot of interior detail in buildings that will never be used - good shortcut !

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