Building a world on a budget
My urban construction has been ticking along quite well. After finishing two street tiles, I thought I would turn my hand to a building. I thought I would be able to get it finished in August, but things just didn’t work out, and I didn’t manage to get it done until 1 September.
Project eight: A biscuit box building
Construction
The pair of terrace shops started their life as the lid from a box of biscuits, whose shape and size seemed perfect for my urban tiles.
The first thing I had to do was give the box a little more structural strength by gluing some supports into it. I used some offcuts of foam board for the supports. Like the Wombles, I don’t really want anything to go to waste.
I am not the most precise of people, which is why I wanted a box lid, as it gave me a regular shape to work with. Once I was happy that the box could hold up to the rigours of the tabletop, I drew up a plan of the building on paper. I tried to make the most of the square edges that the paper gave me to stop the building from being too wonky when I was drawing the plan.
With my plan in hand, I transferred the design onto the sides of the box lid, and then I used styrene to frame the building out. I had hoped that this would give me a precise, regular building that was true, but sadly I was not as precise as I thought I had been. Framing the building out was a mistake, which I didn’t realise until I moved on to the next stage and tried to clad the building with plasticard.
The cladding was a complete pain. I wish that I could think of something positive to say about this stage, but it was just very frustrating. At least I won’t make the same mistake again. My idea to frame the building first made it really hard to cut the plasticard into the right shape. It was all compounded by my less-than-stellar measuring, which made it impossible for me to get any of the cladding to fit flush with each other. I persevered with it, but by the end I thought that it looked like a right dog’s dinner.
Being really unhappy with the exterior look of the building, I thought that the best idea would be to cover it with modelling putty. I chose Tamiya Smooth Finish Modelling Putty, but other brands would also work. I use Tamiya putty because I am used to how it works, and it is the most readily available where I live. The putty work took the best part of an evening to do, but it saved the building for me. While I waited for the putty to dry, I used the time to make the doors out of plasticard.
I forgot to mention in the previous section that the roof surface was made from very fine-grit sandpaper. I really like the texture it has once it has been painted.
The overall paint scheme was fairly simple. I started by undercoating the building in white, then I gave it a base coat of Vallejo Desert Yellow. On top of the base coat, I first sponged on a layer of Dark Sand, and I finished it off with a layer of Ivory. The doors and the window frames were also given three different layers of paint in green and brown.
Once the paint had dried, I added the downpipes and signboards. I learnt another lesson here, one that I already knew but somehow slipped my mind: painted surfaces are not very good for getting a strong bond when gluing things together. I ended up having to scrape off the paint from the areas where I was sticking things to. It wasn’t much more work, but I could have avoided it pretty simply.
The next thing I did was to wash the whole building with Agrax Earthshade. The wash really helped to bring out the texture and details on the building.
The final detailing on the building was what was going to turn it from an okay piece on my table into a pretty good piece. I started by finishing the windows using some leftover pieces of UV-cut sheet that I had put on the glass doors of my apartment. I like the reflective blue effect that they give to the side and rear windows.
I had planned to just put some names on the signboards using transfers, but Uglub had been following the progress of my build on his Discord channel and kindly offered to make some artwork for me. If you are unaware of Uglub’s work, I can recommend his YouTube channel Uglub`s Armoury; it is a great source of inspiration for tabletop gaming. This artwork was the finishing touch that my building needed.
Now I need to get back to making some more streets, so that I have somewhere to place this building.
