Mall Module 1

02.02.2012

I've been talking of making a mall gameboard for a few weeks (or has it been months). Today I finally got the 1st section finished. It still needs furniture, occupants, and bloodshed, but it's a start.

I was going to use the straight World Works Games Mayhem Mall, but once I started poking around the files I was a little disappointed that there were only 4 stores with interiors. I had dreams of grandeur with a fully accessable mall! After getting over my initial disappointment, I decided to use the Mayhem Mall as a template and to just make my own mall. There's plenty of graphics on the internet to steal from to make the mall I was thinking of!

So that's what I did. I went to the web and gathered up graphics for floors, walls, store signs, things to sell, etc. Then it was just a matter of pasting it all on top of the WWG correctly-sized walls and floors. Ok, it wasn't as straight forward as that, but who wants to get bogged down in details?

After weeks of surfing for graphics, hours of pasting and printing, and another hour or so of cutting and taping, I've got my first 3 stores. I kept Manuels from the Mayhem Mall set since I had been using that as my primary template. I added in a Lids hat store and a Spencers Gifts to round out the first 14"x11" piece of fiberboard that will serve as the basis for my modular mall. Next it's time to get to work on more modules. Modulars? Modules!

This is the first time I've delved into proper cardstock buildings. I've read tricks from various forums on how to make things look better. I obviously need to work on matching up corners and sides better, but I'm pleased with my first attempt. We'll see how module #2 compares once it's put together.

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Eeking out another Tuesday

02.01.2012

This Tuesday was another edition that focused on me making some tasty salads for Jerry and myself as we watched Lord of War (which was better than I remember it being, although that's not saying much). My designated hobby prep night has been free of hobbying and prepping of late.

That's not completely true. Monday and Tuesday I worked on a cheat sheet/house rules for Formula D, as we're supposed to be playing it next Wednesday. Formula D was played once back in 2010, hence the seen need for some house rules. Hopefully the new additions will make the game less likely for everyone to finish in the same order in which they start, but we'll see.

Today I went by Hobby Town and picked up more paint to apply to miniatures. I had a coupon for $10 off $50 that was getting ready to expire. I had been thinking of picking up one of the Warhammer 40K Valkyrie Gunships, but the model prices went up after Christmas and even with the discount it's cheaper to buy that one off Amazon. Paints, though, paints are always cheaper to buy in person.

I've got a couple of orders of miniatures coming in, finally branching off into some non-military figures. This means it's time to expand my palette of painting colors. I've had a decent selection of [dark] greens and browns, but I needed more. In particular, I've got some police figures coming in that I want to paint with an NYPD style - light blue shirt, darker pants and hat, so I needed a better range than the 1 shade of blue that I had.

By the time I was done picking out my variety of colors, I had 20 bottles of paint on the counter. That was 25% more than I estimated I would need for my coupon to be valid, but I went ahead and bought them all figuring I'll end up using them eventually. I'm enjoying painting, or maybe I'm enjoying getting ready to paint?

Now I've got to go get the first part of paper mall put together and see if I can squeeze out a useful update from it in the next day or two!

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Just a regular Tuesday... again

01.25.2012

This Tuesday for HobbyPrep night Jerry and I watched We Were Soldiers. You may ask "What does the 2002 Mel Gibson movie about Hal Moore have to do with prepping for hobbies?" and off the top of my head I couldn't give you a positive answer. Mainly we watched it because I watched Black Hawk Down over the weekend and the two movies pair together well. But still, there was a distinct lack of hobbying or prepping.

I fault that in part because my revamping of the Mayhem Mall to become the Zombie Mall (with more store interiors) is a lot more task heavy than just printing out the PDFs I have and magically folding/gluing everything together. I don't want all the stores looking the same, so I spent a lot of the last week stealing retrieving a wide assortment of wall textures off the Google. I continues that trend by finding things to put n those walls (don't want empty stores, they need to sell stuff!). Type "hanging clothes" into an image search and look through for pictures not at a skewed angle. It's fun! Especially around Hour 3!

I've also decided that instead of mounting individual stores on foamboard, I'm going to use the 15"x11" sheets I'm able to get at Staples and try putting together multiple stores/walkways per board, and then have the boards fit together modularly. I have a hard time cutting the foamboard in a straight line (both lengthwise and depth-wise) so I'm hoping this will save me some pain along the way.

Test Board 1 will have 3 stores, each running 5"x8". I've got the floor and wall textures for store #1 finished (a tweak on Manuels from the Mayhem Mall), but I need to have the other 2 stores ready before I start printing, cutting, and adhesing. The walls intertwine for added stability, so I want to make sure I don't leave one side hanging. I need to double check the heights of the printed walls since I've been resizing images, too.

The only event I can see holding me up before next Tuesday is the Royal Rumble this Sunday. Matt and I haven't ordered a PPV since last year's Rumble (going to Wrestlemania 27 means we didn't order it, hah!). My wrestling interest has been waning of late - I've been watching part of the Monday night show every other week. Usually Wrestlemania Season (which starts at the Rumble, although Jason said last weekend he's already been on 2 site trips to Miami) picks up my interest.

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Tues Hobby Night Just Tues

01.18.2012

I had good intentions got some game-related paper modelling on Tuesday night, but a weather front induced cold/headache/sinus thingy prevented me from doing pretty much anything. It's like I felt congested, but without actually stopping up. If I had been running a fever I would have thought I was catching a flu since my body ached all over. Today I'm feeling a little better, just tired.

With that said, I did do a little paper model investigating last night. My first project is to make a mall for zombie attacks. It made a good movie and at least 1 board game expansion, so I need a mall to cause mayhem in. Fitting the bill would be the appropriately named Mayhem Mega Mall from World Works Games. I bought this around Thanksgiving as WWG was running a pretty good sale. I haven't put anything together yet, but I've printed out everything needed for one of the stores (Manuels) for what was supposed to be Tuesday night's hobby construction time.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to notice, but the Mayhem Mall only has 4 stores with interiors. There are closed up store fronts, but you get a clothing store, record store, eatery, and a pet store. I want more of a mall to walk through, so it looks like I've already got plans to modify some graphics before I've constructed the first bit.

Now I just have to whip up a Camelot Music and Chess King and I'll be open for business!

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Tues Night Wrap Up #2

01.12.2012

This past HobbyPrep Tuesday I was joined in the boonies by Jer, who brought a bucket of zombies to paint. I was actually glad Jer came by, because I wasn't in much of a mood to hobby prep. I had been working on the World Works Games paper model buildings and trying to figure out the best way to use magnets to hold things in place - others have done this and it makes for cleaner construction as well as being easier to store. After a couple of different approaches I had failed each time and was a little bummed/burned out. That may be the key to HobbyPrep Tuesdays - don't keep prepping the rest of the week!

While I didn't have anything new to work on, there were still a couple of figures from last week to finish up. I had mounted one of the jungle fighters on a 1"X2" base thinking it would be fun to play around with the flocking on the base. In addition, I had my first zombie stripper and a chainsaw wielding hottie that needed their bases finished.

Jerry was still zombie painting after I had done the base flocking I was after, so I went ahead and dug out the figures from last week. Even though the details weren't as visible as I had hoped, I still thought I could salvage a little something more out of these. I went back with a fine-tipped (005) brown pen and traced over contours of muscle and seams. That brought out a lot more detail, especially when looking from normal sitting height to the table. I kept playing around and gave a couple fighter beards, which caused me a heft guffaw the first time I did it since I was amazed that it looked as good as it did.

Now I'm going to intentionally not do anything hobby-related for a day or two. I might prime some metal figures, but that's it. And most of that is waiting for the primer to dry before flipping them over to get full coverage. Although I do have most of the parts ready to make the first store of the paper model mall.

No no no, that's getting ahead of myself!

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