Charles Noreese

06.16.2021

Today's update is another bit of a change from normal posts. Instead of a whole batch of minis showing up painted, there's one. The Not Chuck Norris from Studio Miniatures. While I had primed a batch of minis when working on the last mall update, I decided it was time to focus on just 1 mini instead of cranking out a batch since I haven't been overly pleased with my last few painting attempts. Chuck made it to the front to get painted, mainly because there weren't any hard to reach spots on the mini, and thanks to the painted pic on the Studio Miniatures site I wouldn't have to pick colors myself.

Using the reference pic worked well. Granted, my paint job isn't nearly as good as what the pros make (my pockets lack stitching) but looking at my version next to the pro version... not bad.

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The second floor nobody can reach

06.02.2021

For fun I decided to put the pieces of the mall together to (1) see what I've got while (2) making sure I wasn't missing anything. While I don't have enough 1st floor stores to support all of the 2nd floor stores, it looks like I'm ok. I've now got a mall where you can't reach the 2nd floor. I'll lower the rent on 2nd floor store space.

Is it ok to have a short post? I sure hope so.

Permalink 4ground-mall

More Empty Stores

05.31.2021

After waiting so long for an update last time I found myself oddly motivated to crank out more empty store space. As it is, these 3 are the last "stores" for the mall. Everything else is specialty areas - like a food court. And bathrooms.

To mix up the floor plans, I left the office off of these 3 stores. I did a better job of filling over the gaps in the wall where the extra wall slides in. It's still not perfect, but it's an improvement over my previous attempt. Plastic-Wood filler and sanding it down again, but this time I made sure to over-fill the hole a little more, so that sanding it down would better cover the lines of the gap. I also put a strip of painters tape on the back for support, instead of just using the mat I paint and glue on.

Out side of that, there wasn't really anything special for building these.

I had primed a batch of 7 Studio Miniatures minis when I finished the last round of mall buildings. I've yet to touch those. There's specialty areas remaining for the mall: 2 double-wide areas (food court and bathrooms) and 2 single-wide (security office and loading dock). All of these come setup to sit on the first floor. I'm not sure if putting these together will fit in my current mode of building the basic structure and leaving the details to fill in until later.

And with that, there's no telling what the next post will contain.

Permalink 4ground-mall work

Empty Second Floor Stores

05.25.2021

After waiting so long for an update last time I found myself oddly motivated to crank out more empty store space. As it is, these 3 are the last "stores" for the mall. Everything else is specialty areas - like a food court. And bathrooms.

To mix up the floor plans, I left the office off of these 3 stores. I did a better job of filling over the gaps in the wall where the extra wall slides in. It's still not perfect, but it's an improvement over my previous attempt. Plastic-Wood filler and sanding it down again, but this time I made sure to over-fill the hole a little more, so that sanding it down would better cover the lines of the gap. I also put a strip of painters tape on the back for support, instead of just using the mat I paint and glue on.

Out side of that, there wasn't really anything special for building these.

I had primed a batch of 7 Studio Miniatures minis when I finished the last round of mall buildings. I've yet to touch those. There's specialty areas remaining for the mall: 2 double-wide areas (food court and bathrooms) and 2 single-wide (security office and loading dock). All of these come setup to sit on the first floor. I'm not sure if putting these together will fit in my current mode of building the basic structure and leaving the details to fill in until later.

And with that, there's no telling what the next post will contain.

Permalink 4ground-mall

Lackluster Minis

04.13.2021

This is somewhat a lackluster of updates. Hobby list items got checked off as done, but that feels about like the extent of it.

10 more minis from no particular game got painted, but this batch seemed to lack detail. It could have been that I primed, and felt obligated to paint, 10 minis at once instead of the batch size of 5-6 that I usually do. Let that be a lesson to myself - even if I say I'm going to prime a bunch and then paint them in smaller batches.... I'm not. The 1 plus from this go around is that I think I finally got the formula for what to use as "concrete" on the bases will be:

• Black base coat.
• Contrast Apothecary White with a widely frayed brush
• Contrast Gryph-Charger Grey with a widely frayed brush
• Nuln Oil wash to finish it off.

It's still pretty dark for a concrete, but it's as close to what I want as I've been able to get.

The last of the single-width mall stores I had put together received their store signs and some interior shelves. The shelves are once of those things that's seen tweaks during each iteration. The latest is 0.06 mm styrene used as the shelves. The longer lengths work better than craft sticks/toothpicks. Measure + cut + cement glue, then prime and glue it to the printout of product. I don't have the patience for the shelves that came with the kits, and this gives some added scenery without taking up too much floor space needed by minis to scurry around.

Permalink 4ground-mall gaming miniatures