Mini Mart and Coffee Shop

06.30.2018

It's been almost 2 months since I first mentioned working on the TTCombat buildings. Beleive it or not it hasn't taken that long, I just keep going back and tweaking things.

The TTCombat buildings are more of a budget line of MDF building. That's not a bad thing. While I really like the 4Ground buildings, they can get a little pricey. Nice, but pricey. TTCombat would give me a chance to exercise my skills at nicing up some buildings. The first 2 commercial buildings in what constitutes my zombie apocalypse thus far.

At some point I'm going to have to explain the setting for my scenery and how it's not just for The Walking Dead.

The first building I worked on was the Convenience Store, well really a Mini Mart. I was shooting for a 7-11 color scheme thanks to a batch of spray paint that I picked up when Hobby Town USA was closing up. Honestly, how often am I going to get to use orange? I primed the interior and exterior white, masked off the middle and added some accent stripes of red and orange. It turned out pretty good. I then got cocky and tried putting a red strip along the top of the interior. Either I didn't mask it properly, or the paint just decided to bleed. It did not turn out well. I decided to go work on the second building while mulling over how to turn a messy red line into a happy mistake.

For the Coffee Shop I wanted to go with the overplayed Starbucks color scheme. The problem I would have to avoid is using too similar a green that I used on the Mini Mart roof. I thought I was going with a lighter green with the can of something Dodge Charger Green something something. I was going with a brighter green. Way brighter. but at least it wasn't the same! I stayed away from masking frenzy on the coffee shop. I started having fun adding printed out what not to the walls - a menu, random coffee propaganda. The kit came with a counter, table, and chairs, and it fleshed out the interior really well.

I returned to the Mini Mart after the coffee shop was done, and there may have been a sale at Hobby Lobby. To cover up the bleeding red line, I picked up some clearance duct tape that was lacking most duct qualities. It didn't stick very well. It was a decorative dark red. It was thin. No wonder it was on clearance. But it suited my needs as a replacement stripe to go along the top of the wall. I'd also been 3D printing shelves to go along the walls. I tweaked the settings of the shelves - I'd learned when getting furniture printed for the houses that the default "real" volume makes everything take up too much room. The first thing I did was change the shelves from 15mm depth to 6mm. Yes, that's tiny, but I wanted something with just a little relief on the walls - honestly I'd been thinking of just printing a picture of shelves to glue to the walls until I thought it'd be cool to use that printer I've got! The best part is... it worked! It took a while, as I printed out 15 shelving units that took anywhere from 2 hrs to 8 hrs (I was learning how to tweak things!) to print. Once they were primed, I figured grey was a good shelf color, and the random products painted I used the sticky tac to hold it all against walls or floor, where appropriate. I've got plenty of sticky tac as that's what I use to mount minis on blocks to hold when I go to paint them, yet most people use it to hold up posters. After the walls were lined with shelves, I decorated the otuside with some random sales propaganda. The Mini Mart turned out a lot better than it was looking when the coffee shop started.

I really need to work on some proper map tiles for these 2 stores. Parking with an entrance, and how to deal with the footprint of the buildings. I've been meaning to work on this for a while, but I keep putting it off.

Permalink 3D Printer gaming miniatures hobbies ttcombat

Police Force and Pringles Cans

06.08.2018

Branching out to a new line of molds, the Foundry Wargames police (Shotgun Cops and Street Cops) have been added to keeping the streets of Potham safe during the zombie apocalypse. More important, I finally unboxed the 3D Printer.

You're supposed to print some type of calibration trinket right after you plug in a 3D printer. I have no idea how to tweak anything a calibration do-hicky would show needed tweaking, so I went straight to printing something useful. At some point I saw add-ons for cans to make them look like tanks (storage, not armour) for wargames. My favorite showed a Pringles can with a lid replaced by a tank door/end. After looking on 3D file sites for "Pringles Can Tank Top" unsuccessfully, I ended up taking part of a model of a tank and just sizing it (80mm) and printing it. The end result turned out A LOT better than I thought for my 1st print. Even better, work has small can of Pringles that I can take when empty. I had 2 Pringles cans begging for printed material. As such, I printed away.

I've never painted a Pringles can before. It felt weird.

This is the first 10 from the Foundry list to mark off. Still making progress on that list!

Next up are a couple of TTCombat buildings, those same buildings I've been mentioning and putting off. Actually 1 of them is already made, I've just been behind on blog posting. The Convenience Store will a 7-11 motif will pop in to the zombie apocalypse, with the Coffee Shop to hopefully follow soon after. The Foundry version of the A-Team is also primed and ready for paint.

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