So I've been playing with a laser cuter and finally finished my first building. It's still fairly basic, but the primary goal was to make a digital kit that let me build any shape of building I want. I still need to work on the doors. My first door design flopped, but wide gates and windows worked out ok, but still has room for improvement. They all have removable inserts to block LOS. I intend on painting the the windows with shades of blue the next time I pull out the air brush. It needs a bit of color. This paint job was just rattle cans. I wanted the design to make it so I can get the basics built quickly and then work on the fluffy details (signs, etc). I also wanted to have non-boxy buildings, currently 90% of the terrain out there are just rectangles, and are fairly template friendly. I don't think I'll be able to go back until next week to print more. But at this stage I've fairly confident that everything printed will fit together properly. In a week or so I'll start working on some fluffy bits.
I was able to get a bit more work done this week. Here are my Food court, picknic table and dumpster. I usually don't photo anything until its at least primed, but the weather here is most rain for a couple days. I fully admit I need to add signs and weather on these before its fully finished. Does anyone have ideas for more scatter. I want to try and get away from crates and shipping containers.
I designed them from scratch, and haven't seen any on the market. Unless you want 10 for 100$ + shipping, I'm not too interested in trying to sell these. My current designs are not designed to be market friendly. They aren't designed to stay on the board to ship, currently everything is fully cut in the machine, and I have a pile of bits to pick up. I toyed with the idea of making a small business for this (once design quality got better), but because my designs as a mix of 3mm and 1mm (doors & windows) the time to print is too long compared to whats on the market. I may just share the designs once I'm done.
My status so far. My V2 of the doors failed and need to redo those AGAIN. I also want to make some billboards, and freestanding walls which should be fairly simple. Once that's done I think I can plan out the entire table. So far I have a Warehouse, and food court. I need ideas for other building and can use suggestions. I know I want: Garage, 12x6, 2 garage doors and a side office. I'm tempted to put in a bathroom in back. But I'll have to design a toilet for it to make sense. It would make for interesting weathering challenge. 2 connected stores (strip mall style). I can make a couple variations on this. Travel agency (paradiso travels) and something else. After taking this photo I think I need to redo the outside stairs, It needs landing on the top level. Otherwise it needs to stick straight out of the building to line up.
Looking good! Fountains, narrow planter boxes, square planter boxes, even round planter boxes (but those are usually best 'acquired' from things like cheap plastic chess sets with the chesspiece cut off). Then you get into things like vending machines, mailboxes, light posts, parking meters, cars, ...
Here is my update for this week. I redid the doors and windows. Mostly done but I found a slight error in the exterior door frames. I made them a little too tall, but I'm not wasting the ones already cut. Some interior scatter to add flavor. The billboards frames are decent (forgot to photo). I'll need to grab some cars and truck to add to the garages. I tried to do a porta-potty but I don't think its very good and will stop at one. At this point I think I have 60-70% coverage, If I do 2 more largish building I'll have a full table. Once thats done I'll pull out the air brush and start weathering them.
I set up a table to get an idea of whats missing, and pulled out a couple accent pieces that would fit this table. I figure 2 more buildings,1 more food stand (so i can have 2 park areas), a couple more park benches, and I'll have to look for some decent cars and trucks to round it out. I may look into some small mats to add streets and parks to add more color to the table. I started some thin planter boxes, but need to grab some cheap plants to finish it off. Long term I want to remove the cargo containers. For game play purposes I need to make a silhouette for a tree, just to have a way of defining a trees edge for LOS. Any suggestions.
