Replacement for Ertl plastic powerhouse.

A client sent me an HO scale Ertl kit, the Easton Mill. It consists of two plastic buildings, but the sculpt, fit and factory paint-and-weathering on them... let's see, how to say this nicely... it's not up to my standards.

I talked my client into allowing me to build the power house as a cardstock model. I pulled all the dimensions from the Ertl kit and then made it in The Gimp.

Here it is.

Stereoscopic View

 

The main part of the building is inkjet-printed cardstock laminated onto museum board. I used Clever Models textures, as usual. I laminate with the cheapest spray adhesive I can find, which happens to be Aleen's Tacky Spray. (I'll have to do a proper how-to post on this technique when I find the time.)

The most painstaking part of this build: I cut out the doors and windows, then painted the thick edges of the holes with neutral grey acrylic, then I used brown, yellow and grey gouache paints to touch up the edges to match the stones.

I tried a new technique for the steps; I made the bottom tread part of the base of the building. That way, there's no chance of the steps falling off if the structure is handled roughly. Once I had the steps assembled, I treated the edges with cyanoacrylate glue and sanded the edges. 

The original model included a boiler out front, and I replicated it with two caps from Trader Joe's disposable pour-over coffee brewers, along with some brass tubing scraps and bits of museum board.

All in all, a quick and fun project.

Papercraft Chimneys

I got frustrated trying to saw a notch in some plastic HO scale chimneys, so I decided to make my own.

I started with the working drawings from the Great Northern Historical Society's Modelers' Pages (#392, "Section Houses and Facilities.")

I'd already enlarged the image to use as a template for making walls and roofs, so I just scanned my enlargement at 100% as a starting point. I opened The Gimp, and used one of Clever Models' excellent brick textures to make a simple box with a notch on the bottom. I used that scan of the enlargement to get the size and shape of the chimney correct. I inkjet printed the result on matte photo cardstock, along with a partial sheet of just the brick texture. I cut and assembled the chimneys, adding strips of heavy black cardstock to the interior as I folded, to give it a little thickness. I touched up the edges with gouache paint as I went along. I cut two strips from the brick texture -- one strip was three bricks wide, the other, one brick wide -- and I wrapped them around the chimneys near the top.

The first chimney must have taken about 45 minutes to make, and I messed it up badly and threw it out. By the time I'd made three, they all looked uniformly nice and my time dropped to about 15 minutes for each.

Here is one of the chimneys test-fitted to the roof I completed earlier.

 I opted to scratch-build these four models for my client rather than buy and assemble four GNHS kits, since it's actually a savings for him -- cutting the pieces myself and assembling them takes only slightly more time than merely assembling a kit. This also means the money I would have spent on the kits -- which are about $25 each -- goes directly in my pocket. Another advantage to me is: I only charge the client for the time spent on the buildings I make for him, and I track my time very carefully, so as I go along, I can make a fifth model on my own time and at my own expense, and sell it to another client later.

Clever Models Gorre Engine House in N Scale, Day 1

Spent most of the day working on these windows for the Clever Models Gorre Engine House. I still need to make the interior trim (because this is a building you can see into) and the skylights. I decided to work on windows first, because I was experimenting, and I wasn't sure how they would turn out -- I didn't want to be nearly finished with the building and have no way to make decent windows.

Penny for scale.

The mullions are inkjet printed on transparency film, while the trim is cardstock which I soaked in cyanoacrylate before cutting. This made it easier to avoid overcutting because the cardstock is a little tougher and more like plastic. 

While the building would look better with several windows open, I decided that one was enough, because it was really difficult to do. 

My new Glue Looper tools proved very useful today. They're little doodads that fit in an X-Acto handle and give you a tiny metal loop you can use to transfer CA glue to tiny spots. I clamped the transparencies to the frames with wee clothespins, dipped the Glue Looper into a drop of CA, gently touched the edge of the transparency -- and just the right amount of glue seeped between the parts through capillary action. Slick!

I stopped shortly after taking this photo because the CA was misbehaving as I soaked window frames, and it began dripping onto my workspace. It was just a matter of time before I glued my fingers together, which, surprisingly, I didn't do all afternoon. Thank you, Glue Looper!

Stereoscopic N Scale Hotel Railing

Just started experimenting with toughening up paper using thin cyanoacrylate. This allows me to cut very, very fine detailed parts without the cardstock delaminating. Here's a balcony railing from an Old-West type building.

I came up with a technique for curing the the cyanoacrylate quickly. I hold the uncut piece in one of the clamps of my Helping Hands tool, and apply the thin super glue along the back of the paper, so it wicks in. Then, because the catalyst that makes cyanoacrylate set is moisture, I just put a steaming cup of water under the piece, and let the rising vapors do the work. 30 seconds or so, and it's ready.

 If I don't do this, I've found myself looking at the piece stuck to my finger.

Ghost Signs for Cardstock Models using The Gimp

Inspired by the Fading Ad Blog, I tried my hand at creating a couple ads to drop onto a Clever Models texture sheet.

 

The Harold Lloyd sign on the top may seem unlikely -- why have a painted sign for a movie that might only run a few weeks? -- but it is based on an actual sign re-discovered a few years ago in Vancouver, B.C. when another building was torn down.

Seems the theater owner knew a building was going up and decided he could splash out with a painted sign. I changed a few things like the theater name and some colors, but I tried to match the fonts fairly closely.

 The second is my very liberal interpretation of an actual sign; the real sign used much less decorative fonts. This is always a decision you get to make when you're designing -- do I want it to look authentically old-time, or should I go for more of a modern idea of what "old-timey" is supposed to look like? Generally, the past was less fancy than we think, but sometimes I throw reality to the wind, because I like to fool around with fonts.

Here is how they look when I drop them on top of the Clever Models texture and lower the opacity of the sign layer.

 If I'm modeling a later era, I can lower the opacity still more to simulate further fading.

I got to fooling around with this, and decided I wanted to create the effect of a recently painted wall, which would make sense with that Harold Lloyd sign, since it was only supposed to be visible for a short time. Creating this effect is tricky using this technique -- by the time you drop the opacity just enough to see the wall (around 75% to 80%) you've created the illusion the paint has faded for quite a number of years.  But it's not impossible. The first step of the workaround is this:

(1) Copy two parts of the brick background that correspond to the areas covered by the painted signs, and (2) paste them as a new layer. Then (3) desaturate the colors to bring them down to greyscale, (4) invert them to make the dark areas light and light areas dark, and finally (5) adjust the brightness and contrast to make the shadows really pop.

Now when you make the translucent sign layer visible on top of this "white paint," it causes the the whites and light colors appear freshly painted, but you can still see a brick texture through them.

Naturally, all this works with Photoshop, too.