Tabletop Geeks » Buildings

First House Attempt [round 1]

tewfik — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:17:59 +0000

Final structure with broken walls

FINALLY!!! Now that we have a finalized idea for our Flagstone, we can start building buildings and other terrain features to fill the blocks for the table.

So far the first building has turned out well, although I built it completely backwards. For starters I glued the entire house together before cutting out the windows, or “breaking” the walls, which just made it more time consuming then if I had cut them out when the walls were still flat.

Currently the house is very clean looking and still missing many details, I plan to add more trimwork around the walls, and I have already started making the the floor look like wood planks, as well as trimming the corner pieces slightly so they dont look so perfect (which will be seen in the next post).

The Bottom Floor of the building

Floor for the second level

[caption id="attachment_598" align="aligncenter" width="650" caption="Slit in second floor"][/caption]

Floor installed into slit of second floor

Full second floor

Both floors resting on cobblestone

Setting up the second floor

Both floors (unassembled)

Basic house stucture w/ windows

Side view of house w/ windows

In the following picture you can see where the door will be eventually, I havnt removed it yet to keep the walls sturdy while I worked on the rest of it.

Final structure with broken walls

Close up of broken floor and model for scale

So here is our first 2 story house on one of our 6×6 blocks. I will take more pictures of the progress and post them up soon!

Foamcore Building Update

Svenn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:05:45 +0000

Spackled

I have been able to do a little bit of work on the foamcore building recently. I am in the process of testing out various methods for the walls right now. I picked up some lightweight Spackle for texturing and so far it seems to be great. The textured look is great, and it seems pretty tough. It’s also really easy to carve out of if necessary.

In addition to the Spackle I also tested out a method for doing a chipped away look with the underlying framework showing. This consisted of cutting away the top layer of paper on the foamcore, then drawing in a brick pattern on the foam with a pen. When combined with the Spackle it really gives the look of a broken wall with the brick framework showing. You can also see on the left side of the window where I added in a small crack in the wall. This is pretty easy to do with the Spackle and a sharp knife.

Previous Foamcore Building Posts:
First Foamcore Building – Work in Progress

Building Laid Flat

Close up side shot

Spackled

Another with good lighting

I doubt this piece will actually get used for anything, as I realized that I messed up the dimensions when measuring. I didn’t account for the thickness of the foam so it’s longer than expected. It will make a good test piece for painting the walls and framework though.

First Foamcore Building - Work In Progress

First Foamcore Building – Work In Progress

Svenn — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:57:59 +0000

Building!

I finally got around to working on foamcore buildings! In a few hours last night I was able to get the first story of a simple building put together using foamcore, matchsticks, and popsicle sticks. I still need to add some stuff to it, including some framing, and it will need to be painted of course. I was going to use some of the new cardstock printouts as base templates for my building, but after fiddling with getting them printed out I decided I would just try it by making my own pattern. I’m pleased with the progress I made so far, though the popsicle sticks didn’t want to cooperate last night.

For those of you playing along at home, here are the materials I used:

Foamcore board
Matchsticks
Popsicle Sticks
White Glue
Craft Knife
Tape Measure (for measuring to make my pattern, you can also use a template)
Pencil

The Materials

The first thing I did was trace out the pattern to cut out. I used the tape measure to measure out three 4″x2″ sections, and then cut one edge short to make it look ruined. I decided on 2″ tall because of the climbing rules for Mordheim… 2″ is about right for a single story (and it’s the size of one story on the official cardboard buildings that came with the box set). You can also just print out some patterns and and trace them instead.

Tracing the pattern

After tracing… cut out the pattern. For the corners you can either cut them clean off and attach them later with glue or do as I’ve done below. I cut the corner piece, but not all the way through. Then I was able to simply bend the foam and it was all still attached. I just need something to fill the gaps in the corner now, which I’ll probably end up doing by putting some sort of wooden framework with matchsticks or something similar.

The pattern after it was cut out

The folded building

After I got this set up I realized that the one side looked weird with a full wall with nothing attached to it. I decided to just trim it down some to look like another ruined wall.

After trimming the wall

Next up was adding some doors and windows to the building. I didn’t have a lot of space so I decided to go with a single door and a single window. I traced out exactly where I wanted them and what sizes before doing any cutting.

Tracing the door and windows out

Doors and windows cut out!

Standing with doors and windows cut out

After that I grabbed some matchsticks and cut them down to make frames for the door and window. The matchsticks worked perfectly for this.

Window and door frame

That was pretty much it for the first story. I went to work on figuring out how to do the second story floor. I considered cutting out another piece of foam for the floor, but decided to try out popsicle sticks for a wooden floor. I put a group of them together, marked out the pattern I wanted, and cut them down to the right shapes and sizes. I tried to glue them side by side, but it wasn’t very strong. I ended up having to glue some beams on the bottom to hold them together.

Top side of the wooden floor

Underside of the wooden floor, note the support beams

I gathered up all the extra clippings from the matchsticks and popsicle sticks to save for later. They should make some good rubble or something.

Waste not!

I stopped there for the night. I didn’t attach the floor to the building yet, but here’s what it looks like sitting on top.

It's starting to look like a building!