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"2 Buildings from toys (Remember the Target $1 barn...)" Topic


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1,200 hits since 10 May 2011
©1994-2013 Bill Armintrout
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ordinarybass Supporting Member of TMP10 May 2011 1:37 p.m. PST

After building a 10/15mm building from a micro machine building ( link ) I got inspired to get to work on some larger toy buildings for a 28mm Post/Apoc or Sci-Fi Settler mining community. These two buildings are made from a Grain elevator from some cheap toy train kit (found in a resale bin) and a plastic toy barn. I learned about the barns from this post here on TMP: TMP link .

As I have a child now, I've very little time to build and paint so in an effort to get these done quickly, they are simply painted as follows.
-Sprayed black
-drybrushed in various colors
-lightly washed in black
-glued to a base made of hardboard sprayed with sandstone textured paint

First the ex-barn, now a storage building and generator.
A little corrugated paper, some random toy bits and a piece of granny grating over the window and Voila!
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Second, the ex-grain elevator, now a mine air ventilation and exhaust station.

This view minus a few bits (flat roof extention, tri-exhaust and bits at lower corner, is pretty much unchanged from the original. Both sides originaly looked almost the same.
IMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y167/dane5140/terrain%20projects/Mining%20buildings/IMG_0803.jpg

On the other side, I cut away the wall, built floor and ceiling for the walkway of granny grating (cross stitch mesh), The x braces are from a mega-blocks piece. The shaft door on the walkway is a memory card case. The round exhaust is a wheel from a toy. The small, round hex nut looking pieces found in various places are from the inside of the heat gauge off of Mechwarior clix bases. I don't recall where the red junction box in the lower corner came from.
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The roof has granny grating at the top of the shaft to allow for miniatures to stand. The wall piece I cut off the side, was remounted on the roof to make another level platform for miniatures to stand on.
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The plain side. Another megablock for the square hatch and I have no idea where the tri-exhaust came from. The building is quite narrow so while it provides alot of line-of-sight-blockage, it doesn't take up too much room on the table
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Last side. Ladder from granny grating.
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The two buildings together.
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Total outlay for the pieces for these two buildings, including the buildings, bases (10 cent pieces of hardboard from IKEA scrach and dent) and all bits (mostly from resale shop junk bins and castoffs) is less than 5 dollars!

I've got a couple other Target farm buildings and I found a source for plastic junction boxes, so there will be more dirty green mining buildings coming this year.

meledward2310 May 2011 1:53 p.m. PST

Bloody Daylights that is fantastic work.

klepley Supporting Member of TMP10 May 2011 5:46 p.m. PST

Um, wow…!!! And you did this without having time. You sicken me sir!! Great stuff! Even when I take the time, my buildings would be condemned…
Kevin

ordinarybass Supporting Member of TMP11 May 2011 6:19 a.m. PST

Thanks folks!

Klepley,
My earlier attempts at buildings have not been great, They tended toward plain, uninteresting, bare-sided boxes and were not very sci-fi. Then I switched to using toys and found-bits. With toys and found-bits, all the textures and most of the details are all ready in place, it's just a matter of cutting them up and gluing them together in interesting ways.

My best friends for this project were a razor saw, large chisel bladed hobby knife, a file and piece of sandpaper lying on a table to rub the pieces against to make smooth joins.

Personal logo CeruLucifus Supporting Member of TMP11 May 2011 10:32 a.m. PST

Those look great. Nice work. Thanks for posting.

Scorpio Supporting Member of TMP14 May 2011 1:27 p.m. PST

Inspirational stuff, keep them coming!

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