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Historical European buildings


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In the past I was an aircraft modeller and then moved on to 1/35 armour modelling. But I move around a lot having lived in Spain, Germany, Austria and currently China.

When I was in Spain I was earning extra money handing out fliers for the company I was working for but always had way too many, so I turned them into a Roman town, completely from my own imagination.

By the time I got to China about 8 years later I was making things a little more complex and having trawled through this site and various others and seeing what can be done I've improved (and still improving) on what I do. I like modelling historical buildings from Europe. I've done the Siebersturm area of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and was working on Mont Saint Michel in France.

The photos here are my Mont Saint Michel models, though I recently gave up because while I have Google Maps to give me lots of pictures, I could never find a decent aerial photo to allow me to see the angles of the buildings correctly and it become quite frustrating to finish a building only to then find out you got all the angles wrong. It happened one time too many (while working on the 6th building) that I gave up.

Now I'm working on a fantasy town, the first part based again on Rothenburg ob der Tauber, but with the buildings a little more interesting, and not spending days trying to figure out angles of things, I do what I want with my own town.

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Excuse the photography, I don't own a camera, just an iphone. Also the scale is quite small and I'm working on ways of increasing the quality. The glue I use is quite annoying. The windows are the hardest part but my new model (photos later) is using a new and improved technique (hopefully). My previous Rothenburg model had painted windows rather than cut out and I got fed up with trying to paint straight lines, far easier to cut with a knife, though the card doesn't quite behave as I would like.

Edited by frigidweirdo
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Wow, that's cool.

Amazing what you can do with just a bit of paint and cardstock.

You know, I don't think I'd sweat the straight lines too much, it adds a bit of whimsy to a fantasy setting to have slightly crooked bits.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Progress has been made, I've half finished three buildings (in other words the roof is on, but weathering and all that might get done over time etc) and done another one but don't have the roof (which takes ages, sometimes longer than the building itself).

 

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Edited by frigidweirdo
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks guys for the nice words. Still trying to improve everything and make it look more real and so on. Had a lot of progress, there was the October holiday, Chinese Nation Day holiday a few weeks back. So here are some pictures of how it's going so far. Trying to get the new side of buildings up to a certain point so I can get the road in place which I think will make it look better, and I've got a base, very scientific what with bits of cardboard stuck on top of other bits of cardboard.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, no pics yet, been busy going off on a visa run to Hong Kong and things like that, but I've just found a new, amazing resource that I can use. It's called beard hair. I don't like normal shavers, I have an electronic one and I'm a bit lazy cleaning it, so it builds up with tiny bits of shaved off beard hair. While sleeping I came up with the idea of using it mixed in with paint and having a non-shiny flat surface. I only started using it today, but it's going well so far..... and it's free, my favourite price.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Great stuff!

It would be nice to see some 'construction' pics: how you actually build the buildings.... joins, folds, tabs, supporting structures etc.

Have you ever thought of making a building in a much larger scale? You could cram loads of extra detail in and make a masterpiece.

And as you a are in China, how about making a Great Wall? :D

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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  • 2 months later...

This is all really quite beautifully done.

 

In a past life I was an architectural assistant (in Denmark). I used to marvel at the wonderful and accurate modeller's creations in card, paper and plastic.

 

This reminds me of those, although the buildings were never historic like this.

 

Do you have a background in architecture or town planning? The plan for your little town is certainly going very well :).

 

Best regards

TonyT

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

No, I studied painting at university a long time ago, but I've never done architecture, and I would suppose the way I'm doing things might be better if I had some of their skills. I just progressed over time and saw what others have been doing and it pushed me to improve.

 

It's been a while since I posted because I learned a lot doing this model, and decided to go back to Mont Saint Michel. I was missing studying the photos and figuring things out and trying to get things more accurate. At some point you'll see the part that is similar to the model in the first post, but hopefully you'll think it looks better. Certainly more accurate.

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  • 2 months later...

 

So, basically I had another go at Mont Saint Michel, but there things about it I didn't like, so i went back to making my own fantasy model of different parts of Germany and France and then changing things to suit my needs. Not sure about it yet. I also had the urge, after looking at the new Google Earth (if you haven't looked, check some of the places out, like Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and see how cool it is) to do something different, but I know I'll end up not liking parts of it and want to change it. 

So after struggling to get my pictures from my phone to my computer, here are a few images of how it's going so far. 

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  • 5 months later...

Well Photobucket has become useless, so I made a group in Facebook for me and my fake other facebook account to add someone as a friend. So now I have somewhere to post things and then to be able to get them up hgere.

 

I've changed what I was doing since the last time (a long time) I posted. This is because I managed to lose the bridge I made, it probably fell off the desk into the bin and got thrown away, so I scrapped what I was doing, and the new Google Earth came out, which is pretty amazing, and it allows me to see places I couldn't see before in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. So I'm making Rothenburg again, only this time I'm starting from the centre, and it's a little larger than before, the red building is about 6.5cm by 7.2cm. None of it is finished. The red paint I had was bought in England but was rather dry and old. So when I went back to England this summer I bought some more and have, at times, diverted myself from what I was doing to trying to make the paint job better, which was made easier by getting my hands on a much smaller paintbrush. I live in a city of 8 million people and, as far as I know, there's one art shop, the size of a broom cupboard and their smallest paintbrushes are like size 1, which is way too big. I'll have to look on the internet at some point and see if I can get some more, as the one I have is exceedingly useful.

 

Well, I'm working on the town hall of Rothenburg right now, which should take months at the very least, but it's a nice project.

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2 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

How did the ‘beard hair’ experiment go? The photos are still down so I can’t see what you actually did with it.    Did you make grass or something?

It went okay, I didn't do very much with it, yes, made texture for the ground, like grass. Just makes a bumpy surface which you can then paint on top. I don't have any photos of it, the model is still somewhere, but I moved flat since then.

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  • 1 month later...

Here's part of the Rothenburg Rathaus that I've been plugging away at for the last two months. Finally got some parts together after making all the outside parts. The roof is going to take forever, 24cm receipts needed for the outside part. It's going to be months more before it gets anywhere near to looking something like what it actually looks like.

 

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Fantastic to see you 'back in action' with your unique builds. I am loving this latest creation. It's going to look fantastic when finished, so persevere!

 

BTW, this use of 'beard hair' for making textures... you do mean BEARD hair don't you? I mean, you aren't saying 'beard' when you actually use...er... armpit hair or something?

:lol:

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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17 hours ago, Badder said:

Fantastic to see you 'back in action' with your unique builds. I am loving this latest creation. It's going to look fantastic when finished, so persevere!

 

BTW, this use of 'beard hair' for making textures... you do mean BEARD hair don't you? I mean, you aren't saying 'beard' when you actually use...er... armpit hair or something?

:lol:

 

Rearguards,

Badder

Actually what I do is go around the neighbourhood with an electric shaver and attack the cats, there are plenty of them. I only use the finest dirty stray cat tail hair. I think it has something to do with first licking balls then licking the tail that gives it the optimal atom count that prevent nuclear reactions with the paint.

 

:D:D

 

Just kidding, yes, beard hair, because I can't cope with facial hair, and I'm too lazy to shave anywhere else. I'll probably get back to doing that at some point, but I need to finish the Rathaus first, so, maybe this time next year....... there's a garden behind some of the other buildings...

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