Modeling Calamity - Things are a changing

I have been primarily working on my project for ReaperCon but there are times when I have had an opportunity to mess around with the arrangement of Calamity. I think this shows the effectiveness of making the model in the first place. I also spent 30 minutes or so making another model of my centerpiece building as a mirror image so I could have some more options in placing it. The ability to scrap the clay off and change my roads at will came in quite handy. As you can see in the photographs.

The whole process started with trying to see if there was a better place to locate the railroad which to this point has always been along one of the long edges. It seemed like a good idea when I was doing it, but it never really felt like it was part of the town. So let's take a look at this idea that started the madness.
None of these really appealed to me, right, left, center, top. I want a bridge, because it will be doubling as the gallows.

A longer bridge, maybe something that cuts across the middle.

Interesting, breaks up the scene nicely but leaves to many awkward spaces.

Better, certainly closer to what I want.

Nice, I think this is about exactly what I want. You can see where I have used a knife to work in a different road layout on the west board (left).

Time really work the track into the town. I'm not sure I have enough track for this, it might take another piece.

Nice, I think I can make this work. The road on the west board is a bit more visible. in this picture.

Okay, time to get serious about this. Time to make some changes.

Center board with the track in place and cut to fit.

And let's make the bridges removable now.

Let's run another road out of town on the top edge.

And now with the railroad tracks.

And the west board, with the railroad tracks in place.

Nice, 30 minutes work with the clay and I have the changes worked into the clay. Time to play with the buildings and see what I can come up with.

That has an interesting look, now something from street level

I think I'm getting a lot closer to how I want the town to look. And the versatility of the model is really proving itself, definitely a worthwhile project!

Modeling Calamity Finished...for now

Here is my more or less completed model of Calamity. The boards are finished, the buildings are finished and ultimately that's what I wanted to accomplish with this, something that would allow me to shuffle buildings around and get a better feel for different arrangements will work. The idea is to keep it simple and avoid working in detail that's not necessary to picking an arrangement. I'm not certain that this will be the final version of the model itself as I will probably mess around with some other road arrangements as well which will require the construction of additional boards.

One idea that has been put forward is to have all the roads running at angles on the board, not parallel to the edges like the current board is setup. This is a highly desirable characteristic to work into model railroads to better help establish the illusion of stepping into another world. I have messed around with this concept a bit today on paper, but it tends to actually cut down on the amount of useful space available for the buildings themselves. It leaves some interesting areas that could be modeled into useful terrain features but I would be sacrificing the space for 4 or 5 buildings in order to do this. I'll continue to play around with this concept, and some others, before I final put saw to wood and start construction.

Here are some photos from today's work.

The completed boards

This is the center section featuring the stream. Its not very deep in the mockup but the intent is to have it deep with fast moving water.

The east board

The west board

Bringing it all together

Some different arrangements, it only takes seconds!

This one is in violation of the 2" rule. No building should extend to the 2" zone all around the board edge.

Apparently I keep violating my own rule

Some street views

Book Review - A Higher Call

I bought this book based on a passing remark that someone else made. I can't hardly recommend this book enough! This book pivots on the events of Dec 20th, 1943 as a crippled B-17 heads for home and is escorted over the coast by the pilot of a ME-109. This really isn't the central focus of the book though just the event that would eventually bring two WWII vets together. This is one of those rare books that I could not put down. It is primarily about the career of the ME-109. Starting and flying almost his entire career in the ME-109 and ending as part of JV-44 in ME-262s. This is book is something that is going to become increasingly rare, a story told by the veterans themselves. I don't really want to go into much here, this is a great book, just read it!

Modeling Calamity II

Its a been a very busy week around here and last night was the first night I was able to sit back down with the model of Calamity. I played around with the road and stream arrangement a bit and decided to make the first cuts into the boards. After cutting out the roads I glued them in place and put on a layer of clay. I then built the boards up to the road level and layed on a different color of clay for the "off road" portion of the boards. I kept the clay pretty thin so if I need to scrap the clay off I can. If I decide I don't like the road and stream arrangement I'll just make another set of boards. I have plenty of clay left over. The pictures probably say more than I can so let's just show those off.

Here's the initial playing around with the road arrangement.

I wanted the main road to have a slight cosmetic curve, This will partially block the line of sight from end to end and give a nice view for photographs. A shot taken from either end should look the road continues. Will see how that works out.

Gluing the roads down.

The stream has been cut out as well

A few preliminary street scenes

Putting down the clay on the road

Then I built up the surrounding area to the level of the roads and used a different color of clay for that.

I only finished one board to this level. It will be the "west" edge. This is the arrangement I came up with last night. Of course its very easy to change,just move the buildings around! If I decide I don't like the road arrangement I'll have to make a new board, but that's pretty easy to do. Nothing is set in stone at this point...just clay.

I'll have to come up with a little fence to go around the two sides of the livery stable. That's the large purple building sitting by itself at the edge of the board.

Modeling Calamity

Construction of Calamity has been proceeding, kits are being built, weathered and painted. While this process will be ongoing for some time I need to turn some attention to the boards. I have already posted some possible configurations for the boards and there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, there will be three 2'x4' boards that will make up the heart of Calamity and they will be permanent. Second, these boards will be used at conventions and will be traveling which brings up the issue of if the buildings should be permanently attached or removable.

In favor of permanently attaching the buildings there is an amazing blog out there featuring the city of Leadwood. This is the level of quality that I'm shooting for. You can find the city of Leadwood at: Colonel O'Truth's Miniature Issues

In favor of removable buildings is the ability to keep them from damage while being transported and making storage much easier.

But those are secondary to the big dilemma; What should Calamity look like? Pushing pieces of paper around on a map just wasn't giving me the view I needed to get a concrete idea of how things should be arranged. It certainly helped in figuring out possible road and stream locations but I can't get a "feel" for how the town will look from that. I need something more 3D for my mind to chew on.

While I was wandering through Hobby Lobby, I stumbled across a pack of mattboard, 5"x7" for $3.99 and about 2" thick. That's a lot of mattboard! That's when it hit me, I would follow a model railroad practice and build a model of Calamity! I grabbed the pack of mattboard and some clay and I was set to get started.

I have spent the weekend making tiny mockups of the buildings that I currently have from the various manufacturers, I even color coded them. I know there are some more coming but I'll deal with that when they arrive. The key here is to build small representations of the buildings to a scale (in this case 1/8"=1", so 12" would be 1 1/2" inches). There is no need for anything behind a basic mockup, no doors, no windows, skip the exterior stairs but leave space for them. You just need something that you can move around and get an idea of things will look at. The modeling clay will be for building up the boards. I'll start with some broad elevation changes using mattboard and then work everything else in with the clay.

Here's the beginning of the model of Calamity.

X-Acto Knife, Mechanical Pencil, Mattboad, Steel Ruler, Good Cutting Surface

Cutting Out the Pieces

Ready to Glue

The Hotel/Saloon Back

The Hotel/Saloon from the Front

The Hotel/Saloon Top

The Hotel/Saloon Finished

Finished Buildings and construction debris.

A bit closer in. The buildings are sitting on the scaled down versions of the 2'x4' boards. The center board is gridded off in to 12" squares. The outer border is 2" wide, and no buildings can be in this zone, its basically terrain only in this zone. this allows for plenty of entrance points for games.

Green will be scratchbuilt, Dark Green are Gamecraft, Purple are Sarissa Precision

Off White are Battle Flag, Red is Aetherworks, Yellow is Knuckleduster/Tri City Laser

Ready for Phase II - Terra-forming