WHERE I NOW AM ....

Well we visited Games Workshop World and have to report it isnt as big as it looks on the website.

Most space is taken up by the Gaming Hall - which doesnt really interest me as I burnt out on that type of wargaming years ago.  I am simply building and painting for personal satisfaction.

However the displays in glass cabinets are excellent.  The work is of the highest quality and can be inspirational or off putting depending on the kind of person you are.  Me - I found inspiration especially with some of the cased and boxed dioramas.

The shop there is rather small.  It includes a couple of gaming tables and shelves of "stuff" round the sides.  However the shelves are poorly lit (especially the bottom couple of rows) and it is dificult to see when searching for a particular product.  In the end we gave up and got the shop assistant to fetch them for us.
  They guarantee to supply any Game Workshop product you require.  If they havent got it on the (poorly liit) shelves then they will get it straight from the onsite warehouse within 3 hours.  Good service.  Did I mention the poorly lit shelves?

The "pub" there is large and they do meals which are of a reasonable price given that they cater for a "captive" customer.  It was hot, well prepared and served with a smile - great to see :)  The souvenir shop is in the Pub and, predictably, the prices are a tad high.  Example a pocket watch (which I had my eye on before going) had a nice engraving of the pub emblem on the front and looked good under the lights.  However I could have got the same watch without engraving for about £10.  The price of the engraved watch? - £30!!  Now I aint tight but for £30 I can get a much better quality wind up watch, with age, tastefully engraved at Melton Mowbray antiques market.

It was a nice visit though - dont get me wrong - and we came away with some good stuff.  My daughter shows hers on her Blog here:-

imaginarycolour

I will show my purchases in another post.

GAMES WORKSHOP HEADQUARTERS

Monday 2nd April will be going to Nottingham on a "Hobby Day Out" with my daughter.


We will be visiting The Foundry miniature shop, Hobbycraft and Game Workshop Headquarters.


The Games Workshop on Lenton Lane will be particularly interesting as it is much more than just a normal GW shop.  Some information is here:-


Museum and Workshop

We will probably buy several large pieces from GW and look forward to the visit.


Will post pics of any pieces I buy of course :)

GARDEN FINISHED IMAGES

Following are images of the finished Garden of Morr.

Once my daughter receives it she may decide to add her own little touches along with her figures - we will wait and see :)

You will notice that the vegetation inside the Garden is almost all dead- just a scattering of moss and the odd weed.  That, of course, is the influence of the Undead that occupy the site.....

This is the first major piece of Games Workshop plastic stuff that I have ever made.  I must admit it was fun and I learnt quite a lot from doing it.  I will probably do a Tower or something from GW later.  In the meantime I am going to resume working on the Haunted House building, which is much larger, and start on the Old West Town.

I was going to feature the Town on its own website but have come to the conclusion that a Blog lends itself more to this kind of "serial builds" than a website would.  So the Old West Town will have its own Blog.

I will, of course, link to that Blog from here once I have something to show.

Any critique would be most welcome ... please ...

A Daughter is a little girl who grows up to be a friend...

STILL HERE

OK - I am still alive and well.  Just dragging my feet a little.


The Garden is finished and I will put up an image later before it goes to my daughter so she can pose her figures with it.


At the moment I am working on producing an olde American west town with appropriate figures (circa 1860s).  That is taking a while as I am experimenting with different methods of building construction.  The scale will be 1/50 to match the average figures available.  I have almost decided on the method to use.


However I am not too happy with using a Blogg for the project as bloggs are a little restrictive.  I am therefore brushing up on my HTML.  If I can remember/relearn enough then I will probably make a website for the Cowboy project.  My interest is more with Cowboy figures than with Fantasy ones so a website makes sense to me.  I will, however, still dabble with Fantasy builds and will be buying some of their good stuff in a couple of weeks time when my daughter and I take a trip to Nottinghams Foundry and Games Workshop.


Hmm - there are some very good Old West buildings on this Blog :-


http://generalwilde.blogspot.co.uk/ 


If I can manage something of that quality then I will be a happy man!


A Daughter may outgrow your lap but never your heart .....

MINIATURE SCALE-WARHAMMER 28MM ETC

I have been getting hits from people using google and searching for "warhammer scale".  As I mentioned the problem with scale in an earlier post and that is coming up in searches I thought I would elaborate a little on the actual scale I am using for all miniatures that are sold as anything from 28mm to 30mm.
If you have a look here:-
Size differences
You will see that there are differences across most companies making miniatures although they are (mostly) advertising as 28mm.  That is because some are using 28mm as the height to the eyes, some to the top of their heads and others to the top of their hats.  Not very useful for scratch builders eh?

For things like rubble, tiles, bricks then the 1:48 scale can be used.  If you are using railway terrain then their "0" scale will suffice.  However the actual scale against 28mm is around 1:64.... which is 3/16th of an inch to a foot.  That is approx 4.8mm to a foot.

Now I am not using less than a millimetre in any measurement so I use 5 or 6 millimetres to a foot depending on which miniatures I am building for.  Some variance in buildings is no big deal - it happens in RL too.  Just make sure the miniature fits through the doorway in a realistic way and then use the doorway as the scale setter for the rest of the building.

Hope that helps a little.;  I know that there are some in depth discussions out there but thought I would just cut to the chase and give the solution I use.

Let me know if it helps - if it doesn't then go join the in depth discussions ..... while you are arguing I will be building .....



To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
-Euripides

KICKING MY BACKSIDE INTO GEAR....

Ok - so I have neglected this Garden of Morr project for a week or so.  Thats because I dont need to have it ready until the 18th March.  That is the date of "Miniatura" - (http://www.miniatura.co.uk/shows.html).  My daughter is picking me up and we are both going to that event.  I aim to give her the completed Garden then and she can introduce her Undead to it.

I know that Miniatura is really a dolls house event but there will be a good few exhibitors selling materials etc that we can make use of - besides its a good day out with my "little girl" :)

Instead of working on the Garden I have been experimenting with an old idea of mine.  Years ago I started to build an Olde America West town (around 1850 - wild west era).  Eventually I dumped it as figures were hard to come by in the UK then and an empty town I didnt want!  Nowadays the figures are easy to obtain and are great with good accuracy and high detail.  Also the building material needed is also cheaper and more easily sourced.

I have purchased cowboy figures from Black Scorpion and Wargamesfoundry so that I can get the scale of the buildings correct.  The figures from Black Scorpion are resin and the ones from the Foundry metal.  Both are reasonably priced but the Black Scorpion order took twice as long as the Foundry one.  They blamed being "incredibly busy" for the long delay.  Well I will help them out by not ordering from them again!

The Old West construction will be featured on another Blog but this week I will be finishing the Garden project.

.... LIGHT RELIEF OVER....

As I said - just a little interlude and very quick and simple to make.  I reckon it turned out OK though.  It certainly gave me some fun anyway :)

I managed to creep a little closer and took a nearer image - shhh - dont waken him....

The ground is just a fine sandpaper with a coarser sand and small grit dropped onto it.

The bricks are individually cut from Cork Sheet and stuck to foam board in a "not too precise" manner.  A little tedious but, I think, better than scribing bricks into foam.

Anyway - relief over, now back to the main model......