WIP: Gotham Olympus Club

As I've mentioned some time ago, I plan to add Maxie Zeus' Olympus Club to my 15mm Gotham - with the Arkham City version being my main inspiration for the piece:

(click to see the bigger version)

There will be some slight modifications, though - the neon sign reading "Olympus Club" instead of "Gotham City Olympus", a bit different look of the Zeus statue and different number of floors (two main floors and two tower floors).
Here are the first two WIP pictures:

The first floor is taking shape (click for the bigger version)

A closer look at the Zeus statue (click for the bigger version.

The Zeus statue was made with some pieces from an Italeri 1:32 gladiator set:

 (click for the bigger version)

The body comes from the third figure in the top row, the head from the first figure in the bottom row. The beard and hair were sculpted using ProCreate putty and the lightning bolt wireframe was made from a paperclip (I'll cover it with ProCreate later).

Knight Models posts their Batman character cards!

Great news - Knight Models finally made the stat cards for their Batman game available for free without the need for buying the KM miniatures! Follow the link here and click "View product details" next to the character whose card you want to download to get them.

On the side note: I know that I've been exceptionally quiet lately, but the situation at work has been a bit hectic lately and I haven't had much time for the hobby. I will try to post something later this week but can't promise that atm.

Finished the first Gotham building

Finally managed to wrap up the first building for my Batman/DC gaming - let me know what you think! Many thanks to Kris for his suggestions concerning the faded ads on the brick walls - I tried out both approaches (gluing the prints and airbrushing) and I think that they went out quite well. It was Warren Abox's idea at TMP forums to add the markings for the windows (white lines at the sides of each floor).

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Teaser: Decorating the Gotham city block

I'm slowly wrapping up the first Gotham building - the structure itself and the basic airbrushing is done. There are three main stages left:

• decorating the interior walls with printed floors and wallpapers
• painting the exterior
• adding decals (Batman-themed posters: "I believe in Harbey Dent", poster for the Grayson family show with "Canceled" bar, ad for the Iceberg Lounge... I printed a couple of these and plan on using them on most of my Gotham buildings)

I wouldn't be myself if I didn't post some WIP photos - so here you go, some teasers before I post the finished version (Saturday/Sunday probably):

Here's how the interior walls are going to look like...

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 ...and the exterior ones:

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I'll probably post a tutorial on doing the brickwork after I finish the building.

15mm Batmobile

The same TMP post that gave me an idea to use the cloaked figure from Rebel Minis as a base for my second version of Batman pointed me to the Hot Wheels model of Arkham Asylum Batmobile. Sadly, after digging through a bunch of Hot Wheels boxes in different toy shops in Cracow I was forced to look for it on eBay - and found out that when it comes to S&H costs for shipping blistered toy cars to Poland, they're nothing short of ridiculous. The S&H cost that is 8-10 times the price of the model? Erm... no. Luckily I've found a single auction with more reasonable pricing and today my Batmobile has arrived - as you can see below, it scales up really well to 15mm minis:

(click for the bigger version)

It's a really nice model with some sharp details but it has its flaws: the wheels are the generic diecast toy ones, looking quite different from the original game model, the front and rear lights are just flat decals. Therefore before painting I want to sculpt the lights out of ProCreate putty and probably look for some better-looking wheels in my bits box.

Tutorial: 15mm fire escape stairs

The first 15mm Gotham building is coming along nicely, as you can see in the picture below:

(click for the bigger version)

But as much as I liked the front, the back of the building seemed to be somewhat lacking in details... and on top of that it seemed rather boring to have only one way to get to the top of the structure. As I was going through the pictures from Batman: Arkham City and some Batman comic books, I came up with a solution to both of my problems: adding fire escape stairs!

Tutorial: 15mm fire escape stairs
Materials:
Faller 180401 model fencing set
Plasticard (2mm); alternatively you can use U-shaped plasticard profiles like I did
Superglue

Tools:
X-acto blade

1. For each floor you want to add a fire escape stairs to, cut a 4cm long strip from the fencing and two shorter strips (each one about 1,5cm long - 5 stakes, that is).

2. Cut two strips of plasticard for each floor, each one 3mm wide and 2cm long. If you're using the U-shaped plasticard profile, cut two 2cm long pieces for each floor.

3. Turn the fencing pieces face-down (flat side up) and arrange them as seen in the picture:

4. Now it gets tricky. Put a tiny blob of Superglue where the shorter pieces are in contact with the long one. Use a match or a piece of plastic to smear the glue along the slit between the pieces.

5. After a few seconds move the piece around so it wont stick to the surface below. You may want to place a piece of foil beneath before you start to glue the pieces together.
6. Take the 2cm long supports you have prepared in the step 2. and glue each of them at the middle of each short section. See below:

7. Cut another strip from the fencing - this time it should be slightly longer than 4cm (1 stake longer is perfect); it will be used for a ladder between the floors. Make one for each floor above the ground floor.

8. Glue the platforms and the ladders to the wall of your buildings. You may want to add two short fencing pieces at the ground floor to simulate the extension ladder.

(click for the bigger version)

9. The whole thing is much more durable than it looks - it will easily hold two miniatures at a time without bending or breaking. If you want to add the stairs as a purely decorative detail to your buildings, you may want to add hand railings - I didn't as I want to be able to easily place miniatures at each platform:

(click for the bigger version)

Let me know what you think!

WIP: 15mm Gotham building with accessible interior

For quite a while it seemed to me that the one major flaw in 15mm skirmish gaming, when compared to 28mm, was the building interiors. I looked at some of the buildings the 28mm players developed for Infinity and thought to myself that the same stuff in 15mm would simply be much too fiddly. And then, while studying the design of Micro Art Studio buildings, it occured to me: why not turn the typical wargaming building design on it's head?

See, most of the comercially available 15mm buildings (and a good deal of the scratchbuilt ones) are actually made up of a couple of stackable boxes - Gamecraft Miniatures residence buildings are one of the best examples here:

As great as it looks, the design makes it rather hard to move miniatures inside the building - not mentioning putting any kind of interior walls in there. But what if we inverted the 'box'?

I've started making some buildings for my 15mm Batman project - at first I wanted just 'solid' buildings without accessible interiors for it, but then I thought I may try out the 'inverted box' idea.
Here's the WIP pic of one of the buildings:

(click for the bigger version)

As you can see, each floor is separate so they can be removed to put miniatures inside. But instead of the usual way of gluing the pieces together, where each story consists of a set of walls and the floor, each of the 'boxes' has it's ceiling glued on the interior walls are attached to the floor below, as seen on the picture:

(click for the bigger version)

The walls hold the floor above in place and after the floor is removed, the miniatures can be easily accessed and moved around. Or lurk around the corner to attack the incoming opponent:

(click for the bigger version)

More pictures of the building (along with a simple tutorial for making fire escape stairs) - soon!

On the side note: I've almost finished The Riddler, but as I was away for a weekend, I just couldn't get around to finish him. Anyway, here's the WIP photo of the mini:

(click for the bigger version)