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:

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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Custom Supersystem 3 ed. profile cards

Recently I've picked up the Supersystem 3ed. ruleset with the intention of using it for my Batman/DC gaming. I love the game itself, but I've decided that I want my own  profile cards with icons instead of Dice Pools abbreviations (and with illustrations depicting the DC heroes and villains). Here's what I came up with:

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Each card measures approximately 8x11cm, just like the ones provided in the Supersystem 3 ed. rulebook. The Physical/Mental dice pools are color and icon coded (red - physical, blue - mental; bullseye - Attack, shield - Defense, heart - Resistance).
How do you like it?

WIP: 15mm Riddler and Mr. Freeze

As I've mentioned in the comments section under the last post, there is a couple of Batman characters I'm going to do in the following weeks. Still haven't figured out how to make the Joker, but after going through my lead pile (and the bits box) it seems I'll be able to at least do the following heroes and villains without having to sculpt them from scratch:

• Two-Face
• Harley Quinn
• The Riddler
• Mr. Freeze
• Nightwing
• Catwoman
• Poison Ivy
• Solomon Grundy
• Hugo Strange
• Harvey Bullock
• Comissioner Gordon

I've started working on two from the above list - Mr. Freeze and Riddler. Mind you, these are still pretty rough versions.

The Riddler

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Miniature: Wilderness adventurer from Highlander Studios
Conversion: The stock of the rifle was filed down and the barrel was cut with clippers. The missing part of the left leg and the shoe were then resculpted in ProCreate. The right hand was swapped for a one taken from Rebel Minis Titan Scout. The question mark at the top of the "cane" was sculpted out of ProCreate.
What needs to be done: a simple eye mask will be added with a tiny bit of modelling putty. I'm not sure if I like the big question mark - I may cut it and go for a much smaller version.

Mr. Freeze

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Miniature: SAS commander from Micropanzer

 Conversion: using a method shown by Mark on Dropship Horizon I did a headswap with the same Titan Scout miniature that I used to get the Riddler's pistol. The barrel of a gun was then clipped and replaced with a lasgun rifle from an old WH40k Catachan Jungle Fighters box.
What needs to be done: I have to sculpt the lower part of the weapon and the collar for Mr. Freeze's helmet. Still not sure if I want to add a clear plastic tubing to imitate the helmet or leave it as it is and assume that the glass covering is there.

Let me know what you think about these two - and I'd be most grateful for any suggestions concerning other Batman characters I could do in 15mm!

15mm Bane painted

On a side note: I have to say I haven't had so much fun with a modelling project for a very long time - so I guess you'll see some more residents of 15mm Gotham City soon! Click a picture for the bigger version.

WIP: Coming next to 15mm Gotham City is...

...the man who broke the Bat. Once again a conversion from a Rebel Minis miniature.