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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 24, 2019 21:55:38 GMT -9
The trees are from various plastic dinosaur and army men sets, but they are unstable and prone to falling over if the table is bumped. I have been building up a number of paper trees with heavy bases that are more stable. They are real ink drainers and take up a lot of storage space due to the bases, but are very stable and look great. I just don't have enough yet to replace the plastic. I have some great paper trees myself (and a few that are less great, but it took some exploring to find ones that worked well), but don't sell those plastic ones short just because they're tippy. Have you considered basing them? You could use large miniature bases if you have extras lying around, or you could cut random shapes out of masonite hardboard, and stick the trees on with a hot glue gun. Some white glue, sand and pebbles, and craft paint, and you'd have some very serviceable miniature trees. If you want to paint the trees themselves, Krylon Ultra Mat paint with "Fusion Technology" is super effective as an inexpensive primer for plastic. Then your miniature paint or craft paint will stick to it really well. I'd finish with a coat of clear mat varnish. Then you'd have some really dope trees!
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Post by BlackCat13 on Jul 4, 2019 13:15:47 GMT -9
That might be well worth the effort. I'll give it a try after we move and get settled in. I'm certainly not going to ditch these old friends in after the good service they have given me over the years and since I'm not going to stop buying plastic dinosaurs and army men, I'm going to be getting more plastikc trees and rocks in the future.
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Post by squirmydad on Jul 5, 2019 7:11:19 GMT -9
I have some trees like that and I made a thick card base for them that was slightly larger than than the canopy. I printed the Battlefield texture on plain paper and glued it to the card for quick texture. They're much sturdier now.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Feb 20, 2020 17:07:16 GMT -9
The cat is still alive and still building paper models. My 5600 series printer finally bit the dust and my wife found a gently used 3630 series model for me to use until we can afford one of those models that has tanks to improve ink efficiency. Thanks to all of you forum members for your help in answering my questions on how to save money and still enjoy my addiction. I still haven't replaced all of the models that I lost during my move to Virginia, but I look forward to doing so. I especially look forward to building the ships I will need to rebuild my fantasy fleet and building new ships for a Retro Space fleet. I'm not particularly good at building things that are round, and my first attempt at an A-10 rocket ship did not come out that great, but I usually do better and better with practice. I learned a lot about the cone shapes building that first A-10 (its a free kit, btw) and I'll be better prepared the next time. I also intend to modify the cockpit design and I have already done several recolors of the model and refitted it to accept the weapons from the battlecars models from the CWFs. They make great rocket ship fighters that way. If I could work out the dynamics of a cone better, I would make my own kit and put it out here for all of you. Right now, however all I can make are those sharp, pointy ones, not the more rounded ones classic rocket ships are supposed to have. I already have several good fin designs and logos.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 19, 2020 9:46:55 GMT -9
This cat is still alive and kicking, even though I've moved and things have been a little slow. I haven't stopped modifying those great Cardlot models by Grendels Mother. Here are the latest models I've created from his kits. They are definitely themed around a certain character that I do not claim any ownership of. I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed creating them. I'll be posting build pictures soon. The blue car is easier to build, but I like the look of the black one better. The black one looks killer with or without the ram plate.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 21, 2020 20:36:03 GMT -9
Now that you have something for the caped crusaders to get around in, here is something to cart around the people they catch in.
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Post by grendelsmother64 on Mar 22, 2020 13:49:56 GMT -9
This cat is still alive and kicking, even though I've moved and things have been a little slow. I haven't stopped modifying those great Cardlot models by Grendels Mother. Here are the latest models I've created from his kits. They are definitely themed around a certain character that I do not claim any ownership of. I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed creating them. I'll be posting build pictures soon. The blue car is easier to build, but I like the look of the black one better. The black one looks killer with or without the ram plate. Very nice. Shawn GM64
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 23, 2020 5:34:13 GMT -9
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 23, 2020 5:46:08 GMT -9
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Post by Vermin King on Mar 23, 2020 6:24:34 GMT -9
Lovin' the fins
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 24, 2020 9:02:23 GMT -9
I'm really happy to see build pics of your models. Thank you Mrs. Tolliver. What is the vehicle with the skull on the door that Batgirl is standing next to?
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 25, 2020 14:35:03 GMT -9
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 26, 2020 17:06:17 GMT -9
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 27, 2020 8:01:15 GMT -9
I missed the first comma, so for a split second I was wondering what a "liquor store shark" looked like. What is actually here looks good.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 28, 2020 20:02:41 GMT -9
I've seen a few liquor store sharks circling the parking lot of the local ABC store from time to time, but that is neither here nor there. Here is a build pic of the coke truck. And here are a few photos of the fun you can have with the Camel FAAV by Grey Matter Games, if you're willing to blow it up a bit and mash it up a bit. The first photos are of a weapons carrier, specifically an anti-aircraft unit made by enlarging the Camel, recoloring it, adding some symbols from the "Devil Inside" font set, then adding the mini-turret from the Battlecars Weapons set 2 (Miniatures in Paper 41) and the Rocket Launchers from Battlecars Weapons set 1 (MiP #40). The resulting vehicle is a bit large for most city roads, but as a military weapons carrier, it looks okay. The second model is a biological warfare vehicle and I must admit I made a bit of a mistake in building it. I recolored it and placed markings on it on the same blown-up version that I used for he weapons carrier, but forgot to re-scale it before printing it. Originally, there would have been room for only one mysterious steel drum on the back and the drum would have looked much larger. The drums are, of course, body cylinders from David Okum's Retro Space Metal Legion. Here four of them have been glued together with their faces facing inward. The antenna on the hood was also stolen from one of those poor Metal Legionnaires and the sprayer on the back of the back of the vehicle comes from the Battlecars Weapons Number 2 page. Had the model been printed at the proper scale, only one tank would have fit on the back. Here are some build pics: I'm only posting pictures of my customization of brother Kiladecus' kit and not the customized kits themselves because brother Kiladecus is still selling this wonderful little kit and it can be customized very easily in so many ways. I just wanted to show off a couple of my more recent and complicated ones. Very early on I translated the simple white color scheme of the original kit into a dozen colors using GIMP, and I'll bet that a lot of you that own the kit have created wonderful variations of it, too. Please post a few and let's compare notes. I should have some pictures of Roger's Bookstore up in a few days, but the Tillman Brothers Warehouse was completely demolished when we moved.
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 29, 2020 8:17:02 GMT -9
I've seen a few liquor store sharks circling the parking lot of the local ABC store from time to time, but that is neither here nor there.
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 31, 2020 10:14:18 GMT -9
Since the Cyberpunk Hoard has been pushed back by one week I'll take today and build the Tillman Bros. Warehouse.
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Post by squirmydad on Apr 1, 2020 8:31:44 GMT -9
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Post by BlackCat13 on Apr 3, 2020 16:38:35 GMT -9
Thanks so much to Squirmydad for the great build job on the Tillman Bros. Warehouse. I hope everyone enjoys it. It was one of my earliest efforts and was based on warehouses I used to work in in Durham, NC. as a watchman back in the 1980's. I recently bought Okumarts' Spot of Bother Set 02: Top Secret Base. It is a great set for building an endless maze of hallways and rooms and comes with an evil villain and plenty of henchmen as well as some props to fill it. The PDFs have lots of layers to allow customization. The entire system supports fold-flat construction and you can build lots of different configurations by just assembling the passages and chambers together in the way you want and fastening them together with bobby pins or paper clips. The set inspired me so much that I decided to try my hand at making a few small, specialized rooms of my own. These pages are formatted on 10"x 7.5" PNGs, so set your margins appropriately when printing and print them on letter-sized, 110# cardstock. Here are the first two projects, a small elevator and a security monitor view.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Apr 5, 2020 15:33:47 GMT -9
Random bad guys are random. Once again, these are on s 7.5 x 10" page. Enjoy!
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 16, 2023 19:24:18 GMT -9
Still around and still making models, just not as active as before. Seriously, I went from having a whole room for model building to a decent-sized folding table and a closet for storage, now I'm down to a TV tray and a little room here and there and sharing some of my models as cat toys. What have I been up to? Well, once I get some test builds and photos taken, I've got some things to share. Remember my old pteranadon figure? I've got a few pteradactyls to keep him company now. I've also done some repaints of the Ebbles/Genet floater models, too. Dave Graffam and David Okum's new sci-fi releases have inspired me. Here is an example of what I've been working on. I am also working on some flight bases, too.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Mar 19, 2023 19:12:43 GMT -9
Here is another of my projects. It is one of the newer ones and I haven't had a chance to a test build yet. On paper it looks pretty good, but I would really like to have a chance to build it myself and put together a flight stand and get a couple of build pics, too. I guess it is sort of a bash-kit, because it isn't a repaint. I actually changed the original build a bit and then did a little re=texturing to make the new dimensions fit the redesign. It is a coupe version of Ebbles utility floater. Consider it a preview of the kind of stuff I hope to post in the near future. Feel free to build it if you like, but it might not go together quite right because this is just the prototype. Once I get the chance to build it myself, I'll probably make some of the other kits into coupes, too. I have also made some of the utility floaters into blue and white police units, taxi cabs, two-tone models, solid color models without the original stripes, I have changed the original stripe colors, and I've worked on other floater models, too. Floaters aren't all I've worked on. Unfortunately, my workspace for building models has been greatly reduced, do test building my creations is a lot harder. I would hate to post something that would not be disappointing. So I've got a got a lot of stuff to post, but I'd like a chance to do some test builds and let my wife take some build pictures. I like the Ebbles kits and I have used them in sci-fi and super hero games. I have also built some of them just for pleasure. They are generally simple and clean, easily assembled, fairly easy to modify just by mixing parts from one kit to another, and many of them can be used in various types of roleplaying and war games. They are free and the web site has been up for years and is still well-maintained.
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Post by BlackCat13 on Apr 15, 2023 18:36:59 GMT -9
Thanks for the likes and sorry for the lack of build pics so far. My first attempt at a flight stand for the attack floater did not work as well as I had hoped. I had placed a single support centered in the middle of the model and there was too little surface area to give the model stability as well as support. I suppose I will have to either have to use a larger single support column or use multiple small supports to give the model what it needs to look good on the gaming table and have a little shelf life, too. The smaller floater models that only fit a single figure will probably be able to get by with only a single support, but that one with extended forks will be tricky to make a stand for. Here is a Jackrabbit for you. I'd like some opinions on it. I have a lot of variant civilian Jackrabbits I'd like to post. I have some sport models with racing strips and grills based on the Shelby Cobras, some convertibles and hardtop models, too. I could easily make military versions of the convertible and hardtop models. All of them are built using the same assembly instructions as the Ebbles kits, although I am attempting to add spoilers to the sportsters. As you can see by the color of the Batbuggy, I have recolored the original Jackrabbit, too, so there are new colors of civilian Jackrabbits. If you are interested, I'll start posting them. This is my first attempt at the heavy floater, a kitbash of the LH558. I made the mistake of altering the tan colored version instead of the white one and some of the alterations were a bit awkward, as you can see. Still, it is not too bad for a first try and I learned a lot from it. I also turned the Harmless Container into a cargo box so that both the heavy floater ant the original LH558 can be used as box trucks. I made several color variations, and if you want more I will be happy to post them. Here are just a few.
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Post by Vermin King on Apr 16, 2023 15:34:58 GMT -9
I would love to see the Batbuggy built (try saying that quick)
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Post by Vermin King on Mar 27, 2024 15:23:00 GMT -9
I have been waxing nostalgic lately and revisited this thread. So many treasures. I hope you are doing well
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