Halloween Wars -- Forum Hoard # 169 September, 2018

[Vermin King]

The theme for this month's HOARD is

Halloween Wars

This can be any sort of miniature figure or model on the above theme or feel free to submit miniatures off theme.

If you submit a figure, they must include both front and rear art, have a proper trimming outline, and include instructions for multi-part models. Recolors and figure mods are encouraged, and even uncolored designs are welcome.

No nudity or sexuality, but bloody gory and horrifying is encouraged.

If you have questions about how to design your entries, like formats, resolution, and stuff like that, see the HOARD GUIDELINES in this forum category.

Entries for the Hoard will be accepted until the last day of September, 2018.

Always one of my favorite Hoards. Anxious to see what everyone comes up with this year

[Vermin King]

Well, I seem to have misplaced my Addams Family TV House folder. It may be on my other computer, but I'm not sure. Only the first floor of the actual house was used in filming. The stills took images of the house and then they painted over it, changing the upper floors. I had multiple images of the real house, even an aerial view, and then the TV images. It would require quesswork on the upper floors not shown in the paintings, but carrying over the same style to the back from the front seemed acceptable. It was one of those things that I thought I had 'figured out', but wasn't sure what I'd use it for. It would have been interesting, but I was really just sizing up how hard it would be to do, since folks at papermodelers.com were discussing a model that someone else was designing that stalled out. Eventually the designer posted that his files were lost in a hard drive crash.

This would have been a good Halloween project, but not if I have to start from scratch


EDIT--

I went back to the funeral home project and think that I can turn it into a Haunted House fairly easily. We'll see

[wyvern]

Vermin King : A quick search using "Addams family house blueprint" brought up a host of options showing the supposed layout for the TV house in resolutions up to 1500 x 1630 pixels (large enough so you can actually read the text, unlike this version!):



The drawing to the lower right is the upper level, incidentally (you can fit it using the distinctive staircase).

I'm not sure what its original provenance may be, nor how accurate it is, but my recollections from the old series seem to match with the places in it I can recall, at least, and its widespread use on the Web suggests it is generally regarded as accurate (or as accurate as anything ever is online...).

If you need the images of the real house again - 21 Chester Place, Los Angeles, apparently - I think this website has what you want. Sadly, the actual property has been long since demolished.

[wyvern]

Just seen yesterday's (2018 Aug 29) Papermau blog posting here, with a rather nice, cartoony, pop-up card Haunted House, newly added to the Canon website. Quite Addams-family in style, and maybe something that could be adapted to a more 3D model, at least as inspiration. perhaps.

[Vermin King]

That website on 21 Chester Place, is what got me searching for more info. I had amassed quite a bit

I didn't find it on the other computer, so I'm not real sure what happened to it

[Vermin King]

Surely the haunted house isn't the only thing working, is it?

[cowboyleland]

I've had no inspiration.

[squirmydad]

It looks very promising that a princess of the Elder gods may be taking up residence in that haunted mansion.

[wyvern]

Possibly a bit late to set people thinking, but it might be useful to have a set of burial ground perimeter railings - or a fence line, or low walls - with a gate and some Hallowe'en-appropriate wear and tear about it. There seem to be plenty of grave markers of various kinds about, as well as a few suitably spooky trees, but I've been hunting around for a couple of days among my collected papercraft downloads for some suitable graveyard railings like this without much success so far. The railings would maybe fit better with the general Hoard concept, as only needing to be back and front artwork, as also the fencing. Walls might need to be a bit too 3D though.

[Vermin King]

That is a very good concept. I'm not sure I'll have time to get back to it, though. Working on finishing out the three versions of the Haunted House, has me running behind. I want to get to the Egg Foo Yong Tourbus before I forget my approach to it. I want to do a deluxe Gamesman's Hut, too.

And a hearse based off grendelsmother64's Flivvers. That was going to be my Halloween treat this year, but got mixed up with some other things, and never got started on it. GM64 asked me about it last night, so I think it needs to be the next piece. For inspiration, I was going to go with something similar to one of these, hearsepics.blogspot.com/

Were you thinking of an iron railing type railing?

[wyvern]

Sept 19, 2018 12:02:52 GMT -9 Vermin King said:

Were you thinking of an iron railing type railing?

Exactly so. Ideally with spiky tips, and maybe a simply-decorated top rail, largely because it will look more interesting when a bit worn or damaged. I guess I was very heavily influenced as to what graveyards and haunted houses should look like from this Waddington's/Letraset Panorama rub-down dry transfer scene from my childhood. Scroll down to see the black and white sheet 104A especially, while the background scene itself has a wonderful clifftop haunted house.

[Vermin King]

I wasn't even thinking worn and damaged.

Would any of the Ravensblight fences work for you?
ravensblight.com/Game.html
ravensblight.com/Hidcem.html
ravensblight.com/Manor.html
ravensblight.com/RavensBlightCemetery.html

Ray Keim at Haunted Dimensions used to have the Liberty Square entrance that I've modded to use in models.

I could swear we had something like this hidden here somewhere, though. I'll have to do a search


I couldn't imagine trying to cut that out or put it in a form that would look right not cut out

This one reminds me of the Holy Cross cemetery where my great great grandfather's twin brother is buried

[wyvern]

Thanks Vermin King. I have all the Ravensblight and Haunted Dimensions models currently on the sites, of which the Ravensblight Cemetery railings are the closest to what I was looking for. However, your photos in comparison with that model illustrate the main snag with these, which is they come in only short lengths with 3D brick pillars in between, while I was really just after continuous lines of railings, with an interesting, perhaps double, gate.

I kept thinking I could recall some too, and they may be still buried away somewhere other than what seemed the "obvious" places to check to me. I sometimes wish I'd renamed the more obscure model downloads as I was going along - the early CWF Hoard sets are a classic case - as too many don't have useful file-names.

In terms of modelling, I suspect the black background of the Ravensblight Cemetery railings would be the most viable option. It should be possible to cut the gaps out between the individual railing uprights, but the black background will help hide the likely mistakes possible in so doing. I think there are some laser-cut paper/card railings now available from model railway stockists, which could be another possibility.

[Punkrabbitt]

I have a couple in progress, but have taken ill. I may need to put them into next month. More sci-fi than halloween anywat o.0

[Vermin King]

Get well soon, sir

[Vermin King]

After reviewing many old hearses last night, I think I have settled on a type for the Hoard, but is there enough time?

During the 1910s and 1920s, most hearses seem to fall into two types -- carved wood and pressed metal. I question this. I think utilitarian was also around, but no one considered them worth taking photos. Both of the two main types were highly ornate, but not as ornate as some of the horse-drawn hearses, again with some exceptions. The one that really has me excited is one that used a combination of carved wood and pressed metal. It is ornate, but not as ornate as some. It also has photos from the side and back, which will help with the design work. Tonight I am going to play with the side and rear views in Gimp. If I can square it up, and use Cartoon and other graphic tools, this could be relatively easy. If not, I'll have to generate the art on my own. And it should blend well with GM64's Flivver. I need to check them out. I believe they all use the same front end. I might want to make some subtle changes, but maybe not

EDIT --
Squared up and started cleaning up the main image I'm going to be using. I like this one, because it is somewhat elaborate, but not horrible.

Only PostImage hates me right now. I'll be back

Well, it hates me on IE, Firefox and Chrome. Maybe later

Oh, for some reason, the PostImage button is directing to '.org', not '.cc'



There she goes

[Vermin King]

More work done on cleaning up the above photo and prepping the Flivver Van to receive the Hearse body.






I'm going to leave off the lamps from each side over the oval windows. I think they are unnecessary. Not going for an actual model of the Winton Crane Breed 1916 Hearse, but I did want to be reasonably close, so I'll be adjusting the doors to be narrower, so that the trim pieces will fit, and I'm going to do some adjustments to the chassis/running boards to get the shell to fit more correctly than it would simply pasting it on. This seems to be one with a longer hood, too, so I will probably lengthen the hood by a couple vents, and adjusting chassis/running boards accordingly

[nullpointer]

Has anyone had success printing on transparency paper? The black/white of basic monochrome transparencies could be great for a wrought iron fence without all the labor of cutting around all the details.

[Vermin King]

That's what Ray Keim at Haunted Dimensions recommends, but I haven't had any around for years. You need to make sure you get the kind meant to be printed on, though

[Vermin King]

[wyvern]

The transparencies work OK for things like stained glass windows (where they can have an unprinted surround fitted into the walls, say), but for standalone models, especially where you may need to use glue, there can be problems with the ink running, for example, because of the way inkjet inks behave. Laser printer versions may be more robust; sadly, not being fabulously wealthy, I don't own one of those, so can't say...

In either case, the printouts don't look sufficiently solid to work all that well for what are meant to be real objects (and often the detail is impossible to see properly on the transparencies against anything except a light-coloured background). For a ghostly fence, that might work, though that's perhaps pushing at the boundaries rather.

It's important to remember too that the transparencies work best when you can keep them flat. As soon as you have to bend or fold them, this creates a line of weakness which is apt to snap, usually at some key point in the construction process. The only real success I had with them beyond window-panes was in the Papercraft Dungeon Gelatinous Cube freebie. (I'm sure there used to be an image of this on the old PD website, but it seems to have vanished in the current version; you can find some instead on the Kev's Lounge blogspot page for the model here.) Even with this, which I built using two-part epoxy glue, I found it was essential to add draperies of the glue (which dries semi-transparent) across many of the surfaces to better help hide the joins. So not ideal for, say, a fish-tank model or a clear crystal.

[Vermin King]

Bump time. One week left

My daughter-in-law has added more work for me. I was showing her something else on my phone gallery and she saw the Industrialist House, which she thinks is fantastic. Told her I was doing a house to turn into a Haunted House, showed her the photo and explained the changes between the test build and the final version. 'That looks good already, but ... shouldn't it look like at some point repairs were made, and an attempt was made to board up some of the missing windows?' Aargh

She is right

[Vermin King]

Trying to format the Haunted House is looking ugly



Any suggestions?

[cowboyleland]

Could the bottom (i.e. both ground) tabs be made out of the margins so it could fit better in the middle of the page?

[squirmydad]

Sept 24, 2018 17:44:51 GMT -9 Vermin King said:

Trying to format the Haunted House is looking ugly



Any suggestions?

It's okay to have white space to cut off, or add in little greeblie items around the edges of the single walls so the page doesn't look empty.

[Vermin King]

Two pages are like this where the top and bottom edges run off. Not so worried about the tabs, but it doesn't look the best

EDIT-- I hate to do it, but it will format a whole lot better if I scale this down to 95%

[Vermin King]

It will probably look a tad small on 32mm, but should still be okay on 30mm and 28mm

















There's a little room to add 'board-overs' and 'patches', but I think I am going to add a few onto the structure itself

[Vermin King]

Took some time over lunch to work on the hearse. Need to add rear fenders and then a test build. As is, the front edge of the roof needs a tight roll. Might switch to a flat panel. Dunno yet.

[Punkrabbitt]

The Hearse is awesome!

[Vermin King]

I think I have the fenders worked out. To more resemble the hearse in the photo, the engine bonnet needed to be lower and narrower. That required a different front fender set up. The rear fender also needed to 'wrap' the wheel, so adjustments there. I've been trying to figure what I may have messed up and checking things out. I think it is time for the first test build. And no, I don't think it will be perfect on the first try, but I'll have to build it to see what further adjustments need to be made.