Saturday 11 May 2013

Terrain: Modding Sarissa Precision buildings



I picked up a small Sarissa shack at Salute, making four of their old west buildings. But I was curious how well they would take to being converted. The plan was to trim and fill some of the rafters holding the roof up, and make the windows much smaller, leaving the shutters off and sand the endless to lose the sharp corners. I also picked up a resin dome at Salute for the princely sum of £1.50, so I flipped the roof and stuck it on. After filling and sanding, the pieces were ready to be sprayed white:


I painted it the same as my last two, working from 'buff' to white using watered down layers. I'm pleased that you can barely see the filled areas once painted.


The painting went a bit awry too much fiddling around trying to perfect it, much messier compared to the older one. You can't see well in this shot, but I lifted the roof half a centimetre or so with some balsa wood.


I also gave these two small features a fresh lick of paint, they were grey before and looked a bit too much like concrete, I also tried a greeny ageing affect on the fountain. The water was an unrealistic blue and has been changed to a muddy green. I don't think painting terrain is my strong point, but these are somewhat better at the second attempt!



4 comments:

  1. Nice works on the fountains ! (I like them!)

    The building is very well painted and it's a nice model.

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  2. You did a great job on these, Phil! My only criticism of laser-cut buildings is that they are often too 'perfect' for the architecture they are depicting. I find that most pre-20th century structures (and many from the third world) are not very square and level, often having an almost organic look about them. Nonetheless, these look very nice (the dome is a particularly nice touch) and I especially like your two fountains.

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  3. I really like this! I'm a big fan of the Sarissa Precision buildings, I have a few of the Cityblock range already. I've done some very minor modifications on those, but the effect you've got here is great and it's an idea I may well steal in the future!

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  4. Cheers all. A relatively successful experiment!

    Curt - I agree, thoughI don't think I'm a good modeller of terrain so by no means an expert. While I wouldn't want all boards to be filled with identikit buildings, laser cut wood are appealing for a variety of reasons (cost, light, durable), but I'd agree that they are too neat and square. Also the walls are a bit thin, this sort of think would look better in 3mm mdf.

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