It’s been 6 months since I posted. I can’t remember if I wrote about this, but I’ve discovered since having a baby that I don’t paint if I don’t have an event or regular gaming time. I really like painting, but I don’t love it on it’s own. And with the kid, I’m not gaming that regularly so I’m not painting and so….I’m not posting about painting.
We did a kitchen renovation at the start of this year and after we had packed up all our kitchen into our storage space, it showed us just how much garbage we had in our storage space. A bunch of games that I just don’t see myself playing anytime in the next 10 years so why bother taking up space with them?
My tradition with stuff I used to love but don’t anymore is to take a photo and use that to convince myself I don’t need the actual thing anymore. So you might get a couple posts of old stuff for a bit. 🙂
Here are two pieces of terrain I was so proud of back in the day.
This one is the more recent of the two. I had this grand plan for a Big Mek table with a hangar bay and planes and shit like that. The only piece I built was this attempt at a crashed rocket that never really looked the part and was shit terrain to boot. The only part that looks good is the very nicely done layering of dirt and dead grass. 😛 Here’s a post from way back in 2010 when I wrote about it originally!
The next piece saw more play because it was actually useful as terrain. A ruined little corner of an ork fortification. Less nicely done layering, but I agonized over how to paint the walls so they weren’t just one solid colour. This is about when I started experimenting with washes, and I’d had enough failures on flat surfaces to know that I was going to have to deal with tide marks. I think I did ok with this one.
Both have been relegated to the trash bin now. I almost started playing 40k recently, but the timing and a lack of enjoying the game made me stop again. Which means I don’t need 40k terrain taking up valuable space in my loft.
I took and uploaded these photos months ago – they were a thing I painted in the middle of that big lull I had, but I was so lully that I neglected to post the photos at all.
I bought the new Necromunda box set because I love the shit out of Necromunda and wanted the terrain and tiles so I could play the 2D version. I’m sick of carrying terrain from a back room, pulling terrain out of boxes, praying it isn’t destroyed, and then reversing the process after a game. 2D terrain is making me happy, so I did a really rough paint job on these guys (but still nice) and have stacked them in a tupperware that I carry to games.
I couldn’t even tell you how I painted them, it was so long ago. Just that I did! 🙂
It’s been a long while since I wrote. I may have written about the baby, and the baby takes up a lot of time. One of the things I like about this new paper building hobby is that I can do it in whatever chunks of time I have available to me. Baby is asleep for 15 minutes? Add another layer of texture. Baby is eating with mom? Take some photos.
It’s slow going, but I’m happy to announce that I have 2 new products available for purchase!
The first floor has a door, while the second floor has no door and has tabs that fit into the first floor to keep it relatively stable.
I initially started designing these to play Gates of Antares with, but GW has since announced the impending release of a new Necromunda so now I’m thinking about gantries and ladders and walkways, because that’s what makes Necromunda awesome!
I now have 3 products available for sale on Geeksong Paper!
Pictured from bottom-left, zagging up to top-right, are the 4 prototypes I printed of the building. This is design, ladies and gentleman — the slow and inexorable force of fucking up constantly until you get something that doesn’t suck as much as it used to.
Remember from last time a few constraints — 5x5x2, one piece of letter sized paper, opens at top, holds models, stackable.
Design #1 was an inch to short, and the roof pieces were an inch to short on both sides. This was just a CAD measurement error on my part – whoops! On the plus side, building this was instructional since I got to hold and handle the model and see what it’s physical properties were — would it hold models? If not, how would I make it do so?
#2Â fixed the basic mistakes from #1, and added a tab onto the end of the roof pieces. You can’t see the tab, but it’s very functional. Because of geometry, the tab prevents the roof from collapsing when you put weight on it. This design still sags in when you put something heavy on it.
#3 added “gutters” inside, and additional tabs to each roof piece so it has 3 floating tabs and 1 glued tab. The gutters were there to prevent the roof from sagging, but ultimately had to be removed. They were a real pain in the ass to assemble each time, which makes it a non-starter.
At this point, I decided to drop the “one piece of paper” constraint. The roof has to be 2 pieces of paper because of this constraint, but if I can use two then I have a lot more options. #4 has the roof as a single piece, which greatly increases it’s strength and ability to not sag or slide when you put models on it. It doubles the cost of printing (printing costs by the sheet, not by the printed ink), but is easy to assemble, strong and looks good when assembled (unlike #3 which is a disaster when assembled). I still want to pull out that metal Gladiator Titan and see what happens, but I think #4 may be my winner.
This process was something I learned after building the shipping containers. Designing your design process! You have to define the physical object first. With the shipping containers, I thought I’d settled the object, so I starting making textures. Then, when playing with the object I found that my object was to big to fit on a piece of letter sized paper! So I had to go back and re-do a lot of the textures, wasting a lot of time.
AFLogistics is a mining corporation that owns the mining rights on many worlds. Their designs are utilitarian – they must be designed to stack, and fit into ships cargo holds as efficiently as possible. Cubes and rectangular pyramids are thus their bread and butter. Which is why I’m focusing on simple designs, even though this building is in my “inspiration” list. 🙂
Here’s a draft from last night:
Design Constraints
I put some models on my cutting mat and decided that a 5″x5″ building would be a good start. Much smaller and it isn’t that impressive. (must)
I want it to be 2″ tall, just above the height of a Gates of Antares model in armour. (must)
The roof must support models. It should even support heavy ones. I keep thinking about a Gladiator Titan.
The design must be foldable.
It must be able to be stacked so that people can make multiple levels.
It should fit on Letter (8.5″ x 11″) sized paper so it’s more mass market.
It should be a single piece of paper.
It should open at the top.
A Brief Aside About Priorities
I’ve organized my constraints by “should” and “must” to help keep me focused. If whatever design I come up with doesn’t fit the “musts”, then it has to be discarded. If it doesn’t suit a “should”, then I have to think carefully about whether that design could be changed to suit, or whether I want to discard that constraint.
You have to be realistic about assigning priorities. Obviously, you could put “must” on everything, but then you haven’t actually prioritized anything, you’ve just made a list.
Back to Constraints
For the shipping container design, #4 was a little flexible so I made two different designs. I couldn’t find a design that was strong and foldable, so I made my customer decide which to use. This isn’t a great solution, but it did allow me to put a product out. Something I started worrying about was “endless design”, where you just keep revising until you lose all your energy.
Constraints #6 and #7 are opposing. I’ve made a few designs that would do one or the other. The one pictured above is the start of a design that might suit both, but I think probably won’t stand up to #3. So then do I drop one of 6 or 7 (can’t drop 3), or modify the design somehow to allow 3 to be met? We’ll see shortly, because I’m going to draw this in a CAD program, print it and build it to see what happens.
My daughter was born! For this, I took 3.5 weeks off work to feed and otherwise support my wife while she fed and otherwise supported the baby. (also, feeding the baby :)) I had a thought a few weeks ago to look into designing printable, foldable paper terrain. My goal was to be able to populate a table of science fiction wargaming from a flat folder. I set about drawing and printing! I’ve attached a ton of photos at the bottom of this post. 🙂
Today I’m writing because my first, boring, but awesome, piece is available for purchase! I’ve called myself Geeksong Paper, and my store is available here:Â http://paper.geeksong.com. For the low-low price of $1USD ($1.30CAD), you can own (license? digital shit is weird) 2 PDFs I’ve designed for shipping containers. One of the PDFs is designed to be folded and unfolded super easily. The other is designed to be really strong and sturdy. You have them both. Maybe you want stronger terrain? Maybe, like me, you want to take up less space in your expensive city-bound apartment? The choice is yours!
And the shipping container in action, with some sweet Concord models and an awesome F.A.T. mat! (both used with permission, the mat is exclusive property of TABLEWAR)
I’ve got a ton of other ideas in my mind I want to draw and build. I’ll be going back to work next week, which sucks. But in about 4-5 months I’m getting laid off, which also sucks, but also means I’ll have more time to draw!
And last, here’s a bunch of photos and talking about the process of building:
I started with simple pop-up building techniques, like childrens pop-up books type things. I had a base and a folding cube. The base allowed me to build with something heavy on the bottom of the model, so that it would pull it apart when opened. The downside is that every model had to have a base, which meant I couldn’t stack. Above is a photo of one design that tried to have the base smaller than was necessary to protect the model while transporting it. I removed the base pretty shortly after this.
Next was a few weeks of math and frustration. I was trying to build a internal cross-brace that would pull the short side edges inward more so they would be flat when opened.
My desk at one point. It got much much worse before it got better. So much paper! We just yesterday came back from Ikea with a float shelf that is now mounted above my desk. With an impending walking-child (right now she’s just a lying-down-child) I needed to get fun and playful things off my desk.
The last cross-brace design. There are 4 different braces inside here, and every single one of them is useless. Because, what I realized much to late, they are necessarily designed to be exactly the same length at all times. Which means there is no pull mechanism, the sides just move in the same way as they would without it. This mechanism could be used to support (hence “brace”…), but it can’t be used to pull. I moved on.
I tried a design that had the roof as a separate piece. I liked this one because it was very flat and smooth. The short sides were smooth, the roof was smooth and the building folded along its natural folds. The downside of this one was that you wouldn’t be able to put heavier models on top, because the roof was just pressure-fit inside. I briefly toyed with creating a groove system for the roof to fit into, but this is about when I decided I’d rather get something finished, than play with designs forever.
Which is when I set up the store and put my designs into a selling-ready mode! Which took a long while as well. Not only did I need to print each design many times at home to make sure it was perfect, I also had to get it printed at a Staples to work out any bugs in that process as well. I wrote and photographed and even video’d instructions on how to to assemble it. And that’s not even including the time to set up the shop, get it looking the way I wanted, and working out all the bugs in the payment process.
My next project is to make a simple building in a similar design as the shipping container. I’ll make another post for that. 🙂
The Burn in Designs windmill continued to cause me some issues – it looked like it was designed so you could rotate it, but without having enough parts to actually be able to rotate it. I still couldn’t figure out what the little sticky uppy bit was! I drilled and pushed the nail into the smaller round bit, then glued the larger one on to hide it.
Used a tiny little plastic screw and a lot of glue to provide just a little nub to give some traction so it doesn’t slide off. It didn’t have to be tight or solid, just keep the top of falling off if you brush it.
The solution isn’t perfect, as the nail isn’t long enough or heavy enough to hold it in the box. Maybe if I put another piece of wood on the end of it?
This is another piece that confused me to as to how to build it properly.
I got this far without trouble. There are stabilizing pieces inside the center of the tower to help put it together, a feature that was very much appreciated! Same in the cylindrical tower – pieces that look almost like garbage are actually there to hold the vertical slats on (you can see them better in the next photo, top left).
But the final build has a thing sticking out of it. And while I have no problem seeing how it’s supposed to attach, I don’t see how it’s supposed to not get ripped off after a moment in my terrain box!
I solved this problem at roughly the same time as my windmill problem. I used my pinvice to drill holes into the triangular pieces, and also the rectangular “faucet”. Then I took a nail from our hardware bin in the closet and made it fit.
So now I can pull the nail out to remove the faucet when storing it!
This cute little building doesn’t fit into my existing architecture at all. These wood sprues came with so many little extras that I had no idea how to put it all together. It even came with little jutty out windows that might sit on the roof. I didn’t put them on, because there’s no second floor.
More terrain! I figured my little town could use a wagon…or two.
There are no assembly instructions for these guys, so it’s a guessing game of figuring out what goes where. It’s ok for the most part, except when you think the yoke is an axel.
