Some Hope for My Blog and Other Odds and Ends

 I still can't post blog photos from my computer, but did a little experimenting with a friend's computer, and found that the photo up-loader seems to work there.  So, I'm going to try to resurrect my wife's old laptop and see if I can work on my blog from it.  First though,  I need to locate a charger and a new battery.

Recently, I've been doing a little work on new 28mm post-apoc settlement buildings and hope to share pics over the next week.  They will mostly be a collection of adobe houses and shanties made of junk.  Additionally, I plan to update some of my older sci-fi buildings for use in the post apocalypse to add to the settlement.

Last weekend, I stumbled onto a wonderful little used book store that had some old miniatures gaming books and rules sets.  Books date to the 1960s and include titles by Featherstone and Grant, and rules span a period from the late 1970s to the about 1990.  You can find the various titles in the history section at BookMarx books.  There were maybe 30 titles on the shelf related to historical miniatures gaming.  I picked up a copy of Featherstone's Solo Wargaming  to continue my exploration of hobby history.

On the New Arrivals front, I recently received an order from Mad Puppet Miniatures, a few 32mm old west ad post apoc figs, which are on my paint table and hope to share soon.  The figures are made of resin, and beautifully detailed and cast.   Shipping from Spain to the US was a little slow, but that is to be expected given the world situation. 

I also received a few more 6mm Cold War infantry from Heroics and Ros, a few Soviets and some more East Germans to round out a few units. These are the newer sculpts, which are lovely miniatures, and shipping time was relatively short, so it looks like H&R is up and running pretty smoothly again.

That's about it for now.  Stay safe out there.

I think My Blog May Be Dead

Well, after spending some time attempting to load photos with "The New Blogger", I have discovered that I cannot.  If I drag and drop, I eventually get an empty "photo box" in my post that disappears completely when I move the cursor.

The uploader consistently take several minutes to load (like 12 minutes or more), and the photo selection never displays in the uploader window (43kb jpg file).  If I select the blank image box in the uploader window, I get the little "something is happening" thingy for several minutes, then it stops, the select button is de-selected, and no image ever appears.

Also, the legacy Blogger option has vanished.

I'll try again in a week or so and see what happens. 

Best of luck to everyone, stay healthy. out there.

 

28mm Post-Apoc Diner and Billboard Update

During this past week, I finished my abandoned diner, and I also finally painted a roadside billboard that has been setting on my painting table for quite some time.

I still need to make a base with a parking lot for the diner, but I'm going to wait a couple of weeks, and work on several different terrain panels all at once, including a couple more road sections with driveways, some town/road sections, and maybe a little park.  

Here are the some pics of the diner:

I went back and forth about boarding up the windows, 

but figure the wood probably would have been scavenged early on, 

so left it off. 

I was concerned with how to do the roof, I ended up using 

320 grit sandpaper, and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

These utility shelves were a pain to make, 

but the room needed something.  I think they did the trick.

I made a number of tourist posters, advertising signs, a calendar, 

and some menus, but ended up not using most of them; it all just 

seemed like too much, and I figure most paper products would 

have vanished with time.

I'll probably eventually add more detail to the diner (nothing is ever really finished, is it?), but for now, the building is done.  As I mentioned above, I still need to make a base, and am working on the roadside sign.  I might add a couple of light poles for the parking lot as well.

This billboard is something that I made maybe a year or two back.  it has been waiting for paint ever since, and today was the day.

It is kind of an unwieldy piece, but I wanted some clutter that stood very upright off of the table, and this does that.  I'll going to add a couple smaller billboards of differing design with some signage still visible.  The figure is a Foundry 28mm Street Violence fig for scale.

Not a huge amount of work done this weekend, but I got a couple things off of my table, and got some paint on a dozen and a half figs also, so that isn't too bad.

Returning to the Abandoned Diner

Sometime back around Christmas, I think it was, I was working on a 28mm post-apocalypse diner, making good progress, when in between my work sessions, 
one of my cats knocked over my paint water, walked across my palette, and then through the diner and across the various bits, spreading paw shaped splats across the diner and bits.

I tried cleaning off the various "splattings" with partial success, but frustrated, decided to put the project aside for awhile, and come back to it later.

Well, it is later, and I starting "re-abandoning" the diner last weekend.  Originally, I had intended to work on Mama's farm, but about ten minutes into that, I found myself in a conundrum over whether to build it as a stand alone piece on a single base, or series of modular pieces that could have multiple uses.

Anyway, while mulling that debate, I made some progress on the diner, and here are a couple of pics.

As I work on the diner, or any of these pieces, I don't just build broken stuff, splat dirt, grime, and dust, etc, I try to imagine the story of the piece, of the abuse and decay.  I try to envision how the story of the place affected the decay and helped make it look like it does in the After.

I start out imagining it shiny and newly built in the early 1960's, how it passed through owners and remodelings,  the state of wear and disrepair at the time of closing, and how vandals, squatters and mother nature shaped it over the years since.

In any event, the diner is coming along, and will will give way to Mama's farm over the next few days with any luck.