Leicester Hospital Build: Windows

As you will see the wife very kindly printed out the windows and doors she had designed for me! I've started applying them to the buildings, just done these two at the moment and personally I think they look great. Sorry for the slightly cack picture once I've done them all I'll take some better quality pictures.

The finish is not perfect but works fine for me. As ever still lots to do like painting and tidying up (also need to finish those chimneys. I have measured up the buildings at the moment and they almost fill a 2x2 square so I have decided  in the interests of not "crowding the board (which is 6 ft wide) I will not build the two wings which should sit to the left and right of the building. I will be sticking with the U shaped building as in my other posts.

This way the model should look good on the table, without filling it up an excessive amount!

As above I'll take some better pictures once I have all the windows and doors on, then its on to painting the bits that need painting.

Leicester Hospital Build: Roofs Textured

Just a quick update, I've now clad all of the buildings in their base textures (walls and roofs) and mounted the chimneys on the main building.

Still lots to do but its really starting to come together now! I'm pretty pleased as I don't usually have the stamina to stick at building projects. I know stuck on textures are not to everyone's tastes but I personally really like them and they produce a far superior effect to anything I could paint (as I'm a bit naff at painting buildings).

A second Blog

The observant among you will have noticed the appearance of a second page tab at the top of the Home page marked as Insurance and Claims Information. No I've not setup my own Insurance company, but I have started a second blog about Insurance (Yawn I know I am quite dull).

Those of you that don't know I work in the Insurance industry dealing with claims at a fairly senior level. As a result of this when two of my wife's friends were recently burgled and struggled with the Insurance claims process I gave them a hand by explaining what to expect, and why, and what they needed to get in order to make the claim as simple and fast as possible.

I'm often faced with Policyholders who don't really understand their policies, what the terms and wording means or the claims process.

So I thought I would do a Blog with as much information as I can about Claims and Insurance generally. I'm going to update it over time with loads of Insurance and Claims related stuff as a bit of a pet project, and hopefully someone will find the information useful. If nothing else it should be a good way for me to keep things fresh work wise.

A swift disclaimer, none of the information on the Blog will constitute legal advice and it will solely comprise of information which is already in the public domain. I will not put any information on the Blog which is drawn from confidential or privileged information which I have as a result of my position in the industry or with Insurers.

Anyway its a bit barren at the moment but hopefully in the next days and weeks I will populate it with more stuff and make it searchable and someone will find it useful. The first post is about what to expect when you make a Domestic Household claim and is quite long.

As an aside if anyone has any general questions or a topic they want to here me drone on about let me know via comments or email insurancethingsyoushouldknow@live.com

Leicester Hospital Build: Window Textures

My wonderful and amazingly talented wife (gushing enough or do I need more?) has made me these three window textures for use on the Leicester Hospital build. The red brick texture in the background is from Scale Scenes and has just been photo shopped in behind the wife's windows to show what they would look like stuck on.

I am frankly astounded by how good these look. The wife has created all of the surrounds, frames shading and shadows from scratch, as above the only bought item is the red brick which is just in these pictures to show what the frames will look like once printed and stuck on.

I will have to wait until next week to print these as the wife wont be able to get them printed until then, but I think these are amazing. She's currently working on the front door for the hospital for me and I expect that will look just as good.

If there is any interest the wife might make these windows (minus the Scale Scenes red brick background) available for download in the future. Thanks for looking.

Leicester Hospital Build: Another little update

Another swift update (sorry for posting so much but I'm using the blog to track my build progress and keep me interested). I have popped the stone texture on the corner units and on the two buildings which sit behind the corner units forming the back of this U shaped building.

As ever i'm really pleased with how this looks. I'm going to be continuing the light stone decoration which is on the middle building along the corner units to make them look a bit better. I'm also just applying brick textures to the chimney stacks so they can be glued on, also hope to do the roofs tomorrow.

The corners of the buildings will have cap stones added later, and the white bits will be painted an appropriate shade of brick.

Oh and in the background on the left you can see my personal computer background which I made myself based around the good old Umbrella corp from resident evil. When I say I made it myself, I do mean it I had to make the red and white logo in Photoshop one triangle at a time. Oh and on the right I had to white out the computer screen as I realised I had left a client file visible (doh)

Leicester Hospital Build: Small Update

Just a quick update to show what I've been doing on this today. I have added some detail to the front of the building and started building the chimneys for the roof. I have also managed to get the brick texture for this building stuck on. Lots of tidying up to do, and I have to add the windows, doors corner stones etc.

I'm pleased with how the basic brick texture looks the effect is really good (in my opinion). The textures are from  Scalescenes who have a great selection of textures. They are aimed at the model railway crowd but there O gauge scale works fine for 28mm wargaming.

The good lady wife is in the progress of creating the windows and doors in photoshop/illustrator for me. Hope to get more done later, but really depends on how much time I have.

Sculpting: A Modern Chap

I thought I would post up a picture of this part finished sculpt I have been working on since Christmas. I have wanted a figure suitable for modern/post apoc gaming for sometime that is armed with an L85.

 I know Empress has modern British infantry but my issue (which seems petty) is the version of the L85 which the figures have. I was in the RAF for 4 years and I want a figure armed with the L85 that I remember from my service days.
So I picked up Hasslefree's L85's and decided to sculpt my figure around it.

Its been hard work, and I know its not really all that good, but I'm really pleased with how it looks. I still need to do another hand, the head and details on the shirt. I'm probably going to give the shirt a collar and then possibly pop a flack jacket over the top, but I'll see how it goes.

Leicester Hospital Build: Roofs on

Just a quick post to share my build progress. I've built the roofs for all the main buildings. The middle main building has a parapet roof so its completely different to the others. I have built it so that there is room for figures to be positioned around the roof. All the roofs come off so it will be possible to position figures within the buildings (on both floors the ground and 1st)

In reality this is a three storey building but in order to accommodate that the building would have been so big it would have looked grossly out of scale therefore the buildings are all two storey. The two end turrets will have crenelations or something on top (the left one has some crudely cut ones just balanced on it at the moment for test fitting purposes.

I now need to make all the chimneys and bits for the roofs before we get to the decoration stage.

I am terrible at painting buildings so I intend to cheat and use my favourite terrain medium, which is printed brick textures. I have used them before on walls and other bits and the effect on the war gaming table is (to me anyway) very satisfying and neat. The bonus is it makes a build much quicker and the building more robust as paint etc wont be rubbed off by handling.

Thanks for looking.

Leicester Hospital Build Progress

Just a quick post to update the progress on my construction of Leicester General Hospital. I still need to make the roofs (obviously) and then its on to covering and preparing the buildings. I will then need to build the two small wings that sit either side of this building (as I said before in reality there are more wings but it would occupy to much table space).

I have made all the sections modular,  this is so that I can use them for other things and also it means that if on the day it turns out the building takes up to much space it can be reconfigured to fit better.

The observant will notice the main front building is taller than the others, it is in reality and has a different roof construction so its not a gross error on my part, although there are probably other gross errors in their somewhere! :)

Flat Pack Hospital

Just a quick little post about what I have been doing for the last few days. Myself and some of the chaps from The Very British Civil Forum are again putting on a VBCW game at Partizan in June 2013. Our game this year follows on from last years game and is the Siege of Leicester.

The focal point of which is going to be Leicester General Hospital (not the Royal Infirmary in the city centre) The above is a frankly rather large pile of bases and foam board I have just finished cutting down to make the majority of the Hospital.

Once this is assembled I will need to make two smaller wings which run parallel to the main building. There are actually more than two wings but unless we wont to have an insanely big table I had to simplify the Hospital a little.

Not Batou

This is the not Batou figure by Hasslefree Miniatures. For those not in the know Batou is one of the main characters in the Japanese Animation Ghost in the Shell which is one of my favourite films.

I had a bit of a cock up when I was preparing this figure for painting, the gun holding hand is not the one which came with the miniatures as the I some how dropped and then lost the gun holding hand whilst preparing it for undercoating. I spent some time looking for it and never found it. The hand I have used is from a Forgeworld figure (I think, I found it in my bits box) and works reasonably well as a replacement. I had to paint the gun hand to match the figures original hand and as you can't actually see both hands at the same time due to the pose it looks okay. Not ideal but I really wanted to paint some camouflage trousers damn it!

I decided to paint the trousers using the Vertical Tiger Strip pattern, which I believe only saw limited service with SOG operators during the 60's and possibly ARVN Rangers. Either way I think its a cool pattern, and I really like how it turned out.

I'm really pleased with how this figure turned out, despite the hand cockup,I am now struggling to base the figure on my customary 2p pieces though due to the pose! Its a fiddle but I think it will work out okay.

I have a couple of 2013 projects to work on, they are (in no particular order)

1. My Scots Covenanter army for VBCW

2. Completion of buildings and other bits and bobs for Junes Partizan game (although its still early planning stage so not sure exactly how that will end up yet)

3. Not figure related but my other geeky hobby is PC gaming and I'm going to have a bash at building some switch control panels for use with flight simulator games (thus proving that if its a geeky hobby I will probably do it)

Royal Marines (Piratical ones)

Firstly Happy New Year to everyone, bit late but it is my first post of the new year. I'm in the midst of planning various 2013 projects at the moment but over the last couple of days painted up these four lovely miniatures.

They are one of the Royal Marines sets from Black Scorpions Pirates range. There resin (but very reasonably priced) and were a real joy to paint. I find white challenging but the extra effort these required was worth it. As most will know Black Scorpions figures are scaled Heroically that's to say they are a little big for 28mm, but these were really nice sculpts and as I have no other pirates or anything of this era they wont be out of scale!

The wife picked these up for me at Christmas and I will most certainly be getting more from Black Scorpion in the future. Just lovely figures all round, and very little flash or cleaning was required. They come for slota bases but I'm not a fan of raised bases and prefer the low profile of a coin.

In other Christmas chap related news I thought I would share a picture of what my family bought me this year.

As some of you may recall I rather like a gin and tonic, well as is evident from the picture my family decided to encourage my mid day drinking by buying me this wonderful globe drinks cabinet. It's full size (not a mini table one or anything like that) and I personally love it. Of course now I will just have to buy more decanters, old glasses and various types of gin to fill it with!