Salute 2011

a good day, if long day, back at around 10.40 last night... three Frother's games and there seemed to be a lot of interest... the mansion in all it's glory, the first game was a bit slow, but the rules were trimmed back and the later games went better...

the mansion game together really well, especially considering how scattered around the UK the contributors are... of course, Akkie's Battlefield game was just one chaps efforts and was outstanding to look at...

the Tron game, oddly only got one pic of that, but it was genius in it's simplicity and won an award...

and Crooked Dice launched 7TV rather spectacularly... table looked great...

even down to the scale map of the table in the villains lair...

CD also had a Who game going...

other stuff included a nice looking VSF Aeronef game and a few ECW games (which considering my recent dabbling was nice to look at)...

the library at Cthluedo Mansion finished

it's finished... well it's done and I'm stepping away from it before I cock it up in a spectacular fashion...

the table is scratch built from foampvc and beads for the legs (not that you can see them very well, but they look bloody great) and the books/cthulhu idol mark out the spaces on the floor so players can climb on/over it as they wish... the wallpaper on the outer walls will tie this room in with all the others (that's the plan - as ever the Frothers build doesn't come together until the day) with some suitable staining... I had planned on putting some Mythosy pictures, but they haven't turned up, so have used the ones the frames came with as most could pass for sinister in some way... removed 1 picture though to help fill the walls up with removed portraits... not 100% sure that has worked very well though... hey ho...

the library at Cthluedo Mansion part 5

I never want to paint another book in my life... sadly I have some more to do for the table... if I can bring myself to do them... sigh... oddly, the photos make it look much brighter than it is, but the basic room is done, just the corridor side walls to finish and to put in the windows to have a playable room... everything else, including the table is just gravy at this point as I'm quite sick to death of the bloody thing...

and in a desperate attempt to add a bit of Mythos to it all, a Mi-Go brain jar on the shelves:

the library at Cthluedo Mansion part 4

the library walls/shelfs are painted, the massive table is as well, but still deliberating over the floor. While I ponder that, Salute gets closer and I need books... lots and lots of books for the library walls...

I'm using bought metal books for those out on the table and strewn about the room, but all I need for the shelves are spines. Now there are essentially two different sizes of book shelf in the room, the mid-wall case and the corner case (which is slightly narrower) and after some quick playing with 3mm pvcfoam, I need 15 books to fill a shelf in mid-wall case and 12 books for a shelf in the corner case... and there are 5 shelves to a case... that should be around 1750 books. No way was I making those by hand.

I made some blocks of books out of foam pvc, 8 different 5 book blocks and 2 different 7 book blocks (henceforth refered to as bb)... that meant 140 x 5bb and 50 x 7bb to fill the walls... much more manageable, so out came the Siligum and the Alumilite Super Plastic:

I did a few molds to optimise the resin when mixed, but was bricking the actual resin bit. This is chemistry. This is chemistry with warning labels. Scary chemistry. Only it turns out it isn't...

Some deliberation over the need for well ventilated and room temperature while being a very cold March, I ditched the garden, turned up the heating and opened all the windows... it's not exactly room temperatue, but warmer than the garden, this has had the downside of slowing down the curing time a smidge (3 minutes normally), but this means I have slightly longer to pour. I've had to limit my mixing to a quarter of a fluid ounce, as any more caused problems with the tin foil cake cups I planned on using for the mixing pot... large amounts caused the foil cups to buckle, making pouring a pig. I will get some plastic cups later, but it means for now I do half the molds at a time, one lot is curing while I mix the next lot which seems to be working so far. I've also got some spare for the Timelord wall sconce when needed.

Now, I have a new found respect for mold makers, it turns out the hardest part of the entire process is getting a decent mold in the first place... I must confess I've had to ditch a couple of my earlier molds, simply because of flaws, I'm getting better at it though, but it was an expensive (if fun) learning curve... what I have now still have some flaws, but all I need are good spines, the rest of the books will not be seen...

the library at Cthluedo Mansion part 3

nothing like a Sunday for putting up some shelves...

even managed to do my planned secret door...

which meant I had a lasercut door going spare, and seeing as I'd made too big a hole for the other door, I got creative and continued the general Gothic theme that seems to have happened by making the door a large double door instead...

(and now I look at it, I forgot to emphasise the join in the middle - so not quite done yet)

now all I need are books... lots and lots of books... I've plenty of bought 28mm books which will be 'hero' books and very visible out in the room, but for the walls I've tinkered with some faux spines... these will be made longer and with Siligum and some casting resin reproduced at a cracking rate hopefully...

but I'm kind of ready to paint... not sure what colour to do the floor... or what (or who) to hang from the very necessary beam...

EDIT: anyone keeping track will notice that there aren't 42 units of shelves there... originally I had plans for freestanding shelves within the room, but once the table was included, the other shelves didn't really help any...

and finally found a pic online of what has been nibbling at the back of my mind the whole time I've been building this... the Hammer version of Dracula...

of course it looks nothing like that, but with the table and the 'hero' books scattered about you never know...

the library at Cthluedo Mansion part 2

the basic shell is up and running... there were a few teething problems with the prototype walls (as the room kits are planned to be available for sale at some point I believe) which I had to tweak with foampvc the same thickness of the plywood... but even that was nothing too big...

the window bay has had some plasticard put over the windows, there will be detail there and I should be able to work more easily on the plasticard (hopefully), I'm also thinking of giving that area a ceiling for some atmosphere and just to reinforce the structure as a whole... the other walls should be book cases... I've had to change my original plan a little bit, which had book cases within the room as well as around the walls, but the sheer scale of building those as well is a bit daunting... it may yet happen, we will see... there will be at least one massive table covered in books though (think end of the Hammer Dracula)...

the library at Cthluedo Mansion part 1

December has been mostly tiling the floor for my part of the Salute 2011 game, the library...

Not very exciting to look at I admit, but quite time consuming... also experiment with some small scale pressmolding, the results of which I will hopefully manage to show before Christmas... the main need for that is also the library (42 units of 3-4 shelves equals a fecking lot of books), however my experiments are with something very very Who-ish which should also prove useful in time...