Japanese Paper Stree Scene Magazine

[disturbman]

The title doesn't really say it all but I was unable to come up with a better name.

 

So today, wandering around Berlin, I stumble upon a very peculiar Japanese magazine. What caughts my eye was the cover, it was featuring a Yamanote line car being held up by a hand.

 

I opened the magazine, leafed it through and buy it for 15€ (japanese tag price is a thousand yen). Now, you are starting to wonder what I found. So I will tell you the magazine is made off pictures taken in Japan. Allways street scenes or buildings. What you can do with it is cut the pictures, glue them together and get a 3Dimensional street scene. You can cut out bikes, buldings, lamp post, salazy men and other college girls... Very strange.

 

Anyway, I do think some photo are more or less to N scale size. So it might be a way to get somesort of wallpaper or very cheap building for a layout.

 

I'l try to make some scans in the near future so you know what I speak about.

[cteno4]

Vincent,

 

hey this sounds cool. can you please post the IBSN number? may have to try and order this sucker!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[disturbman]

Good thinking, the ISBN of the magazine I buid is: 4-86193-035-9 C0076.

 

There is two issues of "Fotomo" on Amazon:

- http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%88%E3%83%A2%E3%81%AE%E7%89%A9%E4%BB%B6-Fotomo-%E7%B3%B8%E5%B4%8E-%E5%85%AC%E6%9C%97/dp/4861930863/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b/376-7732309-3420860

- http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%88%E3%83%A2%E3%81%AE%E8%A1%97%E8%A7%92-Fotomo-%E7%B3%B8%E5%B4%8E-%E5%85%AC%E6%9C%97/dp/4861930359/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

 

I buid myself the one with the girl on the cover since there is a row of ten buildings that more or less look like they are in N scale. I'm pretty sure that the rest can be scanned and reprinted to the desired scale. It also makes for a good photo or scene inspiration library.

[to2leo]

Thank you for adding this to my shopping list in November.  This is amazing!

[to2leo]

OMG this is a whole new hobby!!!!  I have been wondering about something like this for a long time.  And now I found that it is actually a hobby!!!!

 

Keyword: Photomo

[disturbman]

Actually, I must say that I was thinking about making a work in those exactly same lines... but now, I'm wondering if I should not forget the idea.

 

The only problem with this magazine is, it's so beautifull that I don't think I will be able to bring myself to cut it. I will have to buy another one or try to reproduce it.  

 

Glad that you like it Leo. You even make me discovered a whole new hobby.

 

- http://www.geocities.jp/tomofield2002/image/photomo.jpg

- http://www.kousakusha.co.jp/RCMD5/img_tmp/photomo05.jpg

 

That's so great... It's really a big improvement from plastic models. Imagine what it could do on a layout... Raaaaah (going crazy inside)!!! Next time I'm going to Japan I will make sure I'm taking enough pictures to be able to print these myself.

[cteno4]

I now have a foggy memory about these from maybe a year back. i think it may have been here on the forums.

 

Ill throw one monkey wrench into all of this (dont mean to be a buzz kill). I did a lot of this like 25 years ago doing exhibit models for the monterey bay aquarium. we would do cutouts of most of the foreground stuff for the 3/4" model for when we photographed it. i could take photos of people and other objects that would be out free standing (all the walls were 3D and roughly detailed as exhibits with styrene, balsa, colored paper, etc). then i would mount them on chip board and cut them out and darken their edges.

 

rub was this looked pretty cheesie to the naked eye, especially if you were not at the perfect angles for looking at it. also the dark edges made the figures look kind of strange. bUT when you looked through the camera lens the scene totally changed. the dark edges went away and w/o them in the camera any lighter images created a little glow effect around the cutouts making it look very weird. we were able to make some amazing photographs that folks would swear were real. it did take a lot of fiddling with the figures, camera angle, lighting, but the results were astounding.

 

so this is just to say it may look awesome in the photos, but in real life it may not be as awesome or the same feel. dont think the technique would work well with model trains unless it were layering buildings in a background off in the distance, like a transition from 3D buildings to a flat backdrop picture.

 

i think there was a thread somewhere on the board referencing a guy who used photos to create his buildings in 3D as well.

 

sorry dont want to be a wet blanket, but just wanted you to know how this technique works.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

btw i ended up doing this on a coral reef cdrom where we wanted the sub to fly over the reef between underwater labs. was way too hard to make a 3D reef terrain (this was like 15 years ago) so i had the artist try the cut out idea with cut outs of sections of reefs from all the photos we had. as long as they oriented the cutouts to close to a right angle to the camera on its path it worked amazingly well and we only had to do the labs in 3D but that was pretty easy actually. its also been picked up in video as well. ken burns pan and scans on old photos got so popular folks wanted a new effect. well they started to cut the foreground people (and sometimes objects) out of an old photo, then photoshop the person out of the photo. then in 3D software they place the cutouts in front of the background and then move the camera to give a 3D effect to the photo. it sometimes give very odd creepy results...

[scott]

Iit sometimes give very odd creepy results...

 

See? Models + fake people  + motion = creepy!

[cteno4]

Ha! LOL! giving you some nightmares now scott?!

 

nighty night!

 

jeff

 

Iit sometimes give very odd creepy results...

 

See? Models + fake people  + motion = creepy!

[marknewton]

I now have a foggy memory about these from maybe a year back. i think it may have been here on the forums.

 

You're right Jeff, we discussed these books a while back. I have both of them, and as you say, they look better in a photo than they do in reality. But they're full of ideas and inspiration as well... 

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[cteno4]

Yeah they would be great to sus out what might be a great scene to model in 3D from 2D pictures of it! thats basically what we did with the concept in the exhibit models. it worked really well to help those that could not visualize well the scene, even looking at a mini version of it in a model. once folks saw pictures of a concept using the technique they really got it and could comment on it coherently of give approvals!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[to2leo]

After all pictues tell a thousand words!

 

I wonder if I can get them in any bookstore?  Does anyone have a suggestion about which bookstore I should go in Tokyo or Osaka?

[marknewton]

Yeah they would be great to sus out what might be a great scene to model in 3D from 2D pictures of it! thats basically what we did with the concept in the exhibit models...

 

That sounds like a very interesting project, Jeff. A few years back I was moonlighting as an architectural modeller, and I encountered some of the same problems you mention. It's funny how quickly people can grasp a concept once you show them a simple model or mock-up.

 

But the funniest thing I ever experienced was getting a building approval by weathering a presentation model. The client wanted to build in a heritage/conservation area, and the council objected that the building would look too new and clean. I went back and weathered the model, using standard model railroad techniques, and it was re-submitted. The reaction was amazing. Everyone raved about how realistic it looked, all of the objections were withdrawn, and the building went ahead. Apparently it was the first time any of these folks had seen a weathered model!

 

You made a good point about using fotomo images on a backdrop, I think this is how I will be using them. I mocked up a scene on the club layout, and I thought it was quite effective when viewed at the right angle.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[cteno4]

LOL! I love that! never weathered an exhibit model! mostly did the interior exhibit scenes and not the externals stuff.

 

the development days at the monterey bay aquarium was a blast, i was a high school kid and they needed someone to help fiddling with stuff so i became the fiddler for the next 4 years. learned a lot from the exhibit designers and it was fun as my odd background of some train modeling, plastic modeling, and woodworking paid off in thinking of different ways to do things than the designers did. my first day one of the designers wanted me to make a cement waffle ceiling 3/4" scale by gluing a whole bunch of little piece of wood together. that night i realized that it was never going align up well, so i just milled up some new wood stock and did a bunch of dado joints to make the wine box insert system. assembled the grids, trimmed them up and bamo. was a great look on the designers face the next morning when the whole thing was there done, painted and in place with whole grid totally in alignment. he thought i would be there like 2 days gluing little chunks of wood --  my way took all of 3 hrs total! I still have little 3/4" scale cutouts of all the early aquarium staff!

 

yeah is was always getting the right viewing and lighting angle to make the cutout scenes pop. lighting was also a trip to do. had the most fun making kookalorises (sp?) -- basically mobiles that floated in front of the lights -- to get the light mottled properly and reduce the hard shadows.

 

cheers

 

jeff