JR 500系 Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 (edited) Hi Mike! Nice looking buildings you have there! Very detailed air-con on the roof! Nicely fitting into a very nice town! Can i know which type of the GreenMax buildings did you use? *Sorry i just answered my own question. i reckon this is the one? http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10084231 But it's sold out at HS... Great job on the buildings! Edited February 27, 2013 by JR500 のぞみ Link to comment
mbloes Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 Thanks for the comments, gents. I was going back and forth as to whether the "Century Tower" building should be a hotel or "mansions". If it were mansions, I figured I could hang laundry and stuff off of the balconies. But I ultimately went with a hotel because of it's proximity to the station. And, for all of the "detail up" parts that Japanese manufacturers develop, the one area that they have really been lacking is urban-high rise roof detail (like, well, aircon units!). It's easy to use 10 (or 20 or 30) units on a typical high-rise. The superstructure that GM provides in these kits is absolutely pathetic - too big for most of the applications and absolutely zero detail. I'm still refining my aircon unit design. These came out "good enough" for the first pass and they come off a bit better within the visual context of the actual layout. Link to comment
JR 500系 Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 Hi Mike! I see... U meant the air-con details were not incuded in the GM kit itself? It's a smashing job! They look great and definately add alot more realisticsm to the building, with the red flower and all... I'm guessing the flowers are from Tomytec flower bed itself, but i cant figure out where the air-con came from? Are they scratch-built, or did i remember seeing a Sankei Paper kit that had these? Too bad i started late... These GM buildings are long sold out... Not to mention really expensive to buy them now... Link to comment
Krackel Hopper Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 These Greenmax kits are being re-released.. Not sure if there is any improved tooling, but it will be a 5 story basic set (2187) with a 4 story add-on (2188) Reservations are already closed at HobbySearch - and no official release date yet.. 5 Story Basic Set 4 Story Add-on Great looking buildings mboles! Did the 4 squares wide fit the space on the Kato road plate, or did you have to modify the kit to fit? I have the Kato station & roads and I've been playing around with what will fit into that space. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted February 28, 2013 Author Share Posted February 28, 2013 Mike, You willing to share with us your roof ac technique? They are great. I was able to grab 4 packs of the Walthers rooftop details on sale for $5 ea, but as you have shown you need lots od these suckers on the small to mid size buildings. Jeff Link to comment
mbloes Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 Did the 4 squares wide fit the space on the Kato road plate, or did you have to modify the kit to fit? I have the Kato station & roads and I've been playing around with what will fit into that space. The short answer is no. Look at this photo: DSCF2968 by mbloes, on Flickr For the Subaru building, I just made the front and back faces from the kits and used vertically textured sheet styrene for the sides. Now, look at this photo: top view by mbloes, on Flickr You can really see how skinny it is. For the other building to the right in the above photo, the roadway in front of it is not Kato. It is assembled from small pieces of diorama roadway that came with some Bandai vehicle collection, like so: bandai road 3 by mbloes, on Flickr This piece of roadway does not have sidewalk on one side (the station side in my layout) so a 4 tile building module will (just) fit. If you look at the bottom of my building, you will see that it is "open air", in order to allow the pedestrians to pass through (I hope all of that makes sense). Link to comment
mbloes Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 (edited) Mike, You willing to share with us your roof ac technique? They are great. I was able to grab 4 packs of the Walthers rooftop details on sale for $5 ea, but as you have shown you need lots od these suckers on the small to mid size buildings. Jeff Haha, well, I really shouldn't give away my secret but I will post it this once and maybe you'll forget. They are made up of three components: Sheet styrene that is textured as 1/3" squares Some 1/4" or 5/16" square tubing (I forget) And most importantly - PE "detail up" kits for US diesel locomotives like these: http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Trainworx-N-EMD-Diesel-Dash-2-Fans-p/twx-310.htm I cut a single row of the sheet styrene squares and leave the squares all connected. Then, I cut the square tubing into maybe 1/4" long pieces (I did some 3/8" long but I thought they were too tall). I glue these square pieces to the sheet styrene that I cut off (hopefully this makes sense when you look at my photos). Finally, I glue the fan screens to the top of the styrene squares. Use some black marker in between the squares and paint / weather as you see fit. I've seen bare blade aircon units as well as screened ones so you can literally get 20 aircon units out of one of those PE sheets. I'm very surprised that no US modeler called me out on what I was using for the fans! Edited February 28, 2013 by mbloes 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted February 28, 2013 Author Share Posted February 28, 2013 ahh, very cool mike! cleaver man! i thought those fans looked better than printed decals which is what my first guess was. perfect use of those detail up parts, going to have to start lurking for some of those now! really the roof details on most layouts are so very important unless you have an eye level layout as you see those roofs so well and at times with some angles thats all you really notice about a building! cheers jeff Link to comment
mbloes Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 (edited) How many times am I going to bump this thread?!? At any rate, a couple of years ago I had a large building planned, using these Greenmax kits. Unfortunately, as the months wore on, I kind of lost my ideas about what I wanted to do. So I ultimately decided to complete it literally as a "building under construction". It probably took me more time and aggravation to build it this way than if I just finished my original project. The scaffolding is two Sankei paper kits. The yellow fence is clear plastic where they printed onto it. I don't like it (I wanted real fence) but that's what I got in the mail so I used it. The crane is scratchbuilt, except for the boom, which is some US PE kit. It is 100% brass and soldered. I don't think any single modeling project has given me more grief than this did. I tried to take some close-up photos of it but they were out of focus so you'll have to wait. Check it out: Edited July 6, 2015 by mbloes 4 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted July 7, 2015 Author Share Posted July 7, 2015 Mike, Hey great work and a wonderful idea for the green max modules! Jeff Link to comment
mbloes Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 The crane . . . 100% brass, all soldered, Tamiya paint & primer. 1 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted July 9, 2015 Author Share Posted July 9, 2015 Excellent dude! Gets the Awesome sauce label! Jeff Link to comment
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