Backdrops?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

If I modeled flatter placed, I'd be sunk:
http://www.1000skies.com/partials/pages/1st5at15-6228.htm

Anyway, about the music while modeling, I find it funny because I had the same experience.

When I was building my HO Module back in High School, I must've listened to Blues Traveler's Album "Four"  a million times. Whenever I hear Hook, I think about that module.

I've got to go dig that up at my parents place and play with it some. I miss it (and the tasty FEC goodness that came with it).

[Erik W]

Break out some paint and a how to book or two.  While my backdrop could be better, it came out pretty good for the first attempt ever at painting something.



Erik

[ednadolski]

I am looking for backdrops for my layout and for the club too in a couple of scenes. Any one have experiance with anybody making them?

If you want to paint your own, here are some DVDs that I like:

http://www.darrylhuffman.50megs.com/photo5.html

What I find tricky is matching the colors to the existing layout. However that's even harder to do with a large format photo print.

What I finally did was go to a local paint store that sells lots (hundreds at least) of various paint colors in sample-sized jars.  I brought my layout materials and tried to pick a few samples that came closest.  Sounds easy but my base grass color alone has about 6 or 7 shades of ground foam so you have to mentally "average" them.  With those I painted a few sample paintings, I think I'm finally getting close.  When I'm ready I'll have the paint store make up a quart or gallon of the selected color(s).  (Then I'll have to get around to actually building the dang thing... easier said than done for me)

Also, Pelle Soeborg's recent book talks about painting a backdrop using oil paints.  The advantage is that they take a long time to dry, so you can really blend those sky gradients from whitish/mist at the horizon line to the full sky blue at the top.  Water-based paints dry too fast for that (esp. here in Colorado) but perhaps the newer water-based oil paints would work.

The Mike Danneman scenery book is also helpful, but he seems to put more effort into extolling the benefits of the backdrop than in clearly and completely explaining how to actually do it.

HTH,
Ed

[bobcat]

Erik, That looks very good to me. I was planning on painting the background where I have hills and trees, the backdrops I am looking for are city scenes similar to this.



The plan is to have actual models in front of these and get the impression of depth.

[bobcat]

I have some from Realistic Backgrounds, which is located in Pittsburgh. I don't have them installed yet, but they are reasonably priced and of good quality. I bought mine from Scenic Express

http://www.realisticbackgrounds.com/

http://www.scenicexpress.com/


Ray

BTW, thank you Ray for the links. These look a whole lot cheaper than the ones I saw and just fine for what I want.

[wm3798]

Kraftwerk... Eno... You see, that's the kind of guy who invents N scale garage doors that open and window fans that work...  Smarter than the average bear.

You'll notice that N scalers rarely listen to tripe like Journey, or REO Speedwagon!

As for backdrops, I used to cut out photos from the pages of MR and layer them on poster board to create a busy city scape.  This worked well, because the images were of model buildings in artificial light, just like the ones in the foreground!


You can see some between the big Camden Yards style warehouse and the Acme Bird Seed flat.  I just stippled a distant hillside on the poster board, then attached the building pictures with spray mount.  Of course, today you don't have to cut them out of the magazine, you can just scan them and print them out in color.

Lee

[amato1969]

You'll notice that N scalers rarely listen to tripe like Journey, or REO Speedwagon!

Ouch, man.  You're killin' my 80s mojo.  Escape is one of my favorite albums!   

Anyway, back on topic -- Erik, your choice of blue looks great.  I need to swing by Home Depot for some paint.