The World Of Twilight

Today i started design work on a further kit in the series...

I want to add a small range of buildings to act as houses amongst some of the more specific buildings. So I will create a kit that will build a small number of simple houses. Lacking the complexity of the pringles tower or the stables staircase but stylistically similar.

Homesteads

Design intent:

• range of THREE one or two storey buildings (probably based on a cut down pringles tube, a ben and jerry's tub and another as yet undecided (possibly a starbucks coffe cup or a macdonalds coke cup)
• Flat roofs and conical roofs - conical roof with square dormer and or turret cut out, flat with railings.
• A range of beams, doors (flush to wall and projecting gable - thin and wide), windows, balconies, turret, lean to etc which are as interchangeable as possible between the three models.
• Turret (40mm waste pipe) with cut out templates to assemble it to the cylindrical OR the conical tubes n tubs.
• Each model as configurable as I can make it so that no two kits need be built the same way. Encouraging purchase of more than one kit.
• as a pringles tube is an almost direct match for the diameter of the base of an ben and jerry's tub it will be possible to assemble the buildings with a section of pringles tube on top of the uptuned ice cream tub. making a three or four storey building from the elements.
• No more than 3 sheets of A4 styrene.
• target pricing £15 (£5 per building seems a good price point)
• I will copy the conical roof from the pringles tube and the dormer from the Haft-Oob Stables but the other elements should be new, but elements from the tower and stables should be interchangeable.

All progress on this kit including WIP pictures will appear in this thread.

As always comments and suggestions welcome.  

That sounds like an excellent idea.  ;D

Sounds like a great idea!

Any sketchups yet?

Nope... have been snag fxing on the Haft-Oob Stables

Been playing around with some basic ideas for the homesteads.

Starting with something suitable for the roofs.

http://brandlin.blogspot.com/2010/07/possible-roofs.html

Trouble is, the middle 2 would entail the purchasee making angled cuts in the pringles tube that might not be all that easy, even with a provided template. I like the first one best of the four, but if you're looking for odd roof ideas, split-level rooves might look good, cut the second storey in half, put a flat roof on the lower half and either a flat roof or half-cone on the upper half. Just realised I'm describing a similiar roof to number 4, lol!

Those look like the could be fun ideas. Not really sure how they'd look as part of a town of buildings, but I expect they could work. Could you simply do a roof with a different angle to it rather than 45 degrees?
Did you get anywhere thinking about some different roof textures rather than tiles/shingles?
The one with a flat roof-garden looks like I nice idea if you did a little barrier around the open bit and a door/window into the other roof section.

rick - i've not tried angled cuts by my initial thought was to EITHER provide a template that wrapped around the tube and let you mark along the edge, OR to provide styrene beams that are correctly cut that when stuck to the tube mean you just run your knife along the edge of the sytrene to make the cut - much like the haft-oob stables.

mike - i started out just trying to think of simple shapes with a little variation so that an occasional building had a different look to the others. I didn't want anything tooo..."wacky" in this set - as the hope is that people buy more than one and use the modular elements to bulk out a town/village. I think I may have become too complex.

Other angles than 45^o? thats simply done! In fact the current roofs weren't designed to be 45^o. they just turned out close.  differing angles are easy, I'll add them to the list.

I like the suggestion that andres has left in a comment on the blog. It has a "witches hat" feel - only down side is it means making 2 cones and they are big chunks of styrene.

roofs 3 and 4 in the list were an attempt to do something "cheaper". In those the main roof shape is actually a section cut from a pringles tube. But whilst interesting to design they dont grab me. I will do flat garden-roof structures though, but probably with a low building with a flat roof intersecting a taller building.

Other roofing materials? Thought about it for a while, but didn't come up with anything new that I thought would 'fit' in a twilight/fantasy setting. Corrugated iron, copper/zink sheet are the obvious sheet types. Suggestions?

My approach would be to think about how and why the Fubarnii build rooves, and see what design ideas come from that.  I'm not particularly keen on the asymmetry, partly because I don't know why they'd bother.  Sloping rooves are basically to carry the rain off them, in dryer climates you might get flat rooves.
One suggestion is to have a conical roof like the watchtower but extend it beyond the wall lines to give eaves, or a little sheltered porch. 

Beth - I agree about your reasoning... but if we follow it too far then we have to ask why they build round buildings at all! So i have learned to temper my logic with some degree of aesthetic consideration. I think if you want to have a table full of models that represent something that is intrinsically 'alien' or at least 'not of our world' then you need to separate some of the architecture from what you might expect to see on say and English Civil War gaming table.  If you look around at the real world, regions of earth have roofs which pitch at similar angles (broadly the greater the rainfall the steeper the pitch) but as mike suggested different pitches would look good and break up the 'sameness' of a layout.

I agree though, that some of the ideas i showed would be far to complex to put on a house roof and convey no benefit from all the hard work entailed.  Its a bit of a balancing act between 'different', 'appealing' and 'believable'. 

I'm erring towards the second roof for that reason.  With an occasional off-centre conical roof in a later kit - perhaps an engineer's workshop.

I notice you also use the word "rooves" - well done! I should get back to using the proper english spelling of the plural rather than this crass american appraoch i have slipped into !

by the way, did you get your kit ok?

Thatched rooves would be great, but hard to do in your flat-pack kit... Unless you provided some teddy-bear fur...

There are quite a few round buildings on earth, especially in reasonably primitive cultures (ancestral Puebloan dwellings, early brits (I think), even eskimos), so they must have some benefits. I think the Fubarnii just kinda ran with that general design...

The ideal from my perspective would be a mix of your current pitched rooves and some interestingly shaped flat ones with raised walls/barriers (health and safety and all that). Unusual rooves might give broader appeal though?

I think a good simple flat roof would be an excellent addition to the range, and useful for the odd sniping slinger too.

I think I'm looking forward to the homesteads most of the upcoming models, while a series of towers and walls is very appealing, I don't think I'd have the time/money/space to go for what I'd want. I a single tower and a bridge to the tower will have to do me :)

Flat roofs are definitely in, so no worries there. On at least one of the models - probably two. Space on the sheets of styrene will be one of the main drivers. I just wanted to do something different on the third that wasn't just copy and paste the geometry from the stables or tower. If i make it modular, then you could always swap the roofs around with those kits for even more options.

Thatched rooves were mentioned a while ago - i thought you had a downer on the idea? If i did them, I think i'd just provide the cone and a bundle of sisal or hemp fibres cut to length. Not much of a kit though. Worth a try?

Circular buildings do offer some advantages from a mechanics point of view... the weight load of the roof is evenly distributed, and any 'flaring' force that is exerted on the walls from the outward thrust of the trusses is countered by the curved nature of the wall effectively 'pulling' back towards the building centre.  I suspect this was a major feature in cultures that used wattle and daub, ice or other low integrity building materials.  Also a  circular building gives maximum floor space for a certain amount of building materials. Its hard to see how that design would remain for a culture that has managed to forge iron, invent steam engines and create spectacles - but then that's me thinking like a human again :)  As with many things we shouldn't under estimate the power of culture and tradition - maybe the circle is a lucky, religious or otherwise significant shape for the fubarnii?

As to bigger layouts - i know your problem Ben! I suspect I am going to end up with a sizeable display over the next few months as I build all the promo kits and variances!

Actually Bethar, I was thinking about why fubarnii would build different sorts of rooves, especially when you consider that most settlements in our world have similiar rooves in them. I think the answer is competition between engineers and craftsmen, showing off their ideas and brilliance. I imagine that fubarnii would have a much greater diversity in structures because of this.

I figured that coming from cave dwellings it felt more natural for them.


Good points.  But occasionally in Twilight I find cool alienness arising naturally from things we've already established, and it feels very rewarding when that happens!


I think Jubal can take the credit for that actually.  I noticed it written somewhere and thought how strange it looked - not a word you see written very often!  But presumably the correct form.


Yup.  Still eating the pringles.   :)

That is a good point.  Though presumably if you are a fairly lowly Fubarnii who was not a roof builder you would have a fairly basic design because that is all you could afford to hire someone to do.
Has anyone mentioned domes?  Hemispherical, onion domes, geodesic?
... I've just made myself very unpopular with Brandlin, haven't I? ...

Ah, well. Brandlin's already started playing around with ping-pong balls, wonder how long it'll be before he notices that a ball from a ball-pool fits into a pringles tube with only a little filling-in around the edge? My guess is he'll never completely like them, lol!

geodesics and such like sound fun and on the surface look easy to do - accurately cutting the regular shapes is easy on the laser and that's one of the things you struggle to do by hand. The problem is joining the plates. Simply edge gluing them wont be very strong. you need some sort of bracing system - a bright idea for which hasn't popped into my head yet.

domes - easy enough to make approximations of domes from sheet plastic... just a framework and some sections shaped like orange segments. It takes a lot of styrene for the shape though so it low on my list.  I've been looking at those expanded polystyrene balls you can buy in craft shops too, but they're quite expensive for what you get and the sizes are all over the place...

whats an 'onion dome'?

ball-pool = ball swamp? hmm a feel a trip to Ikea coming on.

btw i know what i'm buying you lot for christmas!

Onion domes are shaped oddly enough like onions.  ;D

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/Klute/600-nati-01.jpg)

Made LOTS of grp moulds for those things.

Just a though about gluing complex shapes. When the laser cuts the thicker card, it cuts more of a V than a || and as such could give you a nice glueing surface if you 'folded' a shape at that point. Not sure I'm being clear there.

I was looking around for ball-pool balls when I was doing some planets for 2 clubs' starship game, needed a few. Some of my friends that have kids took them and a bag to a "play-zone" ball-pool, amazing how many of those balls ended up in the bag 'by accident' lol! Also, ELC were happy to sell me a few loose balls from split packets - just gotta ask.

I think the fubarnii would be perfectly capable of building round, segmented or onion domes, not so sure about a geodesic dome though. Didn't Mike say a little while ago that the Casani were fond of domes/rounded rooves?

Ah ONION domes (doh!) I was thinking of the onion layering thing... duh!

emberbreeze - you're right the melting rather than vapourising of the styrene does cause a slight V shape. I'm not sure i'd rely on it as accurate enough to predict the angle when you join edges together. Forexample the last set of cuts i had were done after the laser lenses had just been cleaned, and the cut was much cleaner than some of the others i have had.  I

rick - i'm sure the fubarnii could build any shape they wanted and had the desire and money to. unfortunately I need to build stuff to a reasonable price point and consuming a lot of styrene in the internal structure of a dome wont look like value for money no matter how clever the design :(

I went shopping to the super market today.

I'm considering making the homesteads to fit 3 different sizes of Heinz baked bean can.
They come in 200g and 415g sizes and a larger can that i forget the weight of.

I had been avoiding cans as there are so many sizes but i wondered about using a specific brand...? Not sure whether this is a common grocery item beyond he UK though... probably not.

The other thing about these cans is they are all ring pull, so they don't leave a dangerous ragged edge from the can opener...

They're robust..will glue with CA, and are repeatable. But, they wont be cutable so intersecting them in a kit bash way wont be easy...

What do you think?

(oh and I also bought 4 tubs of ben and jerry's on buy one get one free in sainsburies! hurry get yours now!)

just checked the heinz web site and their beans come in

150g, 200g, 415g, 840g

While they wont intersect, they will stack! so the smaller squat tins could be fitted on top of the 840g tin for example.

I am rethinking the tin cans.

The 150g and 215g sizes are almost exactly the same diameter as a pringles tube so offer little over that size apart from being harder to cut and customise.

I've also just shredded my finger on the sharp inside edge (despite the fact that these are ring pull cans), so will have to seal the ends - taking more plastic than i expected and pushing up the cost.

Finally, the ridges that they press into the can to give it rigidity isn't hidden by the stucco and on the bigger cans the ridges are deeper.

So, I'm back to the drawing board for these ... everything is determined by the starting item...

I'm currently thinking Starbucks coffee cup for a small slope sided hut. Buut not sure what else to add... i suppose i could try a number of different starbucks cup sizes...?

McFlurry tubs ??

that's a top idea....!

have to lower my standards to go into micky-D's

I think there is still mileage to be got from pringles tubes...
If you could have one or two rooves that are flexible enough to sit ontop of a variety of cups/tubes and a bunch of interesting pop-out windows and doorways etc then that would give enough flexibility for people to use what rubbish they can find.
I've got an (empty) coffee cup in front of me that I'm sure would work well with some of the pryngul components with very little work.

Sort of a universal components sheet (or 2). You could have allsorts on there, sell it as a conversion set.

OK so I finally have one and its a dinky little paper cup shape and ideal for a simple homestead!  Thanks Klute. When I finally get things running again that's a free kit for you!

Ha no probs mate. And if you have to send a free kit to someone then please send it to someone likely to paint it lol. That sounds not how its meant btw.  ;D