TWF-06 HOMESTEADS

[Brandlin]

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.  

[Carcharoth]

That sounds like an excellent idea. 

[Emberbreeze]

Sounds like a great idea!

Any sketchups yet?

[Brandlin]

Sounds like a great idea!

Any sketchups yet?

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

[Brandlin]

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

[Rick]

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!

[Carcharoth]

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.

[Brandlin]

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?

[Bethar]

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. 

[Brandlin]

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?

[Carcharoth]

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?

[Emberbreeze]

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

[Brandlin]

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!

[Rick]

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.

[Bethar]

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!

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

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.

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 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 !

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.

by the way, did you get your kit ok?

Yup.  Still eating the pringles.