GeekFaction: Models

When I was a kid, one of the highlights of Christmas was going to see the Wise Ave Firehouse train garden. The other was setting up a 16' x 4' train garden with my father in our living room. I love a world in miniature, the only thing that would have made either of those two better, was if they were little more true to life, I wanted more realism.

I told my wife that when we bought a house, there would be a HO model railroad in it somewhere. Now that we have a home, there is a table, and a work area in the basement. I haven't got a lot to show for the past year or so in terms of complete projects. But, I figure I've got another 60 years to finish it, and I'm in no hurry. I'm doing it slowly and honing my skills, so it can be as realistic as possible in the end.

(My prototype brick wall technique)

Railroad modeling is detail oriented, obsessing over realism, with the greatest achievement being when someone looks at a picture of it and doesn't know if it's real or a model. However, I've come to find wargaming miniatures much more interesting. The "scratch building" wargamers are doing blows away what railroaders are doing in terms of creativity, detail and interest grabbing elements.

One of the best sites I've come across is Necromundicon. There's no kits on here, all these pieces are scratch built from junk laying around. If I had to compare all my work against his, I'd just give up the hobby right now because his work is amazing.

Also check out TerraGenesis, most of the threads on TG contain Work-In-Progress pictures of the models as the people are building them. If you've ever wondered how modelers get such great looking stuff from junk, this is the page to check out.

Once your amazed at the structures, you'll probably want to make some characters, Musketeer Miniatures isn't updated enough in my opinion, but what posts are there are solid gold, especially this tutorial on his creation of a Pirate.

Just in case you think all wargamers are playing with Orcs and Knights, check out The Warfactory for an assortment of various genres of miniatures.

All that being said, I don't even own any wargaming miniatures, or go to any games, I just admire it as an art.