Podcast time
I had a chance to visit with Brett and Todd Wiley on their BenchTime podcast last week. We had a great chat about trees, structures, and scenery versus operators. :-)
Bench Time #139: Steven Haworth is BACK | Rio Grande Southern Railroad
Scenery work
Also, it's been a while and I'm overdue for sharing some photos of the work I've been doing. I went back to a number of completed structures and 'planted' them finally (which for some reason was intimidating, and I dragged my feet on it). But I'm happy w/ the results - see this older post - or some updates at Vance Jct after adding some bushes:
Trees
And, with summer weather, I finally pushed myself to tackle tree-building, and ended up making a pile. Some of these started as unflocked pines / conifers - which I sprayed and then flocked with fine dark green ground foams.
And the I dug into SuperTrees, taking a few steps:
- Straightening the sticks / trees (I used steam from a teapot, outside so as not to steam up the entire house)
- Soaking them in very dilute white glue / water (to strengthen the fragile branches)
- Painting them (just rattle cans of spray paint, in various browns, grays, dark greenish/black)
- Then spray glue (Gorilla Heavy Duty Spray Adhesive) and flocking with all kinds of things, including:
- Super Leafs in various greens (nothing too bright)
- Dark green ground foam (both course and fine)
- 4mm static grass (in the darkest color I could find)
Painting SuperTree trunks:
Trees in progress:
Lots of bushes too!
You can judge the results for yourself. The dark green flocking on the SuperTrees looks like some types of conifer to me (at least for background trees). And SuperTree material yields all kinds of smaller stuff, so I made a lot of bushes and small trees as well.
Blending trees and photo backdrops:
I'm playing with layers of color and texture here, trying to create depth and blur the distinction between physical models and photos. And I'm having a blast playing with the effects!
Tracks thru trees:
In these areas, I had to be pretty careful, balancing the look of track running thru dense woods, but also allowing access for my operators, maintenance, track cleaning etc. The trees also have strategic gaps - not easily noticed I hope - which allow my arm to reach into the scene where needed. Whenever we can return to operations, we'll see how well it works when people are switching on the branch.
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