Wednesday 15 August 2012

Building the zombie bridge.

 As the game featured such an easy piece of terrain I thought I would show how it was made. The first thing to be aware of is what resources you can make use of. For me it was knowing that I could use some of the club hills and half of a table tennis table as the game table. The table tennis table was great, large enough for all to get round and the right colour to look like water. So basically use what you already have.
The actual bridge took 90 minutes to make including drying time. It only used tools that we all should have lying around and not really much skill at all. Honestly nothing that the average person could not do with out having to buy anything. I think that is important to make clear.
OK so here is how it was done:
  • . It is worth getting a "Stanley Knife" that you are comfortable with. The one in the picture gets used by me a lot and I got it while doing some work in a warehouse, mostly because it was different from all the other knives the other blokes had. Needless to say when using knives take care and make sure you don't bleed on what you are making.
  • The three wooden blocks  were scrounged from my builder neighbour. As long as the blocks are all the same in at least one dimension they will work. If you can get then roughly the same size so much the better.
  • Measure and cut the hardboard to what you think will be the right road width. As long as it looks right to you and you can get the right scale car to fit across it the bridge will work. I guessed 7 inches wide as that was a good width for me to use the hardboard I had. It would have worked as narrow as 3 inches for a single carriage way or as wide as 20 inches if you wanted a really lot of car lanes. As I wanted to block the road with a model truck I settled on 7 inches being that the truck was 8 1/2 inches long.
  • Having decided that I wanted a low bridge I went for the lowest dimension on the wooden blocks. There were a number of reasons for this it would make the bridge more stable and require less hill sections at each end.
  • Everything was then painted dark grey. I had some sand coloured emulsion and some black poster paint (Ready mixed) being both water based they would mix easily. I painted what I thought the centre of the lanes a lighter grey.
  • Once dry I used white and yellow colouring pencils to mark on the road markings. These markings consisted of a white dashed line down the middle and two yellow lines down each side, close together so the emulated the British no parking markings.
  • Once dry I used duct tape on the reverse to secure the two bridge sections together. I used nothing to attache the block bridge supports as being low to the water they were not likely to move about too much. They raised the bridge about 40mm from the river so were very stable. If I had used them in a different manner I would have needed to anchor them to either the board or the road surface.
So there you have it a quick simple effective modern road bridge. In an idea world I would have had some edging to stop the cars from falling of the edge. I was concerned that some player or other would have made negative comments about "health and safety" but they did not, t was just accepted.

That's it for today, more on Friday. Til then take care and all the best Clint.




14 comments:

  1. Very cool tutorial there. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are very welcome. It's such a simple build and yet worked very well as a game.

      Delete
  2. Excellent!!! Thanks for sharing your ideas.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for reading.

      I may start some 15mm Bocage later today. (for PBI)

      Delete
  3. I like the fact that you make sure not to get blood or arterial spray on the model, surely it would add to the effect?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes for many games it would add to the effect. But better not to for fear of some players wanting to lick it!

      Delete
  4. Nice. Fits in well with your theme, and easy to make. Well done sir.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you sir. We Like easy and effective very much.

      Delete
  5. Quick and effective... I like it !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not all terrain projects need to take ages. Sometimes the easy solution is the right solution.

      Thanks mate

      Delete
  6. Nice and simply mate. Did you bleed much?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No blood loss for me this time.... must try harder.

      Not all terrain projects need to be very involved.

      Delete
  7. I like it. As others have said, quick, simple and very effective. You mentioned that no one commented on the lack of a wall to prevent cars driving off the bridge. I can guarantee that my brother would have noticed that straight away. He's an architect and he frequently picks holes with my building projects. You wouldn't believe the amount of criticisms he picked with my WWG Mayhem Police Station!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If I had some quick easy way of putting sides on I would have. I have worked with a lot of architects in my life, I know what they are like. I was expecting some comments on the sides, but grateful they did not utter them.

      Delete

Please feel free to leave a comment.