This month in BRM; A Night at the Movies

The sun has finally come out as I type this, the weather is Shirtsleeve-Order, and it's looking nice and Spring-like out there... so why not have a project done last Autumn to look like it was set on a gloomy, blustery evening?

The build was to modify and personalise a pair of Metcalfe Cinema kits. Two were combined into one, with the spare outer wings turned into this block of shops. Nod to my friend Ruthie on the left, who ran a cafe I was assistant-manager of back in the day, and my old local chippy in the West Mids.

Lighting was added, in slightly slapdash fashion (it wouldn't be massively visible and I was against the clock with this one as usual), using cheap battery Xmas lights.

Uplighters for the front of the building were made using a plastic container for pencil leads, which was a bit of an improvisation.

The real fun with this project came from doing the movie posters. Wary as ever of breaching copyright law, it was a chance to make a few of my own. The humans modelling for the posters are actually the robot-patients from work, the models are ones I've done for other projects, and the illustrations are characters I've done for comics. The interiors above are also the main reception at my job.

A bit of a mix of film genres! Arf and Woof seem to be starring in their own Kids series now. Move over Bluey... also, Hallie gets in on the act as well, now starring in her own movie, the little Diva.

Lightboxes from acrylic.

I was quite proud how this one turned out- I enjoyed adding details like the light-up premier board, and modern touches like the ramped access.

Another large diorama. I can't believe I had the intention to do all these on an A4-sized template back when I started...

The only problem I had was getting the lamp-posts to work; I couldn't get them functioning properly, so left them off, hopefully it doesn't stand out too much.

...and in the current issue.

Medical Monday; An Arm and a Leg

So it's been a while since the last Medical Monday... partly because it's been an (insanely) busy winter at work, and partly because we've done a lot of Obs and Gynae stuff, which I really, really, can't post on here because it is (insanely) rude. So how about some paediatrics?

Poor little Hallie, she's had a rough start to the year. My little robot-child (or my 'Work Daughter' as at least one of my family refer to her) has been through the wars, with a number of trauma sims. 

Oh and quick shout of appreciation for the makers of this stuff, these wound-effect makeup kits have really enabled me to raise my game with the fidelity of the sims. Still learning, of course, but these are just terrific, and won't stain the robots either, but don't come off on the trainee's hands. Except the blood, and the pus (more on that in the next Medical Monday. Something to look forward to eh?)

So, to start with, Hallie needed a broken arm. Basing this very much off real life with Younger Child, as two out of three of The Childs were Disaster Magnets in their youths, and a job made considerably easier here by Hallie having detachable arms.

The plan was to use the same broken-leg wound, with the grating-bones, made for the broken leg injury last year.

This one, as featured in an earlier instalment.  The trouble was, it was too big for her petite little arm, forcing me to need to build a new one. On top of which, the rubber bladder that gives it the toe-curling squishyness (medical term there) made it project up too much under the latex flesh.

Time to raid the bone box, for more fibreglass leftovers.

Once again, I was operating on a budget of roughly Sweet F-A, because NHS, so raided whatever I could to cobble something together. A base plate for...

...a set of plastic tweezers. The plan was, one arm (leg?) of the tweezers would be glued to the wooden knife, the bone inserted around the other leg, meaning it would be lightly sprung when you pushed down on the projecting bone. The whole lot secured to more vinyl, to wrap around the inside of the-

SNAP. Yeah exactly what you want after two wasted hours, and with only one night to go before the Insitu, with a dozen people counting on you pulling off a convincing effect.

So I turned instead to this- a sponge skin pad, for the squishiness factor. The bones were cut to shape then hot-glued to pieces of the foam.

Suitably cut-down, then attached with 3M tape, the do-all adhesive of the medical world.

Not the most sophisticated job, but...

...with the skin rolled back up, and a hell of a lot of wound make-up, it looked the part. 

So Hallie had been riding her bike, and had been catapulted off it by a D*ck in an Audi (how often those words are synonymous) who hadn't stopped. Poor girl had a broken arm, grazes all over her, but the real wound was internal bleeding from the handlebars thumping into her stomach. Also, given Sim is on the opposite side of the site and four-floors above the A&E Basement, you don't half get some puzzled looks strolling past everyone in the main entrance with this.

Look at her, the little Diva. "Oh, I love being on the stage, but I'm just exhausted, Darlings... wait, another Sim?!"

Yeah I probably should have warned people I'd run out of bed spaces, and sat her on a chair in the control room. Nearly gave two of my colleagues heart attacks, finding her sat there.

"Back to the stage, Darlings, for the next one"

So, anyway, CT3Pem; this one required the broken leg. Now, we've had trouble with that broken leg I made, in that whilst A&E have proper equipment, our Thomas Splint in the Sim Centre is old as God's dog, is too small, and won't quite fit over the break, so I needed to make a smaller one. Or rather, with next to no time to prep for it, re-use the Arm bones.

Same patented 3M Tape securing method.

Still, looked good.

But amused, she was not. Funny how her default expression when on is RBF.

Similar injuries to the arm break scenario; the real damage was her abdomen. Also note the battered plushie as well, which she was holding during the accident. Details, details, make the scenario.

"I swear, I need to call my agent. Wonder if there's opening for Robot Child No.3 at "It's A Small World?"

A happier Hallie, up on the whiteboard.

 

Garden Railway Saturday; Barrows and Baggage

Posting a little later than intended, and to be honest it's mostly Amy's work this time, though I took the photographs and did a little of the painting/colouring of the models.

Pocket-money kits, a selection of barrows and suchlike to decorate and detail the layout with.

They're fun little kits to do, the ones from this company. Great for what we call a lunchtime-build, that is a project to work on when you're sat at your desk on breaktimes, stubbornly refusing to answer emails or do that bit of work that your employer sneakily tries to get you to do on your free time.

A bit of an experiment with these; some of them were coloured in with pens and brush markers, some with washes of watered-down acrylic paints.

There were also some frankly lovely 3D printed chests and travel cases...

...which go well with the nightmare-fuel inducing figures, by Bachmann.

And there it is in print, in the current issue.

 

This month in Hornby: The Collector. A lovely vintage (tinplate 0 scale, part one)

Gosh, what a hideously busy start to the year it's been. Multiple projects for multiple mags, which I really can't complain about, but it came at the same time as I was recovering from a little episode with my dicky ticker, and work being absolutely manic.

So... where to start? Ah yes, with the project that keeps on giving, the tinplate 0 scale layout.

Honestly, it does feel like I'm milking this one-trick pony to death (can you milk a pony? I don't know, answers on a postcard to your local vet).

In my defence, this is part one of a two-parter for Hornby, and it needed doing to set the context for the VERY big (in every sense) second part. 

And I did re-write the original article, so I wasn't just banging the same old article out again, and I did a whole new shoot with new trains as well. 

My local model shop, Frizinghall Models, had a load of tinplate Hornby come into stock over the winter, and I relieved them of quite a lot of it. It was too tempting!

Arty Monochrome Shot.

And another.

Thing is, this IS a very relaxing project; after a day of dealing with the technical gremlins, and the high-fidelity medical simulated patients, touch screens, digital connections and so on, it's just nice to have something tactile to interact with. Keys, gears, switches, springs, and whirring mechanisms. Sheer filth.

Screenshots of the digital copies this time; my printed mag is lost in action, probably somewhere in the depth of a sorting office, though I know that Hornby are feeling the pinch at the moment and looking to phase-out printed mags. It'll be a shame, but hey, The Future.

So that's part one. Part two should be following very hard on it's heels, having just been sent off to the editor, and should go some way to explaining the radio-silence on the blog for the last few weeks. Assuming whichever Kremlin Spambotskis that actually read this blog are bothered by my absence, I expect the fur-hat-wearing-heads-in-jars computers trawling for Western data aren't exactly overly taxed monitoring my model-making.