Akira - The residential garage.

Or Nakajima Towers :-)

Quite a simple build this one, based on a building near the centre of Tokyo (Setagaya if anyone is from that area). No interior access for the floors and the curtains, blinds took forever lol (it was also started over a year ago and has had bits done here and there over that time).

I had a lot of fun doing the garage area and most of the details are available Here

Pretty much the same methods as the ramen shop. Acrylic structure, rattle cans for texture and colour and then inks and pastels for weathering.

Got a choice of what to go for next, a block of flats with a combini (convenience store), a block of flats with an office at ground level, a tall office block with a relatively fancy reception or a corner office block with a curved facade.

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Akira - The ramen shop

This damn bloody cold/flu/whatever isn't shifting but I'm still getting stuff done, albeit slowly.

I've been trying to finish off the builds that I started for this project one at a time. It's sort of working but I still find myself occasionally flitting between them. I'm glad to say, howeer, that this one is done!

It's very loosely based on my favorite ramen shop in Tokyo and I went to town a bit on the details. The main walls and floors are laser cut acrylic with the little hut on top from card. It was mainly painted with rattle cans and copious weathering was added with inks and pastels.

Some of the elements are available from Here and some have been scratch built. I really need to sort out a switch for it as plugging the ceiling lights into the battery holder everytime is a bit of  pain but as it's not essential to the look I haven't done it yet lol

Onto the photos (which are a tad uneven colour wise, apologies for that). There's also a video at the bottom with dodgy 'sound effects'.

 

 

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Akira - A little something for the road

And it is a little something. I don't have much time for this project at the moment but I've got a small, yet important, update.

I've made a little road widening piece to fit in between a building tile and the expressway to allow for better hand access.

It's only 100mm wide but I think it'll make playing on the ground surface much better. The top three photos are with the extension and the bottom three are without.

 

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Akira - recap and progress

I keep dipping in and out of this project (like most of them lol) and at the moment there's been a fair amount of titivating of some of the buildings I've done so far. I'm thinking that I'll finish all the existing ones to the same standard before starting anymore.

Trouble is, I've got another five to get all the little details on lol

It's actually quite therapeutic finishing these off, looking at reference photos for all the little details. I won't be doing them to a 100% standard as it would take too long, just enough so I'm happy with them and that there's enough details there to catch the eye.

Quite a few of the additional details are availble from my Urban Future range of scatter pieces available in the OSHIRO modelterrain webhop.

OSHIROmodelterrain Urban Future

I've also done some floating cars (very Ian McQue styley) tht will be used as street dressing.

So, onto the pictures. You'll have seen some of these before but they have had extras added. The green building is completely new though and I'm quite pleased with the ramen shop interior although there's still some things that need finishing off for it :-)

I will be doing some videos of the individual buildings on a turntable at some point in the near future; watch this space...

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Akira 3

The vehicles so far.

Being an urban environment there needs to be plenty of vehicles, either in use in the game or as set dressing.

I've bought plenty of die cast toy cars from Japan around the 1:48-1:56 scale and have dirtied them down a bit but these will be for set dressing only. The main vehicles so far are below but I've got plans for some serious police hardware (think Patlabor) and have a couple of plamodel kits for them.

The first police tech is an oop walker from Antenocitis Workshop (I fortunately managed to get hold of a second one). The paint job is based loosely on Patlabor but I need to get a Japanese police star to go on the front, probably 3d printed. It's quite possibly a bit dirty but with the project being slightly distopian I figured it didn't matter that much.

The second walker is I think from Micropanzer and is painted as a military test piece but has been stolen by a separatist group (or something similar, haven't quite decided yet).

There's also a SWAT van, or it might be a private security firm as I haven't added any decals yet. I was challenged to light it up which in the end turned out to be quite fun. There's also an Antenocitis' smart car that wasgoing to have a swish red and gold paint job but the masking liquid reacted with the paint and so I had to rescue it by doing a beat up, rusted version; I think it turned out quite well.

The last vehicle is a bit of silliness in the form of a 'Girls und Panzer' tank (I've got two but no photos of the second one). The tank is 1:48 but I was surprised as to how small it is. The colour scheme is made up as I'm not copying the anime directly, just using it for inspiration.

That’s it for the one being for this project, there’s plenty more to show but I want to move onto my large VSF project, “Japanese on Mars” along with other commission work.

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