Automobilgarage from Illustreret Familie-Journal

[Vermin_King]

This was my entry for the Papercuts Awards at the Cardboard Warriors forum.

I originally found this on the blog, Toto, which was formerly an excellent source of vintage models. Then I found that Patricia had better scans at Agence Eureka, Agence eureka: 16 mars 2009. When I first discovered the models from Illustreret Familie-Journal, my thought was to do a set of these for my grandmother's window shelf at the nursing home, but she liked animals more than buildings. Then I wondered if I could clean it up enough to put into my model railroad layout, if I ever decide to put it back together. But this contest has gotten me thinking about it again. I like the looks of it, but it needs cleaning up and would benefit from layering. If the project had moved along better, I'd have done an interior. It also needed figures that were also vintage, and needed to be close to the proper time frame and have similar style. Found the figures at the Children's Museum of the Victoria and Albert Museum. For this contest all had to be scaled to 28mm. The additional figures needed a lot of help on colorization and had to be sized up 66% to be close to scale.

Found the source for the additional figures from the Children's Museum. Thank goodness for Wayback Machine.
web.archive.org/web/20080713115528/http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/kids/things_to_make/build_your_owns/index.html

Here's what I started with

[Vermin_King]

My original goal was to have the doors open like in the picture, with a dark, sparse interior first floor, but cleaning up the files took way to long to get things done. I also didn't want any white to be showing, so things like the staircase had to have a reverse print. I wanted this to have more depth to it, so the detail work was raised and windows recessed. Some parts of this ended up with four layers, making for a solid build and a very beautiful carriage house.

[Vermin_King]

Then disaster struck. I had thought I had enough vehicle parts to do the straight version of both the car and coach, and a nicer version of each. There is no windshield for the car, so once I built it, I was going to go back and design one for the nice version using the original (but cleaned up) textures.

The coach was a disaster. The sides aren't even mirror images of each other. I ended up doing major surgery on the parts I had already printed and ended up with one fairly nice carriage.

[Vermin_King]

As time was running out, I didn't even attempt the car. I did go through other vintage models and grabbed some additional pieces to flesh out the scene, most of which did not get used. I also went to Paper Brick site and put together some cobblestone. I just used construction paper for grass.

Randy Farmer had made a comment about getting things in, even if they are only 90% done, so that is what I did.

Thank you, Patricia for having your archive of wonderful vintage models

[Cami]

Well done VK. It is a beautiful diorama. Your efforts paid of for sure!

Cami

[SCEtoAUX]

That turned out very good with a very nice presentation. Those extras you included really brought it to life.

[Seascape]

Great looking diorama VK. Like the way you added all the extras.

Fred

[Vermin_King]

Thanks. A friend wants this for a shadow box. The frame is too tall just for the carriage house and carriage, so I stole some trees from other vintage vignettes to give it a little height. This display is only temporary for the contest.

I have no hope of winning the contest, but I knew that going into it. I had several goals that this project achieved.

1. I have a nice model of the carriage house (until I actually give it to my friend)
2. I gained experience in using Gimp to clean up vintage templates
3. I showed the gaming community that they probably should check out some of the vintage models, because they can build up nice, with a little care.
4. I supported the contest, because at the time I started this, there was only one other entry in that category
5. It was a much needed break from having to fill in down at the farm. I'm not cut out to be a farmer...

[tatasam]

Beautiful old paper modeling , how little was needed for the joy of modeling aaah
Nice model !

Regards , Henryk

[gotham]

VK - not my thing, but I have to say, a charming looking diorama all the same. Nice build.