i need some tips on building buildings and/or ruins

Ola Luke

Well you could search through the article sections on Armorama. The Diorama section would offer you a couple of articles varying from very easy to the harder and more labourious buildings.
A couple of examples:
building a diorama from Scratch by KFMagee
Distraction Greta`s Revenge by me (FAUST)
building a ruined farmhouse by Marty
Gotcha Covered by Slodder

This should supply you with enough material to get experimenting with techniques.

I hope you can learn something from this

Robert - You beat me to it. I feel honored to be included in a thread with Greta.


Thats a great post

That is how I feel as well.

For rubbel, get some plaster of paris (very cheap) mix some up let it harden, put it into a gallon ziplock bag, along with some balsa wood (or any other small shards) and smash it with a hammer!
This produces different sizes of rubble, you can just glue it to the base as needed, then paint it!
have fun smashing!
-shain

When mixing the plaster of paris use a little gray/black dye or food coloring to darken the plaster. That way it's not pure white when you smash it. Plus it won't be as difficult to paint all the nooks and crannies.

Unfortunately this wasn´t deemed worthy of being included with Greta :-) :-) :-)

Another short article on making a ruin by moulding and scribing. It was used as a background for a 1/16 figure, but maybe you could find some useful tips there also. Building a base for a 1/16 scale figure
Good luck.

Hello Luke,
apart from the ideas offered by my colleagues, it could maybe serve you this threat

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/40227&page=1

It is a building made with cardboard. The cardboard not have the versatility of other materials, but can be reached very interesting results

I hope it serves you

Its kind of embarrassing to put up my suggestions here especially in such great company. Luke, my work nowhere approaches any of the fantastic work done by the gentlemen here for they're truly among Armorama's best builders of buildings. In fact Robert's (Faust) Greta was what really got me going as it was elegantly simple and effective.

Anyways, the pic below is my first go into building or ruins to be specific. It has a foam backing with plaster mixed with various grades of beach sand over it. The windows and arch were done with cheapo A B epoxy you can get from any hardware store. Its still work in progress and I haven't added the rubble and debris.

Sorry having trouble getting into My Gallery so here's a link to a post on it:
https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/61607&page=1

Hey Luke.I hope you have found the basics to get yourself started.Still busy with my first dio and the big A has everything i needed in a nutshell!If i could make a suggestion,it is easier for people to help you out if you try to describe in detail about what you want to do.I read some past threads where some guys personally,i think gave you a hard time.Kids your age are doing FAR worse things these days than building models!!Cut Luke some slack guys!!
Good luck mate,Shay

Very easy way to start:

https://armorama.kitmaker.net/news/1345

Hi Luke,

A recent thread about one of--if not THE--Master Modelers of our age, Sheperd Paine, produced the following URL. Just go to it, at the top is Shep paine Tips , and you can read most of his armor diorama HOW TO's

Tiger Models and Shep paine Resources

Luke

get ahold of KFMagee. He makes / sells some of the best stuff you've ever seen for making buildings, streets and rubble. He lives here in Dallas and I have helped him sell it at a couple of Model shows. I've seen him sit there and carve out a building sidewall in the space of less than an hour. You can get bags of different kinds of rubble commercially as well things like full and partial cinder blocks and bricks. And NO I don't get a commission or anything out of recommending his stuff.