Wednesday 23 October 2019

Bringing Colour to the Slums - New Fogou Buildings

You may have seen some of my previous buildings from Fogou Models, including several post-apocalyptic / sci-fi adobe houses and the fantastic Fort Hardknox. Fogou buildings are beautifully detailed and cast in a robust dense resin. I was delighted to hear that there is a new range of adobe buildings planned for a forthcoming Kickstarter.

The new buildings are designed to be genre neutral - suitable for ancient, modern or even sci-fi gaming, and I was delighted to be offered some pre-production samples to paint up. I was supplied with some larger two-storey buildings which can also be disassembled to use as two separate buildings. The interiors are also nicely detailed and the roofs removable, should you wish to use the interior for gaming. 

Johnny and Wulf tackle some ruffians in search of the next pay cheque.

The Jazz House

As you can see, I decided to inject a lot more colour into this first building than I had done previously. After watching a documentary about the colourful barrios in Bogata and seeing some fantastically painted African buildings, I wanted to ramp up the colour levels in my adobe village.



The painting process was pretty simple:

  1. Undercoat with a cheap grey primer. The sand-yellow pre-coloured resin and information from Fogou indicates this might be an unnecessary step, but I wanted to use the same process as my previous buildings.
  2. Base coat with a sand-yellow spray.
  3. Drybush the entire building with an off-white.
  4. In turn, carefully mask each colour with tape and stipple on the colours.
  5. Stipple a light brown around the base of the building.
  6. Wash with a diluted brown wash around the base of the building and any other desired areas (e.g. window streaks).
  7. Lightly drybrush the corners with the off-white.
All in all, I think the building took about 2.5 hours from start to finish, with the masking tape being the most time-consuming task.




I originally had the colours butting up against each other, and I wasn't particularly happy with the look, so I added the ~1.5mm white stripes between each colour. Suddenly the whole paint job really popped as a result.


The Store

With the second building I wanted to end up with something in the middle ground between the Jazz House and my earlier adobes with the simple stripes. This time I went for a block colour on the diagonal (because diagonal stripes always seem to be more sci-fi!).


I overpainted the blue-grey with a mustard stripe on each storey, adding the white advertising slogans with random characters that hopefully evoke the signage in the Helsreach illustrations from Rogue Trader.


Unlike the Jazz House, I took the opportunity to add a few detail elements to the building. The wood stack, light and junction boxes are from Fogou, whilst the canopy over the door is a cut down market stall from one of Mantic's terrain crates.



Painting this building was a lot quicker and simpler than the Jazz House, although I used the same masking technique for the coloured areas.


Like the first building, the two storeys can be used as two separate buildings.


When I get the opportunity to paint up some more of these fantastic buildings, I plan to have a variety of different colour schemes. And of course if you have a village, then you probably need a cool scenic board to use them on - that's the next project!

The streets of frontier towns can be dangerous for the unwary travelling merchant.

34 comments:

  1. Great model architecture and colour schemes.

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    1. Thanks! A bit of colour is usually a fun thing :)

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  2. What an exceptionally good idea.

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    1. Thanks Phil. They're perfect for any kind of fringe sci-fi setting I think :)

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  3. Nice and simple but really effective. Excellent idea.

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  4. Woof. I really like the weathered back painting on the doors.

    This was such a bold gamble, and it's paid off. They're very convincing as real world buidlings with a sense of time depth to them, and the characters of their owners.

    I never spotted there were mud huts in Rogue Trader! That's an exciting way to legitimately sneak them in to far future games.

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    1. There is complete legitimacy to have games of Rogue Trader with jetbikes zipping around vaguely western themed adobe townships!

      I'm hoping these all hang together when I get round to the board!

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  5. What lovely color! The buildings exude a sort of lived in dustiness.

    Are you planning to have any other textures in your collection? A few brutalist concrete or iron buildings could go with this set, and would serve as a bridge between Rogue Trader era frontier town and Contemporary 40k all gothic all the time.

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    1. Thanks! Lived in dustiness is exactly what I was aiming for!

      I've got a couple of other buildings I can add into the mix - rusted sheds, pre-fab barracks and the like. Nothing brutalist concrete though!

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  6. Wow Jon! That jazz hut colour scheme is spot on. Looks like something you could have seen on the front cover of an 80's sci-fi novel.

    I really like the weathering technique you use on these buildings. You must have so many now and they'll all tie in together beautifully.

    Can't wait to see your board. It'll look amazing with it populated with all you've been creating over the past couple of years.

    Well done mate :)

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    1. A 1980s scifi cover? You say the nicest things Shane!!

      Choosing the right elements for the board is going to be fun. I want to make sure it all hangs together, whilst still being both visually interesting and playable. Plenty to think about!

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  7. Very cool. When I was in Afghanistan, Folks would also paint different things on the walls. (planes, trucks, helicopters, hearts, flowers male symbol and female symbol)
    They would also hang Christmas lights up year round.

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    1. That's interesting to hear, I should definitely do some genre suitable images / logos. I might head back to Rogue Trader and the Book of the Astronomican to see if there are any symbols I can use.

      I like the idea of lights too. I'll look at doing that!

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  8. Fantastic execution – definite echoes of Helsreach, but also something quite distinct. Love 'em!

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    1. Thanks! That's exactly what I'm aiming for!

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  9. This is great, you're delicately intriducing cyberpunkish elements into the post-apocalyptic setting you've created and it really works, I can see now how the jazz house works amongst the rest nad love it all.
    I'm demanding a game now.

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    1. Post-apocalyptic needn't be all grim and gritty with no bright colours, right?! A splash of something more exciting is perfectly acceptable ;)

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  10. Nice work on those. I love that they're colourful but worn and weathered.

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    1. Thanks! I definitely wanted them to look like they've been in the sun and dust for a while. I think I like the centre-base of the radiating stripes the most - it captures that closest.

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  11. There's always a little colour and happiness somewhere, even in the grimdark future.

    Good stuff - and I really like your designs too.

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  12. Wow, such a bold approach! It works incredibly good! I really like it, I may have to shamelessly try to copy it ;)

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  13. Fantastic buildings, congrats!

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  14. End results look realistic and that's what counts.

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  15. They totally look the part. You've given me a lot to think about.

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