A silk Importer and Tailor, next to a wine importer.

A few row houses to go in my village. These sit across the road from the church, right near the river.

In my reading, I've discovered that it was a fairly common practice to build homes up against an outer wall of the city, in effort to save building materials, in that only three walls would need to be built. With that premise in mind, I built these townhouses, attached to the cities outer wall. As well as the wall, I decided to build a Barbican as well, to make a space for more details and a town watch. The buildings themselves are built as townhouses, each one having living space for 2 or 3 different families. I left the walkway on the wall open, so that the watch could still walk the walls. I also modified the design of the wall a bit, without changing it too drastically.

Drawing inspiration from Kylemore Abbey in Ireland, and the Legend of Zelda series of video games, this is my version of the Temple of Time.
Mostly built to fit in my village, it would also be suitable for both fantasy, historic, or even modern wargames settings. This project was started last November, and worked on here and there between then and now. I stopped work on it around Christmas, and picked it back up in the spring, only to stop again to focus on other projects. I wavered a bit on the design and how I would actually carry it out, which is why it took so lng to get into motion. Mostly I didn't know how to do the windows, and wasn't happy with the design of the actual building, which changed several times. Eventually I nailed down what I wanted, and am quite happy with the results.

This is a recent commission I've recently wrapped up. The concept was to take a 2D gaming map from the Early 80's rpg "Dungeon Dwellers" and reproduce it as a playable 3D environment. There wasn't a lot of design, since the maps were my guide, but there was still a lot of figuring out how to execute it.
The doors all work, hinged using RC airplane hinges. The dungeon equipment was storebought, but most of the chests, the straw bed, throne, crypt were all scratch built. Two boards all together, one is 2'x3', the other is 1.5'x1'
Minis painted by Darron Lafleur.

Foam tavern and townhouse. These were built on a curved stretch of street, specifically to add some new angles to the town. The base on this one fits in with the base of the Chancellors office.
The tavern has a cellar, with a barred window in the back, and a storage and loading dock on the side. The townhouse has living quarters downstairs and up, with flowerboxes on the upstairs windows. One of the trees is scratchbuilt, the other from the store.
Shot at Willow metropark.

Built from foam, cardboard, plastic, and balsa.
Building in town where taxes are paid, and the Kings will is imposed.

I decided that my town buildings were getting a bit too square to the road. To solve this problem, this building, as well as two others, are all planned around a bend in the street. Because of this, the base for this building is shaped like a diamond. The building, to fit, is rather odd shaped. I really like the unplanned look of this building, achieved by it being unplanned. Originally, I was building this as the chemist shop, but got a little too big, so it became a government building instead. I'll be working on te vines, which are admitadly a bit bushy. I'll be re-shooting this one with better light once the trees turn, and the other half of the project is finished.

A half timbered cottage, built from pink foam, foamcore, cardboard, balsa, and clay.
Shot at Willow Metropark.

This was the first project of 2008, and the first since I decided that I really wanted to work hard towards the objective of becoming a proffesional scenery artist, working in the gaming industry.
So this piece was built with one specific goal: start to finish in two weeks. Well, I missed it, but just, 15 days.
I figured a way to build complex foundations quickly, and built a nice stone wall, litereally, block by block. Each stone in the wall was cut individually, and glued in place one at a time. The little garden is cardboard and flock, and he tree is completely scratch built from wire, clay, and clump folliage.

A blacksmith shoppe and forge, made from foamcore and balsa.
It's a small project, but it's packed with detail. The shop is in te downstairs, and the Smiths home upstairs. The stairway under the forges roof leads to a doorway, that is fully detailed and painted, even though it can't be seen.
There is a sword rack displaying the wares on the staircase, and I think the forge section works really well in scale photography.

Town gate, built from foam, balsa, and a tower kit. This is my favorite pice that I have. It started as a way to use an old GW WFB Fortress tower. I cut the top off, and built the barracks on top. The building looked kind of wierd though, too much flat space. That's when I went for the idea of a town gate, so I built the actual gate section, and a second building to match up to it. I actually did the full landscaping between the buildings before gluing them into place, since it would be so tough to get between the two to work on it (3 inches between buildings). There are lots of little detail pieces here that are hidden, like mushrooms, hanging ropes, a posted bill, horse poo, a wine bottle, the archer practicing.
I've since gone back and added a well, and rebuilt theflag pole to be able to swivel, to line the flags up on multiple projects.

An elvish tower/ manor, made of blue foam. there is nothing on this isn't scratch built.
This is another project like the windmill, that I was just stumped on, so it sat on the workbench for a year, waiting to be finished. The tower itself was built right after the fallen tower, but the base wasn't done until the following summer. I really wanted to go overboard with the landscaping, because of it being Elvish and all. So it's got tons of bushes, grasses, flowers, vines, all over. I really like the garden part, with the half circle staircase. There is a light on the inside, but the foam is a bit thin, and shines through the blocks. Shot this one at oakwoods metropark, over several days trying to get the right light, while getting into the park late enough to not have to pay.

An old world tavern. Foam core, balsa, and styrene.
This was the first village piece that I made specifically for my town. I wanted a very unusual looking design, but didn't really know much about design at the time. So, honestly, I knicked the design from Games Workshop. About half way through though, I figured it out, so there are some pretty substantial changes from the empire clock tower.
I' very proud of this piece, it has my highest rating to date on coolminiornot, a 9.5, and was ranked as the #1 terrain project on CMoN for 2007.

A fortified outpost, with both natural and man-made defenses. This was the last round tower that I built, and the first piece with the mantra "even flat land isn't really flat."
With that in mind, there is not flat level terrain here. The ground was built up level by level over time, and a lot of thought went into the actual defenses. There is a ring of stone piles and cliffs, redirecting any assault to the stair in front. on one side is a sheer rock, on the other, a row of pikes and a manmade wall. Another fun part of this, the lanterns at the door, stair, and in the tower all actually light, which was pretty tough to do at this scale.

Windmill in the village of Mulburton, near the town of Dunbrough on the Southen Sea. Originally, I was building this as a Halloween project, but couldn't get it done on time (go figure). It was also originally built as a pedistal style windmill, but it just looked out of scale. Sat on the shelf for a year, before being rebased on a hill. The windmail itself is built on a track door roller, so yes, it doeas rotate. In fact, during the shooting, it was a pretty windy December day, and the blades were spinning the entire time, pretty neat! Also shot at Lake Erie.

Fallen elvish tower over the pass on red mountian.
It's a pretty fun little piece. I wanted to build an Orkish tower, but I didn't think orks built their own towers. So I built an Elvish tower, in full, and then ruined it by hacking bits off. This was also the first one that I shot outside, at Lake Erie metropark. Now It's pretty tough not to shoot outside, the results are so much better.

A small outpost on the eastern frontier, guarding the trade route near the white river ford. My second round tower, this is probably my simplest piece yet. The birch trees are from christmas store, and the snow flock is, well, pretty tough to keep clean. If you are thinking of doing a winter scene, use plaster or something for snow, and not flock. Flock gets dusty and is very tough to keep clean.

A watchtower perched on the cliffs of the southern sea, protecting the village of Dunbrough.
I really like this project, still. The tower is built from a cardboard tube, wrapped in plasticard. The top of the tower is a modified Zvezda round tower. What I really like about this is the several sets of stairs, winding up to the tower. However, as a mate of mine pointed out on Frothers, the staircase at the tower itself should really wind the other direction, so that the defenders sword arm is open, and the shield arm to the wall. Go figure, I corrected it on the rest of my round towers. This is also the only one (so far) that I've done water on.

The elvish tower of Albion, hidden deep within the forest of Gulsen. This was my second foam terrain piece, and building this I learned a lot about building arches, complex arches, and much more realistic rocks and boulders. I still didn't know much about landscaping at this point, and now I'm not very fond of the grand scale of this one. It's in storage right now, but will come back at some point, heavily remastered if you will, perhaps on a cliff, part of a complex, waterfall or something. It's not up to standard right now, but I think it has a lot of potential.

The first fantasy foam terrain that I made, The western wall of the great city of Igros. I learned a lot making this, from how to carve foam, flock, make trees, and somewhat, half timbered buildings. Originally it was just a place to display my minis, but now terrain has taken over, and most of the minis are boxed up. This piece has since been dismantled, not living up to the standards of the rest of them. Besides, on an extremely tight budget, I needed to recycle a bit of the foam.