Vampifan's World of the Undead

A while ago I made a set of 12 walls from the World Works Games' Mayhem Junkyard set. Each wall measures 6" long by 2" tall and they come in four different flavours. All walls are glued to bases that are 0.5" wide on either side.
The wall at the left of the photo above is a plain blank wall with no markings or graffiti on. I made six of these and two each of the other walls.
The wall at the right of the photo above bears a "Private Property" sign. It also has a very amusing poster that reads "NB Trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."
 The wall at the left of the photo above has been spray painted with graffiti.
 The wall at the right of the photo above has has numerous advertising posters stuck on it.
The photos directly above and below show the reverse side of the walls with their support columns.
All reverse sides of the walls are identical. These were incredibly easy to make. The walls and bases are reinforced with mounting card.

I recently reviewed the garage from the WWG Mayhem Junkyard set. There are lots of interesting accessories and props in that set. Amongst the props are a small collection of crushed cars and here they are.
Here is my 28mm scale figure of Vampifan standing next to one of the stacks of four cars, the stack of two cars and one of the single cars.
Here is a side view of the stack of four cars and the stack of two cars, which I'm pleased to see are not all facing in the same direction.
As with all of WWG's models the texturing is just amazing. These cars really do look to be in a very dilapidated condition.
I was wondering whether to classify these as vehicles or scenery, but seeing as they can no longer drive and are just static they have to be classed as scenery. They are useful for cover or barricades and of course, you can stack as many as you want on top of each other. There are fifteen cars in total, so you could make three stacks of five cars. Or lots more if you print out more of them.
By the way, the Mayhem Junkyard set does include a car crusher, but I haven't made it yet. Don't worry, it will get made soon as i have already printed it out.

After I had finished making my WWG Mayhem Police Station, the next building I made was the WWG Mayhem Junkyard Garage. I have no idea why I haven't reviewed it before now. I guess it just slipped my mind. Of course, some of my followers are more eagle-eyed and alert than me, and I was recently asked when I was going to do a review of this building? That was enough to spur me into action. Seeing as I plan on reviewing a lot of my recently made card models this month, this is the perfect opportunity for me to rectify my oversight.
After making such a complex, labour intensive and time consuming project as the Mayhem City Police Station I wanted to make something a lot easier next time. This building fit the bill perfectly. It was single storey, comprising two rooms and had very little in the way of furniture to make. Perfect!
Note the air conditioning unit on the roof. That was originally part of the roof design - a 2D piece of paint work. I cut it out and added four walls to it to raise it up and to make it a 3D object. It serves as a useful handle for lifting the roof off.
This is the front of the building, with Vampifan standing in the centre, to give you a sense of it's size. It measures 12" long by 6" wide by 3" tall.

Can you see on the air conditioning unit how the three fans are slightly raised? I cut the fans out and glued them onto three circular plastic counters that, fortunately for me, were the same diameter as the fans. I painted the edges black and when they were dry they were stuck back in place. I bought my counters from EM4 Miniatures webstore. They carry a nice range of gaming accessories like plastic counters. I find them useful for my card building projects.

The only point of note about the back of the building is that I cut out the two small meters in the lower centre of the wall and glued them on to mounting card before sticking them back in place. It is just a small detail, but I wanted them raised from the wall. In real life I don't think that they would be flush with the wall.
The windows have been replaced with transparency paper, with the window tracery printed on them. It is certainly not very apparent from this photo, but you'll see what I mean when you view the interior photos.
Here is an overhead of the interior, showing the office to the left and the garage to the right. One of the things that I particularly like about WWG models is that their textures are excellent. Just check out the details on both floors. Seeing as I primarily want to use this building in my zombie campaign, the blood stains on both floors were particularly welcome and very atmospheric.
All of the furniture in the office are variants of furniture items from other WWG Mayhem City sets. By variant, I mean they are the same size and shape but they have new skins. The filing cabinet in the upper left corner is a variant of the one found in the Mayhem Police Station set. The four lockers next to it have been recoloured from those found in the Police Station. Plus, they have been reduced in size from eight lockers to four. In the garage section, the work table in the top right corner was a prop from the set that I added. The black cupboard and drawers next to it were originally just part of the wall design - totally flat. This was a stupid idea, in my opinion, so I cut them out and added two sides and a top to them, which I painted in matching colours. The clock on the wall was also cut out. I stuck that to a piece of mounting card then glued it back in place.
You can see the window tracery on the transparency papers much clearer in this photo. In the office, I have left the hubcaps and spare tyres as part of the wall design. Likewise with the tool racks on the wall between the two windows of the garage.
In the garage, the large front door is hinged along the top so that it opens inwards and upwards. It is shown half open in the photo above. The two doors in the office both open and close normally.
Once again, in the garage, the red and blue tool cupboards were simply a part of the wall design, mere 2D items. The larger cupboard next to them was a prop that came with the set. I cut out the front sections of the red and blue tool cupboards and glued them to a piece of mounting card. I added tops and sides to them, and after I had painted them, I stuck the 3D models back in place. All of the furniture items, with just one exception, look dirty, used and often rust-stained. That is true of the chair and the desk in the office. The one exception that I mentioned is the laptop computer on the desk.
Some of you may have noticed that this building made its debut appearance in the Day One scenario of my new ATZ-FFO campaign, although no one entered it, making it just a part of the scenery. It crops up in parts one, two and three of the scenario. Simply because it was so easy to make, I enjoyed making it. Obviously, it is designed to be used as part of the Mayhem City Junkyard set, but I see no reason not to use it on its own as I did in parts one and two of my ATZ-FFO Day One scenario or as part of the petrol station as I did in part three. I also think it would make a good replacement for a couple of the buildings from the Stoelzel's Structures Auto Park set.
Note that there are extra wall designs to those shown here. For example, the large window that appears at the front of the office could be placed on a side wall instead of the two smaller windows that I chose. You do have numerous optioms for how the finished product will look. My design is simply the option that I liked best. You could even split the office and the garage into two separate buildings if you wanted.

As well as making card buildings, I like to make card vehicles. Now, I may have fell out of favour with World Works Games when it comes to buildings (basically, I'm not a fan of their new TLX buildings) but as far as model vehicles go, WWG are still number one in my opinion. Here are my two latest models and these came from the old Mayhem Junkyard set - a digger and a grabber.

When I decided to make these, my first thought was, "should I make the digger or the grabber?" What an idiot! The obvious answer was to make both! To the left is the digger with its bucket scoop at the end of its arm. To the right is the grabber with its mechanical claw at the end its arm.

Regarding the construction of these two models, the tracks and body were very easy to make. The arms and their attachments were much, much harder to build, especially as I reinforce my models with mounting card. Actually, despite the extra effort, it has paid dividends. I can just imagine how flimsy the arms and attachments would be if I hadn't reinforced them. I'm comforted by the fact that these will stand up to a lot of handling when I'm gaming.

This side view shows the vehicle with the digger attachment. The two small, slender hydraulic arms on either side of the main arms were reinforced with thin card, but when glued back to back are quite thick and robust. There is very little space to work with for attaching the bucket to the end of the arm, so I glued it in place with a dab of superglue to get a really strong bond.

I normally print my vehicles onto satin photo paper for a semi-gloss look. For these, however, I printed them onto my standard matte photo paper. It reinforces the fact that they have not just rolled out of a factory but are working vehicles that will get dirty very quickly. One thing I did do, which isn't too clear from my photos was to gloss varnish the windows.

Here we have the side view of the grabber. The grabber itself was reinforced with thin card and it was the most fiddly part of the model to cut out and glue together. One thing that I always do with any card model is to "edge" them. Edging is colouring in the white edges of your model so that they blend in with the rest of the model. Most tutorials suggest using felt tip markers to edge. I prefer to use acrylic paints. This means you have to take extra care and a steady hand is a must. However, on the plus side, it gives me a greater range of colours to play with and I can more accurately match up the colours required.
If these were die-cast models, you'd be able to move the arms up and down. Unfortunately, that is not an option with these, so the arms have to be glued into one position only.The hydraulic joint between the bend in the two arms gives you some variation in how the arms can be positioned.
Keen-eyed viewers will have seen the digger version of this pair making an appearance in my "Assault on Precinct 13" scenario, where it was no more than a background prop. These would both make fine zombie fighting tools, with a number of options for dispatching zeds. I'm very happy with how they have turned out, but I must stress that these are not suitable models for the beginner.
NOTE: the first five photos have been edited to show the bucket attachement to the digger fitted the correct way round - facing the cab.

Once I'd finished making my police station I knew what was going to be next on my card modelling list - police patrol cars. You can't have a police station without any patrol cars. Up to now the only police vehicles I'd made were a police van and two interceptor patrol cars. I needed some bog standard police cars. In other words, these -
Four seemed like a fair number to build, just to start off with. I may build some more in the future, but for now I'm happy with these four. You get two cars on an A4-sized sheet, with the numbers 01 and 02 on their roofs. WWG very helpfully provide a bonus sheet with an extra 36 numbers printed on with the numbers 03 to 38. I can't imagine anyone making 38 police patrol cars but if you're mad enough to want to the option is there.
Here's a hint for you if you're using any of the higher numbered roofs. I cut out the roofs of cars 01 and 02 and replaced them with numbers 03 and 04. These were kept in place by strips of masking tape on their reverse side. This made folding down the back, front and sides much easier. Some of you may be tempted to glue the new numbers directly on top of the old ones and this is certainly a viable option. I decided not to as it would have made their roofs slightly taller. I should point out that I printed these onto 250gm Satin Photo Paper, which is a lot thicker that the matte photo paper I normally use. I like to use Satin paper for most of my vehicles as it gives a nice shiny look to them, without being too glossy. I have used Gloss Photo Paper on a few of my cars, like the aforementioned police interceptors and on my sports car. These are the kind of vehicles you expect to see highly polished.
This front view of two of the cars shows an inherent design fault that is only noticable when viewed from this angle. Check out the wheels - they appear to bent at an odd angle and are pointing inward. This is due to the sloping sides of the car. However, when viewed from above as in the two previous photos it is barely noticable. Personally, I can live with it. If they look good on a gaming table then I'm happy.
At first glance the two cars look identical (apart from their roof numbers) but they aren't. The difference is subtle but car 01 (at the left in the above photo) is cleaner than car 02. Car 02 has more mud splashes on its sides than car 01.
And the other difference is that they have different number plates., as you can see here. I'm not sure why one is a combination of letters and numbers and the other is made up of just numbers. Probably an American thing.

As promised on Sunday, here is part two of my review of my World Works Games 28mm scale Mayhem City Police Station. This time, I'll concentrate on the ground floor interior.
This is the overhead view that I left you with last time as a teaser shot. Well, no more teasing. I'll tell you what each of the rooms represents, starting in the top right hand corner and moving around clockwise. First up is a detective's office, followed by a second detective's office. Next is the corridor to the cells. There are four cells, and each one can hold four prisoners. Next, we come to the corridor leading to the rear exit and to the stairs to the first floor. The processing room and identity parade room are side by side. Above them are an interrogation room and a connecting room, which leads to four other rooms. In the top left hand corner is a third detective's office, next to the public toilets and the entrance hall.
Let's take a closer look at the rooms, starting with the pair of detective's offices next to each other. Against the far wall of the office at the top of this photo are a filing cabinet with a computer on top of it, a wall-mounted bookcase and a selection of wanted posters hanging on a wall board. The far wall of the lower office shows a photocopier machine, a fire extinguisher and a large wipe-board.
I did not want each office to look the same, so I rearranged the placement of the furniture in them, even though they all contain common elements. Both have their desks behind a window but due to the placement of the windows the desks are at ninety degrees to each other.
Against the far wall of the office at the top of this photo are a filing cabinet from my Mayhem Industrial set and a bookcase, which this time, I have placed on the floor. As in part one of my review, all furniture items came from the Mayhem Police set, unless I note otherwise. The far wall of the office at the bottom of the above photo shows a large filing cabinet in the corner and on the wall, a poster of Great Cthulhu. Apparently, he has been linked to a number of ritualistic murders. Police advise the public not to approach him!
This photo gives a good overview of the layout of both rooms. They each measure 6" by 3". Nothing more to say, so move along now.
The entrance hall is the second largest room in the building (after the first floor squad room). It measures 9" by 6" but loses a 3" square for the toilets at the bottom right of the above photo. The giant shield mounted on the far wall lets visitors know in no uncertain terms that this is a police station. In the public toilets, the checkered floor came from the TLX Mayhem Armoury set. The two wash basins in the toilets are from the Ebbles Ambient Elements - Barracks set.
You can see that the room is dominated by the huge reception desk, upon which I have placed a computer keyboard and monitor, and a telephone unit. The computer stack stands off to one side of the desk, near the coffee dispensing machine.
I cut out the clock from the entrance wall, glued it to mounting card then stuck it back in place. This gives it a 3D effect, as it sits away from the wall. The two red leather seats either side of the main doors are for the comfort of waiting visitors. The three toilet cubicles came from the same Ebbles set as the wash basins. I suspect that Mel Ebbles aka Christopher Roe never envisaged anyone making them with open and closing doors. But I did, and whilst I realise that the doors should open inwards that was physically impossible and so I had to compromise and make them open outwards.
The short wall by the toilets shows an array of wanted posters, pinned to a board.
Moving ever onwards, we come to a small connecting room with a door in each wall, a small interrogation room and the third detective's office to be found on this floor.
At the top of the picture, in the detective's office are a bookcase with a telephone unit on it, a small filing cabinet and a taller bookcase.