High Rise / Skyscraper building kits ??

[cteno4]

couple of new high rises on ebay.

quite complex marriot

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300579497910&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

high rise

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140580252944&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_500wt_961

and a parking structure

http://cgi.ebay.com/N-SCALE-BUILDING-PARKING-GARAGE-AWESOME-/140580252126?pt=Model_RR_Trains&hash=item20bb3c69de#ht_500wt_961

cheers

jeff

[quinntopia]

Here's some great looking apartment complexes if you have any East Germans on your layout looking for some nice communist housing:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=de&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.1zu160.net/neues/news.php%3Fid%3D2048&usg=ALkJrhjkGIcmhACbQl6rx7JEH-S4LtMwxA

I actually think these would look really good next to tracks.

[cteno4]

thanks quinntopia, interesting find. yes these could be anywhere really! bit expensive at $36 per single unit (like $27 each if you buy a set of 4), but free shipping to the US! i like how they did things modular.

makes me want to do a couple of small window sections like this on my friends laser cutter. once its all worked out, turning out a bunch is not very expensive then. something of this layout could also all be done with strips as well...

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

another what looks to be printed window high rise on ebay from adam's trucks and trains

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300597636232&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_839wt_809

its interesting he has a whole line/system of strip mall buildings he has come up with. simple design that you can mix and match

http://stores.ebay.com/Adams-trucks-N-trains/_i.html?_fsub=15961393

looks to be a combo of some simple printed doors/windows and strip styrene. his prices are not bad for custom made stuff like this, even if they are not very detailed it takes quite a bit of time to whip these out even if he has it set up to mass produce a few. always thought it would be something fun in retirement to do something like this to bring in a little money to cover the hobby stuff!

i know strip malls are starting to hit the growing japanese suburbs. be interesting to see if there were a formula to do some japanese ones! anyone got any pictures of japanese suburban strip malls?

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

another interesting kitbash of the atlas highrise. this is along the lines of what i plan to do with my kits

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110748455113&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_4435wt_946

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

ok here are some wild kitbashed high rises from various tomix, kato and green max kits!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400251564371&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_844wt_802

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400251503724&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_844wt_802

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

couple of more today

sort of an abstract sears tower from atlas kits:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110769587128&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_3719wt_1042

printed window office building:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300619143080&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_873wt_808

jeff

[cteno4]

heres an interesting circular high rise someone has done. looks like they used some sort of filter unit to create the building parts. now thats a new shape to walk through home despot and the like thinking about!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170749581013&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

cheers

jeff

[keiman]

Don't know if these would be of use to people but are low relief card kits.
I know they are british style but for the more adventurous,especially given the low cost(Pay by Paypal)
http://www.scalescenes.com/products/TO10-Low-Relief-Flats
Buy it once and then you can print out as many as you need.

[quinntopia]

Thanks for sharing that Scalescenes link Keiman.  What I think is kind of cool is that they offer a couple of free 'kits' that you can print out to get a taste! That makes for a nice, inexpensive project someday!

[cteno4]

another ebay atlas custom high rise

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110811849039&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_5419wt_1116

jeff

[domino]

Hey guy`s
I startet this tread some time ago , and im still looking for some fantastic high rise buildings for my layout, and i finally found it, take a look at this seller from Japan autions, the items are fantastic, i already bought 2 from him, only down side that the buildings are made of cardboard , but  never the less fantastic

http://www.jauce.com/view.php?seturl=http://openuser.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/user/tyjwm075?alocale=0jp_aps_mode=2_aps_apg=1

regards
Brian

[cteno4]

Something I hope to do in my retirement someday!

Jeff

[quinntopia]

Hey guy`s
I startet this tread some time ago , and im still looking for some fantastic high rise buildings for my layout, and i finally found it, take a look at this seller from Japan autions, the items are fantastic, i already bought 2 from him, only down side that the buildings are made of cardboard , but  never the less fantastic

http://www.jauce.com/view.php?seturl=http://openuser.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/user/tyjwm075?alocale=0jp_aps_mode=2_aps_apg=1

regards
Brian

Neat!  I didn't know about this site...I used to watch for similar buildings like this on Yahoo Japan Auctions, but they seemed to have slowed down on that site.  Nice!  I have a couple (I actually added lighting to one of them!) and would definitely get more at some point if the price is right.

[cteno4]

Brian

Did you buy yours thru the jause.com site?

Jeff

[domino]

Brian

Did you buy yours thru the jause.com site?

Jeff

Yes i did, it is a bit expensive, they want fee for everything, they even take a fee when you put money in your acount through paypal .

brian

[cteno4]

Thanks Brian,

It did see like there was a charge for everything!

Jeff

[cteno4]

another round highrise using what i think are some sort of filter columns. cleaver....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170775104562&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_500wt_1131

jeff

[cteno4]

ok who is going to model this one?!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hectorbc/5976585813/in/photostream/

jeff

[Bernard]

Wow that looks like a "kitbash" that went terribly wrong....or too much CA glue got on too many pieces, spread and then got stuck together. The rooms must also be interesting. 

ok who is going to model this one?!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hectorbc/5976585813/in/photostream/

jeff

[cteno4]

yeah i started to look at it to see how to potentially attack it, but its a head scratcher! would be fun though, i definitely do want to scratch build or kitbash a few odd buildings like this as they would certainly perk up a row of standard high rises

jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

Home was a condo on the fifteenth floor of a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals. The walls were solid concrete. A foot of concrete is important when your next door neighbor lets their hearing aid go and has to watch game shows at full volume. Or when a volcanic blast of debris that used to be your furniture and personal effects blows out of your floor to ceiling windows and sails flaming into the night. I suppose these things happen...

[KenS]

ok who is going to model this one?!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hectorbc/5976585813/in/photostream/

This is what happens when Goji steps on a building. 

It's definitely distinctive, but it might be too far "out there" to look good on a layout.  If the real one looks like the results of an accident, nobody's going to believe the model was intentional.  And that just breaks the "sense of realism" a model is trying to convey.

[cteno4]

Ken,

I have to disagree that an interesting building like this would break the sense of realism on a japanese layout -- japan is all about these sorts of off juxtapositions. granted, it would not be an easy one to pull off, but if done right i think it would be superior to the equivalent high level scene w/o it. yes on a layout set anywhere else it would probably go too far, but i think that japanese urban scenes are all about this kind of thing. if done right it just grabs the viewer even more and makes them look closer. the problem is you could not just throw that in somewhere w/o having a really detailed and realistic japanese urban scene done well all the way down the block with all the other variation. yes its a bit harder for someone who is not familiar to japanese scenes to understand this and their conscious brain will say its not right, but if the scene is done well you can actually start bending the mind's eye to your content even though their conscious brain may be saying it aint right. if you really have something to say about the interesting scenery you have to go this route as if you try to play directly to the conscious brain of someone like that you have lost and will be making a us layout...

this is actually one of the most fascinating parts of doing japanese rr to me is the amazing variety of scenes and even details w/in scenes that you can have. rr scenes from many other places all start to look very similar in the long run and thus the modeling. in japan the track is pretty much like roads so they end up juxtaposed to all sorts of interesting things that you dont see elsewhere. also the mixture of old design, new design, and crappy design can be such a jumble in japan that again it just gives scenes that have such interesting look that is so less uniform in ways other places (and then layout scenes) tend to become. yes you can find very uniform and more normal scenes i japan, but those then end up going down looking just like any other layout in the world.

cheers

jeff

[KenS]

That's a good point: if you put one odd building in a too "normal" scene you might not connect with the viewer, but if you have some more subtle differences from what they might expect, that sets up a "this is different" vibe, they may be more willing to accept the really odd.  I'll have to think about that while I'm planning my layout structures.  I don't think I'll go this "distinctive", but I definitely don't want "Main Street USA" either.  Distinctive is part of the appeal.

[quinntopia]

What an amazing building...thanks Jeff!  I think the wild looks of this building would look fine as long as its just the one.  It also appears to be an Audi show room (making an assumption based on the building sign) so crazy looking 'show rooms' seem to be a feature that many car companies will put into a key city as sort of show piece for their brand (the Citroen store on the Champs d'Ellyse in Paris is one that loved visiting!).

Even though I said this would look okay if it was just the one, its a bit too wild even for my tastes, but the appeal of having one of these over-the-top style buildings is something that I would be interested in having!

[marknewton]

...Or when a volcanic blast of debris that used to be your furniture and personal effects blows out of your floor to ceiling windows and sails flaming into the night. I suppose these things happen...

LOL! Party get out of hand, did it? 

Cheers,

Mark.

[cteno4]

yeah its a real balancing act to not push the viewer over the edge, but i think we tend to be way too conservative in what we think we can do with the viewer's minds eye compared to their conscious mind. the mind's eye is very intuitive and if you give it the right cues it will latch on quite well and tend to turn off the alarms of the conscious mind -- its that thats cool/interesting but i cant tell you quite why feeling...

of course if you foul up (and this happens a lot in design) and piss off the mind's eye the alarms will be heard by the conscious mind even if it does not see the problem -- its that i know thats not right but i cant tell you why feeling.

over the years its been fun with the jrm layout as we have had it very flexible in the past and put buildings in all sorts of variety over the years. i have watched folks take it in a lot and i find them quite interested the more we mix things up and do things that are not found on regular layouts. its a bit of breath of fresh air i think and it just feeds into japan is different then. again delicate balance.

I watch people for hours in exhibits as i find its the best way to get data back on what works and what does not. its quite unquantifiable (says the phd molecular biologist), but compared to all the surveys and other types of research folks try to do on exhibits i have found it to give me the best intuitive feedback into the design. its a que from doing wildlife behavior research where you have to just observe a lot before you can see some trends to try and start testing. anyhow try it and watch folks as they look at your layout or others and watch their reactions carefully. we are monkeys and show a lot of expression with our physical reactions but you just have to look for them.

experiment with your layout as well. perhaps mock up a wilder building and plop it in somewhere. even if its just taped together hunks of cardboard. you never know what you might come up with and you will sometimes be surprised how well something wild can fit into the mundane and just be right in the overall picture while still being wild on its own. Gehry and others have shown this to be possible. btw its not an urban myth, gehry does start a lot of his thinking with bits of crumpled paper taped down with scotch tape! my design partner saw this 35 years ago in his office. someone on the simpsons must have heard about it, this is one of the best little bits

cheers

jeff

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/7QQBQDXHzys" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/7QQBQDXHzys</a>

[cteno4]

heres a very interesting kitbash of several different high rise n scale kits!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110834663551&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_4892wt_1009

jeff

[Bernard]

heres a very interesting kitbash of several different high rise n scale kits!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110834663551&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#ht_4892wt_1009

jeff

Hey he kitbashed many parts from the Memorial Hospital kit, and I liked what he did!

[quinntopia]

I just read about this in the latest Hobby Search announcement email and Wow..if I'm reading this right, this could be really cool!
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10180238

Here's the photo that Hobby Search currently has up for it:


What else seems to be right in line with what a lot of us want...it has an available LED lighting kit!
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10180239

It appears to be about a foot and half high (estimated from the 426mm height mentioned), but looks like quite a few floors from the poor photo. From my rough counting, it looks like about 21 floors.

Its also stated as being made of acrylic, so this is no card structure!  Interesting area for Cosmic to expand into (although they've been making 'led kits' for lighting buildings for a while, this step does kind of make sense!).

I don't know about you, but this is pretty cool!

Yep, I already have mine on pre-order! 

[cteno4]

Why did I not see that one coming!

I was tempted earlier today as well, but decided to hold off right now.

These are the kind of building I could see scratch building at some point. So I may wait.

Cheers

Jeff

[quinntopia]

Why did I not see that one coming!

I was tempted earlier today as well, but decided to hold off right now.

These are the kind of building I could see scratch building at some point. So I may wait.

Yeah, I'm a bit nervous reserving it with such a vague photo of the building!  I'm hoping something better turns up soon!

[cteno4]

quinn,

from the looks of it and the other cosmic stuff i think its going to be good quality. you got me thinking about it again last night damn you! must resist...

man would i love to have a laser cutter! i keep hoping they are going to come down, but that has been really slow. 3D printers have evolved much faster. i guess the powerful laser is one of the expensive parts that just is not getting cheap fast. probably market as well as i bet there are lofs of folks who want one, but its so much harder to develop your models than doing simple 2D cuts!

jeff

[quinntopia]

quinn,

from the looks of it and the other cosmic stuff i think its going to be good quality. you got me thinking about it again last night damn you! must resist...

man would i love to have a laser cutter! i keep hoping they are going to come down, but that has been really slow. 3D printers have evolved much faster. i guess the powerful laser is one of the expensive parts that just is not getting cheap fast. probably market as well as i bet there are lofs of folks who want one, but its so much harder to develop your models than doing simple 2D cuts!

jeff

I hear that!  Although I've heard of some folks getting some pretty decent results with some of the 'craft cutters' that you can connect to your computer.  I suppose if you use thin enough styrene the blade could cut through it with no problem.  The decent ones are still $200+ and that's a bit too much for me to experiment with!  But yeah, a laser cutter would be amazing!

[cteno4]

issue with the craft cutters is they dont do styrene all that well and dulls the expensive blades quickly. basically they work well on card stock, but past that it goes downhill from what i have read.

we use plotter cut vinyl a lot in exhibit work and seen a lot done with them and when the vinyl starts to get thicker is when you loose the quality and have to go to much simpler shaped fonts.

im still intrigued with the simple cutters, but have not looked around this year to see whats new. last year the entry level was about $400 for anything that had any quality and power, but i expect its dropping fast! you could also always do the layering technique or cut out facades from nice colored card stocks and mount on clear or smoked acrylics for interesting modern smooth building exteriors.

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

new photos for the cosmic apartment tower just showed up and looks nice! back to being very tempting again! it is tall though and will require a few other structures near it in height to not make it stand out toooo much, but hey in japan you will see a city area with a bunch of 2-4 story buildings then one odd 10-20 story building poking up all of a sudden! even out in some small towns ive seen one rather large building and all the rest in the area pretty small!

but even with there being a lot of prototypes for something like this many viewers may not get it and think it odd, but hey thats a lot of the fun of japanese modeling as it has so many more interesting (you may call odd) things to model!

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10180238b/30/1

cheers

jeff

[quinntopia]

Just arrived from our friends at Hobby Search...the Cosmic 22 story high rise!  It comes in a rather plain box with an attached label of sorts:

Inside, the various pieces are wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic....looks a little bit more complicated than the original photos seemed to indicate, but the work doesn't seem to involve too much overly onerous extra effort (for example, removing extra flashing from plastic and plaster casts which is somewhat typical of 'artisan' produced kits like this):


I posted more photos at my blog http://www.quinntopia.com/2012/05/cosmic-ns-93k-22-floor-high-rise-kit.htmlif your curious...haven't yet started doing anything with it, but I thought others might want to see some more on this interesting kit from Cosmic!

Let me know if you have any questions!

[cteno4]

Quin

Looking forward to seeing more of this as it comes together. Already seeing a few ideas for rolling my own. Please take Picts as it goes together. I finally decided to wait on it till more work comes in the door.

Jeff

[quinntopia]

Quin

Looking forward to seeing more of this as it comes together. Already seeing a few ideas for rolling my own. Please take Picts as it goes together. I finally decided to wait on it till more work comes in the door.

Jeff

Will do Jeff! I'm in the middle of scratch-building a passenger terminal at the moment, which is taking up most of my 'hobby time'!  I think I'm going to try and tackle this one next!