jeff train: Backdrop

Sýnir færslur með efnisorðinu Backdrop. Sýna allar færslur

Sýnir færslur með efnisorðinu Backdrop. Sýna allar færslur

þriðjudagur, 5. maí 2015

More commentary on photo vs. painted backdrops

In my Getting Real column in the current issue of the online magazine "Model Railroad Hobbyist" I presented a review of how I used a photo to extend the foreground scenery into my painted backdrop. The point I was trying to make was photos can be used in combination with painted backdrops to address things that are harder to paint - roads, buildings, rivers and the like.
The comment section has become an interesting series of comments on the relative merits of photo or painted backdrops. Kind of like the discussion we had in this post back in December.

fimmtudagur, 29. janúar 2015

Rethinking White River Junction - 2

Is this the answer to the White River Junction dilemma? Time will tell.

Been doing some scheming and planning regarding the issues with White River Junction that I blogged about a week or so ago.
I received a fair amount of feedback on the blog post, both on the comments section and through personal emails and I've read, considered, and most of all appreciated them.

An overhead view of the station in position on the layout.

If this was a layout in the planning stage I would have to admit at this point I'd say "no joy" on WRJ and find another scene. But the track is in, and wired, and everything works reliably. So the question is "Do I press forward and try to fix the things that are bugging me, or scrap the entire scene and start over?"
If I hadn't done any rework to the layout I would likely choose the latter - but as I told Bernie at lunch last Thursday I feel like all I've done is benchwork, track, and wiring. Frankly, I'm sick of infrastructure.
Finally, there's the not so insignificant fact that the station and coaling tower - two signature structures - are complete.
So a "tweak" it is.

Several people commented that the hole would be less objectionable with light levels matching the layout room. Here's a view that proves that theory. I made it that tall to take photos from "inside " the hole looking out - but the result is the hole is too tall.

This prototype shot is pretty close to the angle of the model photo above. Note the Cross & Abbott building to the right. Circa 1957. B. Decker photo.

The diagram at the top of this post, courtesy of Bernie, shows the plan to address the entry into staging. To start with we'll add a coved backdrop piece. That will make it easy to lower the height of the "mouse hole" The left side of the opening will be a seamless transition to a low piece of backdrop in the staging yard that will screen the unsightly elements from view.

By the time I took this photo Cross & Abbott was Vermont Salvage. (For a number of years it was White Mountain Paper Co.). Most of this wall will be visible on the layout.

This is a portion of the old Swift & Co. packing house. The low height will work well for screening the hole in the backdrop. At least I hope it will.

Sanborn Map shows how some of these elements fit together.

Front side of Vermont Salvage, which will be the Cross & Abbott Co. during my era.

On the right side I plan to add the long warehouse structures to the rear of Cross and Abbott and may add some portion of the Swift branch house - even running the wall into staging.
What of the staging yard that juts into the middle of the workshop? That's going to have an adjustment made as well, but first I want to ensure this transition works.
Wish me luck!

þriðjudagur, 30. desember 2014

Painted or Photo mural backdrops?

Same section of layout - one with my initial attempt at a painted backdrop, the other (below) with a commercial photo backdrop that has had the "sky" cut away.

Here I moved the photo print to another section of the layout and tried again. Obviously for photo backdrops to work you have to be a little more careful of how you cut the landscape from the sky. Among photo backdrops fans there is some disagreement - there are the "cut into the tree line" adherents and the "leave a little sky at the top of the photo and blend into the rest of the wall" fans. I, as of yet, remain unaffiliated.

Yes, it's a question that divides otherwise peace-loving and agreeable model railroaders into two warring camps - do we use photos for a backdrop or go with a painted image?
Painting an effective backdrop is a skill - and a talent. It can be mastered but it's not easy.
Frankly, anyone can put a photo behind the scene on the layout.
And you'd think a photo, being a photo, would automatically be "better." It's not. It takes some skill and talent - and the right photos - to get a photo backdrop to look right.
Biggest issue I've seen with photo backdrops is the way the backdrop colors aren't even close to the colors of the scenery on the model railroad. Another issue is the photo backdrops can be just a little too much in the viewer's face, and there can be issues with light and shadow that are in a real photo but don't translate (or conflict) with the shadows and lighting on the layout.
Clearly there's no easy answer.
One of the most talented model railroaders I know who's built world-class layouts, has identified his limits and decided that plain "sky blue" with perhaps a slightly lighter horizon line with perhaps a very thin streak of "ground," is enough backdrop for him.
I decided to do a little experiment with a photo backdrop put temporarily in place of some of my attempts at painting.
I'm not sure what this proves, other than I'm not much of a painter.
I also haven't made a decision one way or the other - but I know what way I'm leaning.
In the meantime I have to finish prepping my clinic for Cocoa Beach, so I doubt I'll get this resolved before then.

þriðjudagur, 9. september 2014

Lessening the mouse hole effect

Taking a break from working on Waterbury structures to offer a planning/construction tip.

The train emerges from a darkened staging yard. What's the first thing your eye sees in this view? The scratch built station? No, it's the cavernous black hole.

Turning on the lights in the staging room offers an immediate improvement. The next step will be to screen the exposed stud and support post with a realistic backdrop that will blend into the layout room backdrop.

Frequently on model railroads track passes through walls. Typically the mainline leaves the scenicked portion of the railroad and heads into a staging yard in a separate room. That's the case near the White River Junction station on my layout.
Modelers frequently disguise these openings with highway overpasses, buildings, and the like. But in my case no such options were available.
Let's face it, we're not really fooling anybody into believing the train isn't going through the wall. What we need to do is lessen the impact of the track heading into a dark mouse hole.
The easiest way to ease the transition is to maintain the same light levels and type of lighting on both sides of the opening.
The photos (underlie purposely to show the effect) illustrate what I mean.

föstudagur, 13. júní 2014

Sky Blue Paint

Tore, and a few other blog readers have asked me about the sky blue paint I've used for the layout room and the peninsula backdrop. Readers in the US simply have to walk into a Home Depot and ask for Behr's "Silver Strand."
For those who don't have access to the brand name of the paint, the mixture labels on the two cans I've used over the years are shown here. A paint store should be able to match the formula. Although the numbers are slightly different I've never been able to ascertain any difference in the color between these two cans that's worth worrying about.

fimmtudagur, 12. júní 2014

Distant mountains behind Waterbury

I added some distant hillsides and mountains to the wall behind Waterbury last night. I need to leave this backdrop somewhat unfinished for now. I plan to spend my layout time this evening finishing up some areas that need static grass - specifically around the underpass and north bank of Williams Creek. Then I need to start clearing off the layout, including putting away the scenery materials and backdrop paints, in preparation for my operating sessions on the 21st and 28th.
I also have a few of the usual suspects coming over for a small work session this coming Sunday.

þriðjudagur, 10. júní 2014

"Not a Cloud in the Sky�."

With all due respect to Karen Carpenter that's not quite the case anymore.
I painted the basement walls sky blue before starting construction, but it looked exactly like what it was - a plain blue wall.

A vast expanse of blue wall behind the peninsula needs a few clouds to liven things up a bit.

Tonight I decided to add some horizon line clouds and a line of clouds slightly higher in the sky. I'll come back tomorrow and add some distant hills.
While it's not exactly going to put anyone "On Top of the World" I think it does look better.

I painted these using tips I picked up from video series on MR Video Plus and from Chris Lyon's four-part series on TrainMasters TV.

laugardagur, 17. maí 2014

Work Session Report - May 17, 2014

Bernie stopped by after his golf lesson and round to patch the gap in the backdrop. While he was here he also tweaked some other sections on the backdrop between Randolph and Waterbury. One neat thing he did was blend a barn and farmhouse photo into the painted backdrop.
Finally, we played around with some static grass before he left. Once he left I got out my static grass machine and worked a little on getting a pasture around the hay barn on the peninsula. All in all, a productive day.
See the photos captions for more details.

When we altered the peninsula last January we sliced right through the backdrop Bernie had painted. Here's what it looked like before the Masonite was installed. For several months this has been a sky blue patch in a backdrop painting.

Bernie got to work blending the new backdrop section into the one he'd previously painted. He didn't want to be photographed today - he was feeling shy�.You can see the sky blue section on the bottom that denotes where the backdrop "splice" joined the old backdrop painting. This went pretty quickly. I think it took him longer to drive out to our place from the golf course than it took to paint the new backdrop!

The finished section is seamless - Well done! There would be no way I could have matched his colors, or frankly his painting ability. A shallow-relief structure will be installed between the track and the backdrop.

Closer to Randolph we added a barn and farmhouse from a photography to the painted backdrop. I think this is from a photo George Dutka sent me a while back. There was a pine tree in the photo obscuring the barn - so Bernie blended some additional painted pines to match the picture. We used Bernie's static grass machine for the grass in this section.

Once Bernie headed for home, I got out my static grass machine and started to dress up the grass in the pasture and along the right-of-way just north of Waterbury.

Christine dared me to put this on the blog�.

þriðjudagur, 13. maí 2014

Re-Locating Williams Creek: 9

The scenery is still not finished, but this shot shows an eye-level view of the creamery road heading into the backdrop. The photo of the old country road seems to blend well.

I'm rapidly approaching the end of the Williams Creek relocation project - which is a good thing since Colonel Zeb Carson "Buck" Williams III, USA, the scene's namesake, is going to be visiting sometime this summer!
I tried painting a road onto the backdrop and found it less than satisfying. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that I stink at painting manmade objects like buildings, trains, ships, boats, and yes, even roads. But the creamery road runs directly into the backdrop so I had to find a way to lessen the shock of the transition from modeled scene to 2-dimensional backdrop.
Bernie Kempinski has had some success at incorporating photos of structures (barns, houses, and the like) into painted backdrops. In fact we cut out some farm houses and barns and pasted them to the upper deck backdrop back when the layout was double deck. The buildings can be readily blended into the scene by painting a tree or bush around the base or even partially obscuring the building with a large tree or the like.
I decided the concept a little further and see if I could use a photo to transition the road from the 3D scenery to the backdrop. Success rides on having the right photo. I took this photo up in Maryland last autumn.

The prototype photo. Taken in Maryland last October.

The road had a slight rise to it, and since I'm modeling a remote two-lane road in rural Vermont in the 1950s I didn't want a lot of markings, lane lines and the like.
I reduced the photo to the point where the road just about matched the width of the modeled road, and then printed it out on ordinary color printed paper. I trimmed the sky and some of the foreground out of the print and slid the picture into place.

Sliding the printed photo into place.

I did move some of the trees around since the picture has green trees on the right and almost barren trees on the left. This helped blend the image. The top photo shows how this looks in place. I need to do some fine blending of the top of the trees into the painted backdrop, and will weather the road to match the photo after I add the scenic textures, but the effect seems to work.

föstudagur, 9. maí 2014

Relocating Williams Creek: 7

When I got home from work tonight I added some additional texture to the foreground hills on the backdrop. I included a fair amount of rust/brown trees in the foreground hill since I have lots of Supertrees made up that are in that color "family." It may seem like the background hills are a little too tall, and that the lack of detail at the joint between the vertical backdrop and horizontal surface of the layout may seem distracting, but remember those things will be obscured once the trees are planted.

miðvikudagur, 7. maí 2014

Re-Locating Williams Creek: 6

In progress look at the backdrop with some of the tree textures added. To prevent a real circus look, even on a fall backdrop like mine the green trees should dominant the oranges, reds, and yellows. I still need to work on the foreground trunks and do something with the road in this view.

Re-Locating Williams Creek: 5

A quick update on progress on the Williams Creek scene.

Current appearance of the Williams Creek scene, including my initial attempt at painting some distant mountains on the backdrop.

A previous post showed what I originally planned to include in this area of the layout (see photo at right). Comparing the two images shows how things have evolved. Inspired by the "less is more" principle espoused by some other modelers, I eliminated the planned station and country store from the scene. Also, the road running up the hill was just a little too steep so I located it between the creamery and bridge instead. In the place of the road and store the pasture (which was too small to look correct) will be expanded. The earlier view shows a stub-ended siding behind the station. It's been replaced with a double-ended siding that will serve the Whiting Creamery (based on a prototype in Waterbury.) I recall reading somewhere (perhaps in one of John Nehrich's article on milk trains?) that ".... most" creameries were on double-ended sidings..."

I learned a long time ago to avoid such broad, declarative statements.

Most towns on the CV had at least one creamery during the time frame I'm modeling. The only two creameries I've found with this "typical" double-ended siding arrangement are the Whiting Creamery at Waterbury (below) and one of the creameries in Randolph.

Pete McLachlan photo of the Whiting Creamery in Waterbury, Vt. This is going to be a fun scratchbuilding project.

As far as the scene goes, I might include a small section house but otherwise this is a simple scene that features the creamery, river and bridge � and not much else.

Next on the agenda is to build a mockup of the creamery building, paint the detailed trees on the backdrop and add some ground cover and texture. The entire saga of removing and resintalling Williams Creek will be featured in my next "Getting Real" column in Model Railroad Hobbyist ezine.

fimmtudagur, 27. febrúar 2014

Does dividing the peninsula make a layout seem larger?

I follow the USA & Canadian Railway RMWeb forum since I think getting a British perspective on American railroads and modeling is kind of interesting. (I first found RMWeb looking for information on Irish narrow gauge railways since I have a long-standing interest in those lines). One of the regular posters on the USA & Canadian forums is an N scaler "Barry Ten" who is building a very nice layout (see this thread) reflecting the railroads of the Southeastern US.
The footprint of the layout is similar to many we have on this side of the pond (as the Brits would say) - around the walls with a peninsula jutting into the center of the room. Or at least it will have a peninsula jutting into the center of the room once he finishes building it.
The other day he posted the following regarding whether or not to include a "backscene" - what we'd call a "backdrop." Hey, I might not be able to translate a lick of Russian anymore, but I can handle translating English!
Here's Barry's post:
"I considered a backscene, but reckoned it would make the room feel a bit too cramped as it would effectively block my view of one half of the room from the other. My plan is to have a high ridge down the middle of the peninsula instead, but not as high as a backscene would have done..."
When I read this over my morning coffee this morning I immediately remembered having the same concerns with my layout in Colorado. On that layout I'd originally built the peninsula without a center divider, (even though we'd used them pretty consistently on several MR project layouts as then managing editor Jim Kelly was a big fan of them!) I planned to rely instead on a ridge to divide one side of the peninsula from the other as I'd done on the N scale Carolina Central. Here's what the layout looked like - sorry if these images aren't up to snuff, they're fairly small pics and I no longer have the original larger files:

I toyed with the idea of adding a peninsula, but, like Berry, was unsure if it would make the room seem even smaller than it was. In an effort to see what it might look like I used my completely mediocre Photoshop skills to add a "sky" backdrop, as well as some of the planned buildings to the scene. The result is shown below.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this makes the room larger. I will say I added the backdrop to the layout and was happy I did.

sunnudagur, 13. maí 2012

Backdrop tweaks

My first attempt at including a backdrop in what I call the "Essex Junction alcove" (You can see the approximate position of the Essex Junction shed with the mockup on the left) utilized a curved piece of Masonite attached to the wall and forming a constant radius curve in front of the support post and joining the peninsula backdrop.
I didn�t like the way the curved section of backdrop looked � besides it would have made an awkward scene with the wye trackage. I also (for once) wisely decided to do something about it before laying track in this area. It would have been difficult to do this work with track in place � and virtually impossible with scenery!
So I removed the last backdrop section, cut a panel of Masonite to fit between the end of the existing backdrop and the support post, and blended the joint smooth. I�ll paint the post sky blue so it will look like part of the backdrop.

Removing the backdrop section meant the backside of another section of backdrop was visible. I framed up some supports and used some Masonite to fill the area between the support post and the wall. When this is all painted sky blue I think it will fade away from view � something that all backdrops should do!
As an aside, I'm really, really pleased with the fascia color!

föstudagur, 24. febrúar 2012

More backdrops

On Bernie's last visit he'd been assigned the task of installing the turntable and track in the engine servicing area. Once Bernie finished cutting the hole for the turntable (and a fine hole it is . . .) he begged off laying the track. Instead I put him to work finishing up some backdrop painting behind the Williams Creek bridge scene (where the river meets the backdrop).
He also painted about 8 additional feet of backdrop before calling it quits. The new section of backdrop shows more fall colors than the previous section since the foreground scenery will include trees with some foliage remaining. Think of it as past peak colors, but before all the leaves are down, and representing a slightly lower elevation down in the valley where the wind hasn't knocked all the leaves off the trees. The tree in the foreground is one of my finished trees he was using to match colors. I think it came out pretty well.

mánudagur, 12. desember 2011

Backdrop Video Trailer

Coming This Holiday Season . . . from Dog Butt Films, in conjunction with Leaping Hound Productions ....

föstudagur, 9. desember 2011

December 8 Work Session

Good work session this evening on the Central Vermont Winooski Sub. Bernie braved the DC traffic to come out to Manassas for a Friday night session. I worked on roadbed in Essex Junction while he painted a late fall backdrop behind Waterbury. I won't bore anyone with photos of roadbed - but the backdrop Bernie painted came out pretty sharp.

We did shoot a couple of short videos showing Bernie at work - I will post those later.

We found some pictures in Morning Sun's Central Vermont Railway in Color for inspiration. One of the most recognizable items in the Vermont landscape is "Camel's Hump" - the second tallest peak in the state but one with a unique profile (hence the name). Bernie used a photo taken by my good friend Alan Irwin as a guide - Alan's picture is in the lower right in the open book.
In the image below you can see the unique shape of Camel's Hump - but Bernie was careful to not make shape TOO distinctive since the backdrop would look odd when viewed from a different angle. Looks like there is already snow on the peak - it won't be long before Waterbury will be buried in the white stuff . . . maybe we need to run a couple of ski trains?

Along the narrow "neck" of the peninsula, Bernie added some "foreground" tree detail to my already outstanding backdrop painting efforts! (Actually, I think he "tweaked" my trees more than a little). The Supertree in the center is there as a height reference. One thing that has become obvious is I need more light on this section of the railroad. We discussed some possibilities for that as well.

I couldn't resist setting up a simple "test shot" in Waterbury. I want to finish up the work on the track in Essex Junction - but I also really, really, want to get to work on the "front door" Waterbury scene.

Thanks for the help, Bernie!

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