Monday, February 14, 2011

More Windmills!

I came across this by accident the other day so needless to say I was pleasantly surprised and ordered one right away as supplies are limited. 


What's of interest is that they are specially manufactured by a unique individual. Paul McDonagh of  Paul's Modelling Workshop.


Paul is a sole trader hand building terrain and scenery pieces for sale to gamers, collectors or any other persons looking for highly detailed and unique looking architectural models. He has previously built display models for museums including ancient village scenes and battlefields. He also has constructed models of town and residential projects for local councils, architects and building developers.







An article by John Moher

http://wargaming.info/buildings-fortifications/a-warlord-games-windmill%20


Some history about Paul from his website;

I started building scenery and terrain many years ago with my father. Back in the early 1970's we used to build with matchbox wood - balsa being expensive or hard to get - and used shoe polish to stain the wood! Also, cigarette packet plastic was used to represent glass and painted sawdust provided the groundwork. Things have changed a lot since then in the availability of items for the model maker!

My early influences include the late, great Ian Weekley and the range of fantastic scratchbuilt buildings he produced - I still have all the articles he wrote for Miniature Wargames magazine from the early eighties onwards. Also Basil Fletcher of Fortress Models produced some great articles showing differing styles of walls, doors, windows etc - basically anything architectural that would be useful for the model maker.

I believe passionately in that we have such fantastically sculpted and painted figures available for wargaming nowadays that it is such a waste not to therefore have the most highly detailed and (more importantly)  realistic scenery and terrain to fight over. I despair at seeing beautifully painted figures being let down by a plain green base for example. Or buildings badly painted or lacking detail. Remember,  the majority of space on a wargames table is not taken up by the figures.

I have to say that when it comes down to scenery our cousins in the railway modelling world regularly turn out beautifully built and detailed terrain  - I aim to produce the same standard for wargamers.

Nowadays I would say that my biggest influences are companies like WETA workshop in New Zealand who created the models for the Lord Of The Rings films, Industrial Light & Magic who have created many models for films including Star Wars etc and also Pinewood Studios in the UK who have been creating fantastic scenery for productions like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet etc since the 1960's. I hope you like them as much as I like making them!

Paul

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