26 January 2022

Jersey barriers and a Lambo


Earl, Calvin and Lazarus take shelter behind some concrete barriers and get ready to fend off the zombies heading their way. Edna is there for moral support and cats.

I bought these jersey barriers last year off Amazon. They're by Ender Toys, they of the really rough 3D printing, and I had to sand the crap out of them to remove the horizontal print lines but still retain some texture. You get eight for $10: two sloped end pieces and six regular barriers.

They were all painted the same basic scheme: sprayed with grey primer, then daubed with Strong Tone and drybrushed with Ash and Ghost greys. I used a pointed sculpting tool to add bullet holes and cracks to some of them, and a few had slices carved off the edges to represent damage.

Once that was done it was a case of thinking up graffiti designs, which were drawn on with a pencil and then painted over.  




I really don't think the teeth worked on the left endpiece, and I could not be bothered to think of something for the other one so left it blank.

The barriers are scaled really well for 28mm figures and look really good once painted. They are very light — I'm pretty sure they're hollow — and are just asking to be knocked all over the gaming table when the zombie horde comes along.

And now for the Lamborghini. 

This Aventador is another cheap 1/43 scale car from Dollar General, and was a stocking stuffer pressie from Alicia at Christmas. I could not face doing another spray-and-latex rust job on it, and I thought that maybe a $400,000 car wouldn't rust too easily. So I just sprayed it with matte varnish to dull the paint.

I also took the body off, sprayed some Blood for the Blood God onto the inside of the windscreen, and added some suitable graffiti to the bonnet.

And as you can see, I finally found a use for one of the pillar boxes that I painted back in February last year. I'm aiming for a mix of British and American influences on my scenery and the pillar box helps with that idea.

12 comments:

  1. Great work on the barriers and car Matt, have found liquid greenstuff great for filling those pesky lines on 3D prints, and once dry a light sanding is required, depending how smooth you want it.
    Good call on leaving the rust off the Lambo, must rich people don't tend to leave them out in the elements ! LOL but they do rust just the same.

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    1. Cheers, Dave! I have thought about using some kind of filler on these 3D prints but to be honest it's just cheaper to sand them, despite being a bit labour intensive. And there has to be some texture on the barriers otherwise there's nothing to drybrush :-)

      The Lambo looks fine without rust, and as I have a truck ready to go through the latex process I couldn't face doing it twice.

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  2. Jersey barriers are sre such an iconic scenic in modern games and you've done a great job on these, thoough I doubt I'd enjoy all the sanding necesssary to get them even near to being soon. More pieces I alaways wanted for myzed set-up, but never gone around to making or purchasing any.

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    1. Thanks, Joe! I have seen a couple of tutorials on how to make the barriers out of XPS insulation foam board, but it looked a bit of a hassle and just a lot easier to shell out $10 on the printed ones. The sanding was tedious but necessary. Ender Toys does a lot of good looking and relatively cheap scenery, but the print lines are a nightmare and put me off buying their stuff.

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  3. The barriers look really nice, good useful pieces, and the graffiti really sets them off well, you're getting pretty good at the old graffiti, are you sure you're not "Banksy"?

    Lambo looks good too, I like the slogan on the bonnet!.

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. LOL no, I'm definitely not Banksy! Cheers, Roger, and I thought the slogan on the Aventador suited it perfectly!

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  4. Wow! These look great! I used graffiti decals on most of my city scenics because I never thought to just draw some stuff myself. D'oh!
    I bought the Ender Toys sci-fi walls. I get what you're saying about the print lines. In my case, they were supposed to represent the quick, prefab building materials of a Starfleet base, so all I did was prime them white. Lazy, but it worked!
    Love the lambo, and the slogan!

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    1. Thanks, Keith! Drawing then painting the designs takes a bit of courage knowing that if you screw it up you're going to have to repaint the wall, but it's worth it in the end. Yeah, Ender Toys' 3D printing leaves a lot to be desired.

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  5. The graffiti looks great on these barriers! I really love to see your creativity come out on these pieces of terrain. I think the images throughout this post have a lot of life in them and while the post-apocalypse is usually very desolate, I think I'd rather live in the world you're creating instead. If nothing else, at least its visually interesting :D

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    1. Thanks, Jeff, and it is a lot of fun to get creative with the slogans and designs even though it can be a pain coming up with them. I'm trying to create a town that was populated with the world's most mediocre graffiti artist LOL!

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  6. Saw those on Amazon as well, now after reading how much work they require, yeah I’ll pass. Even at that price.
    Regardless, I love the graffiti on them!

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    1. Cheers, Dai, and yes, they're a pain to prep for painting. On the other hand, they are cheap; if GW made them it'd be $50 for three LOL!

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