Paper Model questions

[doctorwayne]

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned the dangers of lacquer thinner and many other solvents, and the need to provide adequate ventilation. I was doing the illustrated work in my garage, unheated and about 100' behind the house. Even with the door open (and it's a pretty "airy" building even with all of the doors closed - over 100 years old ) I wore a two-stage respirator, the same as I use when airbrushing. These remove particulate matter (good for any kind of sprayed paint) and also fumes from organic solvents - lacquer thinner, alcohol, acetone, MEK, etc., etc.

As for placement of the structures, most of my layout is only 30" deep, and the pictures showing the structures on the layout were taken from less than 20" away. I haven't added much in the way of three-dimensional details, but that's because I needed these to fill-in specific areas in the background.
One structure, which I didn't show because I'm not decided on which foreground structures to be placed in front of it, has printed detail which is not shown as a strictly head-on view. I had initially thought that re-doing those "suggested" 3-D features with actual 3-D details would be necessary, but controlling the viewing angle through placement of foreground structures gives, I think, a very convincing representation. Here it is in place, viewable only from the left:



Even from up close (about 10", and only 15" from the front of the layout, it still looks pretty good:



...however, in that locale, it's also viewable from the right:



Even once the second level of the layout is installed above this area, it would still also be viewable from above:



The low-relief stone building shown earlier is actually the two bottom storeys of this structure, which I had thought to be too tall for its small-town setting:



I added a gabled half-roof, sheathed with Campbell corrugated siding, to make it a totally different looking structure:



...it still looks acceptable when viewed from an angel:



...or even from up-close, about 6" here (the apparent curve in the roof is imparted by the camera's lense):



Some of these, with the photograph of the prototype taken at a right angle, would withstand scrutiny almost at the front of the layout, in my opinion. If you added three dimensional details: for instance, the loading dock in the last photo, many viewers would likely see it as a fully-modelled structure.

Wayne