Nation- (and City-) Specific Victory City Markers

[CWO Marc]

These are really shaping up nicely!  Great work!

[ossel]

London!

[John Brown]

@ossel:

London!

Wow, that stands out nicely. Well done, my friend. :-D

[CWO Marc]

Impressive!  I could almost believe that it includes an imbedded microchip that plays Big Ben’s chimes every hour!

[Tall Paul]

Ossel & other’s,

––The artwork for these “City Markers” is absolutely GREAT! I am DEFINATELY SOLD on them,…just please make sure we have options for the different levels of plastic available. The one rule that I’ve learned with ordering units from Shapeways is: I ALWAYS order them in the most detailed plastic available. This way they have EXCELLENT detail and aren’t a rough suface.
----Great job on this worthwhile effort!

“Tall Paul”

[ossel]

Paul,
  That’s definitely an option.

Heck, if you wanted to get the Victory City Marker Set “Donald Trump Edition”, you could drop $480 each for 14K gold!  :lol:

[CWO Marc]

@ossel:

Heck, if you wanted to get the Victory City Marker Set “Donald Trump Edition”, you could drop $480 each for 14K gold!Â

To Donald Trump, mere 14K gold is probably the equivalent of the cheap-grade plastic mentioned by TP.

[Atomsk]

These are shap-ways ing up nicely.  :-P

I agree that the hi res plastic is great for detail and smoothness, but these are modeled in a way that I think getting one in something like steel wouldn’t be too bad. (even if it is 3x the cost of plastic) Plus they’d have a nice heft to them which always gives parts a quality feel.

[ossel]

ROME!

[John Brown]

@ossel:

ROME!

Wow, it is amazing on what your doing. Very nice piece! :-D

[John Brown]

Ossel, will these pieces be different colors or just gray?

Thanks,

John

[ossel]

@John:

Ossel, will these pieces be different colors or just gray?

Thanks,

John

Shapeways offers many different options (with different prices as well). Right now it looks like the (plastic) options are:
White
Black
Grey (“Alumide”, so metallic grey)
Blue
Purple
Red
Pink

So, if you’re looking for faction-specific colors, the answer to your question is, no, the options are a bit more limited.

Metals are also an option (at a much higher price) as someone mentioned before.

[John Brown]

@ossel:

@John:

Ossel, will these pieces be different colors or just gray?

Thanks,

John

Shapeways offers many different options (with different prices as well). Right now it looks like the (plastic) options are:
White
Black
Grey (“Alumide”, so metallic grey)
Blue
Purple
Red
Pink

So, if you’re looking for faction-specific colors, the answer to your question is, no, the options are a bit more limited.

Metals are also an option (at a much higher price) as someone mentioned before.

Ok, appreciate that. I didn’t know if they would be sold on HBG’s site as well or not.

John

[ossel]

I offered, but didn’t get any feedback. It might be an option in the future, but for now I’m going to sell them on my own.

[CWO Marc]

@ossel:

ROME!

Magnifico!

Regarding the idea of metals, I briefly considered that brass might be a nice option…but then I remembered that brass needs to be polished periodically or else it tarnishes.

Colour-wise, I think grey plastic would be a good choice.  It’s neutral compared to the national sculpt colours, so it would fit everybody, and it would also parallel the grey generic IC pieces from the early games.

[CWO Marc]

Here’s a fun idea.  If the markers could be produced in translucent white plastic, you could run off a set for jluna1273 whose custom Global 1940 table…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=29890.45

…has its victory cities wired with lights that glow red or green depending on who controls them.  If he placed the translucent white markers over the lights, the markers themselves would light up to show who holds each city, which would be very cool.

[ossel]

NICE. Yeah, there is definitely a translucent option!  :-D

[John Brown]

@CWO:

Here’s a fun idea.  If the markers could be produced in translucent white plastic, you could run off a set for jluna1273 whose custom Global 1940 table…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=29890.45

…has its victory cities wired with lights that glow red or green depending on who controls them.  If he placed the translucent white markers over the lights, the markers themselves would light up to show who holds each city, which would be very cool.

Now that, would be cool! :-D

[CWO Marc]

The wattage of the VC bulbs (he used LEDs, I think) is no doubt very small, but the illuminated markers could probably be photographed in a dramatic way with a camera that has manual exposure control: wait for night-time, light up the markers, turn off all the lights in the room, open the camera shutter, expose the markers for a few seconds to have the glow register nicely, fire off a flash to expose the map board itself, then close the shutter.  It might take a few experimental tries to get it right, but the result would be impressive!

[CWO Marc]

Ossel’s markers are shaping up so spectacularly that I’m thinking it would be a shame for some of the victory cities to end up with markers which are simply molded versions of the A&A roundels (as he mentioned might be the case).  I’ve therefore expanded and refined the suggestions which have already been made, and I’ve found some pictures to illustrate these different concepts.  In some cases I have definite favourites, but in others I couldn’t make up my mind which options I preferred.  Here are the results of my analysis.  Because of the two-pictures-per-post limit, I’ll broken the information into several pieces.  Comments are welcome, and of course Ossel – since this is his project – will ultimately get to decide what options he’ll use for each VC.

The cities which have been completed and posted by Ossel so far are:

Berlin (Brandenburg Gate)

London (Big Ben + Parliament Buildings)

Paris (Eiffel Tower)

Rome (Colosseum)

Washington (Capitol Building + Washington Monument)

The following cities have not been completed yet, but (like the five previous ones) they have iconic and easy-to-recognize structures associated with them:

Moscow
Marker suggestion: Kremlin and/or St. Basil’s Cathedral

Ottawa
Marker suggestion: Parliament Centre Block + Peace Tower

San Francisco
Marker suggestion: San Francisco Bay + Golden Gate Bridge