It says they are made from plaster which I suppose is why it is inexpensive. I hope it ships well without breaking. According to the website these products are also available at several hobby shops around Quebec, so it looks to be an established business.
Those buildings look pretty basic. You can make them yourself and they would cost very little. It's very easy to make a mould with plastic sheet and square tubing for thickness. With a little planning you can make most basic shapes you might want, and the rest(brick shapes)you can easily scribe in the plaster. Try it.. you'll be surprised at what you can achieve with plaster.
I know I can make these items myself but I never seem to get around to it. I also don't think I would be very successful trying to scribe stones and bricks. I don't mind helping a small company as it might encourage them to do more, and more complicated accessories. It is a Canadian company so the shipping charges won't be too high for me. Besides, I would probably spend just as much money running around buying the materials. This way, all I need are some Grandt Line doors and window frames to customize the buildings
I'm not really into dioramas anymore, but I can tell a serious supplier when I see one.
Jean-Francois has made a solid effort to support all the major scales, and he plunks
1/48 right in the middle of it all.
It appears obvious, that he has made a name for ProduitsMP with the railway fans, and this got him into the local Hobby Shops.
Some of his most interesting photos show armour (1/35 & 1/48) so he is obviously
reaching out to us. I am one for "scratch-building" everything I can, but in this
case I think that plaster fills the bill rather nicely, and the railway overpasses show
it at its best. Hey, plaster will "crumble", so you can even get realistic breakage
wherever you need it.
He deserves our support... especially from Canucks.
George Bradford
AFV NEWS
This message has been edited by George_Bradford from IP address 67.70.204.140 on Feb 8, 2008 3:51 PM
George, these are nicely done, and for those who don't want to make their own buildings and architectural accessories, they are not badly priced either. The fact that they are plaster is not a problem if they arrive intact, and my experience is that properly packed plaster items are not in any danger of breaking in shipment. The stonework in the wrecked farmhouse is beautiful. Note too that it is really easy with plaster to "shoot 'em up" and pock mark the heck out of the buildings to simulate a hard fought street scene. Two thumbs up.....
No one was having a go at you. Most of us use plasticard and different putties to sculpt detail, so making your own scenery is no biggie. I think we are all still at a stage where the 1:48 is still a bit young, so when new producers step in there is a desire to see them succeed, and therefore produce more stuff for us to get our grubby little hands on.
Pretty much all the folks on this site are friendly and helpful, from Bruce Culver who is devoting his time and resources to some of the newer producers, to Lu Rodriguez, who made the effort to help me out via email with my armoured jeep conversion, made with plasticard (and which I will paint some day soon, Lu, and post pictures)
Happily for us the 1:48 forums are still nice places to hang out, unlike some of the 1:35 and 1:72 forums which can get bitchy as hell......
Agree with Matt. No worries here. I like your suggestion. But if I found myself without the time or ambition to do myself and can get some of these to spead the process. I can also see using your suggestion to add on to these buildings and personize them.
I actually saw this on ebay and tracked down the website. I love it when more 1/48 product come available and wanted to let people know if they ever had the need.
Yes, my response was not in anyway meant to be contnetious, but rather a commentary on my lack of skills in constucting a realistic European brick/stone building. For some reason, integrating the large corner stones with the walls lies beyond my patience. (insert smiley face emoticon here)
Hisham, your comments were perfectly valid for a lot of people, but having carved buildings in the distant past, I can tell you that making a nice stone farmhouse like the MP one is time consuming. This is one of those areas where experience is pretty easy to come by, and in the future, I'm doing an article for Garfield on the simple methods I've used and seen others use to make buildings and other architectural features for dioramas. I hope to have a "stable" of buildings I can use to create temporary dioramas for photography, then dismantle, and reuse the buildings for another scene. Thanks for writing.....
