A Good Day for Modeling

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - With the exception that I currently have little scraps of foam core all over my floor (which my vacuum is too wimpy to pick up), today has been a great day for making my model. I had previously gotten a large sheet of green felt for the grass, and I quickly realized that maybe a deep mossy-green might be the wrong color. So today, I went down to the local puzzle and model train shop, which has been a very helpful resource so far (lakecityhobbies.com). There I was introduced to the magic that is Ready Grass's Vinyl Mats. For those of you who do not know what this is, it a sheet of vinyl (which has the texture of poster board, but does not tear by accident) with model grass already glued to it. You just roll it out and glue it down. With the felt, I was worried that I would have to put the road way on top of the felt, which would give it a strangely raised effect, but with Ready Grass you can easily scrape away excess grass to either paint on a road or glue one onto a flat surface. The company recommends using a plastic putty knife, but I will probably use something thinner, like a spoon. And the BEST part of Ready Grass, is that if you heat up the vinyl with a heat gun (or hopefully a hair-dryer), it stretches and I can get the grass to fit snugly over the topography I am currently working on. I'm very excited. Can you tell?

Speaking of the topography, it is officially half way done (see above photo). I think that it is coming out nicely, but I still cannot wait until I can work on something a bit smaller. Trying to draw even grids with a 40 inch straight edge is not as much fun as it sounds.

I had been a bit bummed that the thinnest dowels I could locate at hardware stores and the internet have been 1/16" of an inch in diameter. I wanted something to make posts out of, but 1/16" is 5 feet in my scale. At the model store (which has earned a lot of cool points today), I discovered that they have white plastic rods and tubes .015" in diameter (about 18 inches in my model, which may be perfect). They also have ultra-thin plastic cards with grooves engraved into them at what would be the equivalent of 2 feet apart (which will be perfect for making crude stairs or a white picket fence). I felt so hopeful about this project while leaving Lake City Hobbies.

I am currently looking for a summer job. As nice as it would be to get a job near my parents' house so I could have free room and food, it would be impossible for me to ship whatever progress I have and work on it without being on site. Keep in mind that - with the exception of the topographic map I got from city hall - my entire model will be based on my personal observations and whatever satellite imagery Google Earth and MSN maps has to offer. Thus, I am actively looking for a summer job in Geneva. I have talked with Architect Dan Long, who has an office here. He said an internship might work out, but I should come back when the summer gets closer.

Today, though, I was walking home from model shop with a roll of grass under my arm, when I passed an office building with several different architectural renderings of different buildings on display near their entrance. I timidly went inside, feeling bad that I had not called in advance to make an appointment or to make sure that they are, in fact, an architectural office. I heard a man's voice on my right that said, "You're in the right place, Jason." It was Eric Ameigh, the city planner who commissioned this project in the first place. He was there for another project, but he introduced me to the people who work there. By "there," I mean a new branch of an existing architecture firm just south of Rochester. The woman I spoke with said that her company and the Dan Long were considering getting one intern to share between them, a job which I am a good candidate for. That was exciting.

This week, after I do my homework, I am going to finish the topography. I am determined!

Getting started with a good foundation

Originally, I had planned to model only my school's campus. I mentioned to my architecture studio professor my intentions to make this model, and she said that the city planner had mentioned to her that he was interested in the same thing, but of the downtown area.

So I walked over to City Hall, where the city planner works, and had a nice talk with him. This was, of course, many months ago in mid October, which is why I am telling this story so quickly. I asked him where he saw this project going and we discussed the boundries and scales. I was big on making the downtown area and campus because they're interesting to see. He really wanted to see the residential districts so that the people looking at the model might be able to find their house on it (which would be cool, I must admit). We compromised on the dimensions and scale previously discussed. I still can't believe how big and detailed this model is going to be.

I wanted to start my model on the right foot, meaning that the model's foundation would be an accurate depiction of the topography of Geneva. Upstairs in City Hall, I photocopied their topographical maps, and later at home I enlarged them and drew a grid on them.

My next step was to find a material to carve the foundation into. The topo map has lines representing every 10 feet, so the scale calls for a material 1/8" thick. The material had to be in a sheet, be easy to cut, and soft enough to "plant" trees and buildings into later. I looked at rolls of cork and thin pieces of styrophome, but I decided on foam core, despite how easy it is to damage it. Each sheet is 32"x40," so 4 of them will be the size of the finished model. I drew out a grid on all of them so that I could convert the topographical map accurately onto the foam core. Of course, it does me no good to have a picture of the topography. If you draw out the topographical map twice and cut out all of the even lines on one piece of foam core and all of the odd lines on the other, you can stack and glue them together to create what I expect will look like stairs on both the top and bottom of the model using relitively few materials.

I'm still in the process of drawing the topographical map onto the foam core, so I'll let you, know how it works out. Also, I just realized while trying to photograph 4 pieces of foam core to show you the size of the prospective model, that there is no spot in my room large enough to lay out all 4 pieces next to each other. Not even on the wall. As you can see in the picture, there is a fire sprinkler in the way. This means that if I live in this room over the summer and again next year, I'll never see the full model pieced together until it's done unless I find another place to work on it. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it!

Introduction

I'm making a model of Geneva, NY. For those of you unfamiliar with the small cities of up-state New York, Geneva is situated perfectly between Rochester and Syracuse. It has 14,000 people, is on the third deepest lake in the country, and is home to my school... Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

The model is being made for several very different reasons: it might count as an independent study for my architecture major or it might be part of an honors project; I really like the Tim Burton movies from the early 90s where the opening sequences always "flew" around a scale model of the set; and who doesn't like a good challenge?

Speaking of challenges, the model is 64"x72" (1.63m x 1.83m) which is roughly the size of a Queen-sized mattress), and covers about 1 square mile (about 2.6 square kilometers). This makes the scale 1": 80' or 1:960. Why that scale? Materials tend to come in multiples of 1/8" thicknesses, which is multiples of 10'. I thought that that scale would be easy to work with. Apparently, nobody else agrees. I've looked for materials designed for this scale, and nobody seems to work this small unless they're modeling battleships. This means for much of this project, I'm going to have to improvise a lot. Consider this scale for a second. 1:960 means that a 4 story building would be half an inch tall, or the thickness of your finger.

Did I mention that I have next to no experience? I made a model of an Escher drawing once in high school, but it was pretty sloppy (see above). It was put together with hot glue, and the roof is made from cardboard cut out with safety scissors because both of them were convenient. The Geneva Model is going to be on display in City Hall (which I'll discuss in my next blog). I need to make it right.

I must be crazy. Scratch that, I know I'm crazy.