Discussion > What's on the Discs?
Well Gian, I know that you are fairly new to our site and I will apologize again for my poor answer, just as I have many times before. We have been trying, apparently not hard enough, to get a comprehensive page of photos of all of the kits available. You would think that in the years that we have been around, we would make it a higher priority. The problem is that I am the one who builds the kits in preparation for photographing. That's not to say that you are getting untested kits that haven't been built. They all have, but very often they are built when they are still in the untextured, wire frame mode and not suitable for presentation. It is usually months (years) till I get the time to actually fully build a particular kit. Example: AKRON steel has been available for years, yet I have just recently (last month) finished a partial build of the building in O scale with enough detail to be presentable. That's my excuse and again I apologize for it, but this is a very small company and time and talent are what they are. There are also website constraints that we have to deal with. That's not to say that we are not trying to come up with good ways to present the kits. If you go the the "BUY DISCS" page and then the O scale area and then down to the Brick & Mortar disc, you will see how we will probably be presenting pix of what is on a disc. But to try and help you now, there are two paths that you can take. The first is to go back and look at all the BLOG pages. Most (not all) of our kits have been shown at one time or another. Some are customer builds or kit-bashed versions. The second is to let me know specifically what you want to see and I will do what I can to send you some pix. So far, these methods have worked remarkably well and that is, unfortunately, one of the excuses I use for my procrastination.
Dave
Dave
March 30, 2012 |
Dave Miecznikowski
Dave Miecznikowski
Thanks so much for the reply! Your info is much appreciated.
March 30, 2012 |
Gian
Gian
I've got the Evan Designs Model Builder Software, and some great out of print books on model making, but the May 2012 Model Railroader (p. 33) sent me to your site. I'm looking at 20 feet of small city components, and the cost/benefit (not to mention weight) for non-traffic structures is enormous compared to real railroad issues. You seem to have great solutions, but I model in HO and cannot figure out your DVD offerings.
Some DVDs seem to overlap.
While your downloads are very reasonably priced, and the "tips" are terrific, I can't find what I would call "coherency" in the models, E.g. "how does this model fit with that one"?
I've just downloaded your "freebie" and will try it. I live in western WA state, and humidity is a nightmare, so the test should be interesting. Still, I suspect Chicago has even worse extremes.
Some DVDs seem to overlap.
While your downloads are very reasonably priced, and the "tips" are terrific, I can't find what I would call "coherency" in the models, E.g. "how does this model fit with that one"?
I've just downloaded your "freebie" and will try it. I live in western WA state, and humidity is a nightmare, so the test should be interesting. Still, I suspect Chicago has even worse extremes.
April 1, 2012 |
David
David
David thanks for taking a look and trying our kits. I think you will find that Humidity isn't a problem when the kits are sealed with dulling spray. You bring up lots of interesting points and I'll try to give some insight into our methods. Overlap for instance. right now there isn't much but since some kits are available as downloads and some are on disk but not all, it's very possible to find a kit on a disk that you might have already purchased. Additionally we will occasionally include the same building in two collections such as "Plant#2" which is on the "brick buildings" disk and "first street". In this instance we added it to the first street disk just because we felt it fit the collection. We are in the habit of over loading the collections. We feel that each disk is such a good value that we consider and overlap a bonus. We could have left it off the disk and it would still be worth the price but it fit so I put it on. Another example is one of our latest disks (available on the web page soon)
the "More wood buildings" collection. This is a budget $20 disk. It has "McElders on it which is also on the original "Wood industrial buildings" disk. It also contains two brand new and exceptional kits, the "Music store" and "Kirks books" plus extras. Just the 2 new kits are easily worth $20 bucks but McElders is a cool kit that has been kind of ignored. It fit in with the style of the collection and I also did some updated work on it, offering it with and without graphics and some color changes. Including it puts the disks value way over the $20 mark. That's pretty typical of how we decide what to include. It's always aimed at good value.
The coherency issue is interesting. originally our kits were mostly midwest urban. We purposely stayed away from the old west style because we had a competitor who had staked out that area and was doing a good job. that was Paper creek (now defunct). they made a good quality cardstock kit. As we became more experienced we found that eastern style buildings were some of the most popular so we spent the next year expending our designs in that direction. With the passing of Paper Creek we also started adding western style buildings. With 13 disks now available we are pushing close to 100 kits, Something for everyone and we are not stopping, as a matter of fact we are entering non railroad areas with gamer supplies, lighthouses and windmills aimed at the crafter crowd and even steampunk airships.
Makes it sound like we're some big company but it's just me and my brother trying to get it all done part time. So the web site is never up to date, we don't have pictures of everything. We test build everything, sometimes with the help of our good friends here on the list.
Spend some time getting to know us and I think you will have fun. We're a little weird and we like it that way.
the "More wood buildings" collection. This is a budget $20 disk. It has "McElders on it which is also on the original "Wood industrial buildings" disk. It also contains two brand new and exceptional kits, the "Music store" and "Kirks books" plus extras. Just the 2 new kits are easily worth $20 bucks but McElders is a cool kit that has been kind of ignored. It fit in with the style of the collection and I also did some updated work on it, offering it with and without graphics and some color changes. Including it puts the disks value way over the $20 mark. That's pretty typical of how we decide what to include. It's always aimed at good value.
The coherency issue is interesting. originally our kits were mostly midwest urban. We purposely stayed away from the old west style because we had a competitor who had staked out that area and was doing a good job. that was Paper creek (now defunct). they made a good quality cardstock kit. As we became more experienced we found that eastern style buildings were some of the most popular so we spent the next year expending our designs in that direction. With the passing of Paper Creek we also started adding western style buildings. With 13 disks now available we are pushing close to 100 kits, Something for everyone and we are not stopping, as a matter of fact we are entering non railroad areas with gamer supplies, lighthouses and windmills aimed at the crafter crowd and even steampunk airships.
Makes it sound like we're some big company but it's just me and my brother trying to get it all done part time. So the web site is never up to date, we don't have pictures of everything. We test build everything, sometimes with the help of our good friends here on the list.
Spend some time getting to know us and I think you will have fun. We're a little weird and we like it that way.
April 1, 2012 |
Dave
Dave
I just buy all the disks. They are worth the price even if i'm not interested in everything on the disk. I compare what is on the disks with the downloads. I purchase any download that interest me and is also not on one of the disks.
April 1, 2012 |
Don Schmitt
Don Schmitt
Thanks Don,
At some future date we want to have everything as a download but the plain truth is, we're just not that good at the internet. If it's been a month or so between kits we might forget a few details about how we did it last time. I shouldn't say we brother Dave does it all. web HTML terrifies me.
At some future date we want to have everything as a download but the plain truth is, we're just not that good at the internet. If it's been a month or so between kits we might forget a few details about how we did it last time. I shouldn't say we brother Dave does it all. web HTML terrifies me.
April 2, 2012 |
Dave
Dave
As long as we're OT a little, I would love to see an old-time New England grist mill with a wheel and everything... That would be extremely cool! And also, as easy as it would be to make one from textures alone (I even have a feeble attempt), maybe a simple, cliche, red barn...
Either way, I'm sure you all have hundreds of items on your to-do list!!!!
Either way, I'm sure you all have hundreds of items on your to-do list!!!!
April 4, 2012 |
Gian
Gian
I see that your DVD pages list the models on each disc by name, but what is the best way to see what the models look like? Is there a spot where I can see photos of what is included on the DVDs?
Thanks again for creating such cool models!
Best,
G