(Pics) Buildings for 1/43 and other scales.

These are great !  I particularly like the gas stations, general stores and larger car lots.

Department 56 does a nice job and is close enough in scale to look really good. Click here. 

Mike, thanks for information. I was not familiar with this.

You are welcome ! John's suggestion is also a good one and I have used inexpensive ceramic buildings and items from home improvement stores to make backgrounds. Forced perspective can also be used to get more out of an item as well as aquarium scenery from a pet store.

@mikedetorrice 

Good suggestions and nice pictures.

I will add a few items to this post and the replies.  You may have seen some of these photos or similar ones, but they are applicable here.

The first shows a Conquest 1/43 scale 1956 Desoto leaving town.  The town is part of my 1/64 scale train layout, but if the 1/43 scale car is positioned far enough from the buildings, the buildings are suitable backdrop.

 For those interested, you can try designing something with LEGOs.  Here is my Sinclair gas station, which I have shown in previous photos. The operating garage doors are a perfect size for 1/43 scale cars.

You can also use photographs. I did not have any with cars, but here is an example using a photo of an aircraft hangar with a 1/48 scale airplane.

Posted by: @mikedetorrice

Here is a very old link that still seems to work showing several pages that display color-printed buildings done on heavy paper and card stock and then assembled. Years ago I made a couple and they looked very good.

https://evandesigns.com/pages/customer-pictures-of-model-builder-buildings-gallery-1

https://evandesigns.com/pages/customer-pictures-of-model-builder-buildings-gallery-1

This is interesting.  Does one buy the preprinted sheets for assembly or does the site send PDFs of the various sides for the buyer to print on card stock?   For the one that was mentioned in an MAR article recently, the maker sends a number of PDFs out which one can print on card stock or have printed by a place like a UPS store.

I think there are cases where, depended on the paper stock model, one could do either. There was usually examples offered where one could print out a building on your own color printer and see how it would work. Prints could be sized for different scales, but obviously 1/43, "O-Gauge" and1/64 scale, "N-Gauge" were popular and they sold pre-printed colored sheets and also software to do one's own prints.

Technically, one can use photographs and use those behind a model, which can give the impression of a 3D scene. 

Here, a photograph is used in combination with the model and initially using an "asphalt" looking base which is photographically added to in order to give the impression of the replica being "in" the image.

Nice.  Outstanding Photoshop work!

Thanks ! Even something as simple and straight forward as "mountains" cut out of heavy black paper can work ok for photographs and even some displays, like this 1963 Chevrolet in front of paper mountains.

I started playing around with AI to generate backgrounds. Last summer I needed a Cadillac on the beach for a 4th of July sale ad, so I took the photo I did of a 1:18 Mitica '62, told AI I needed fireworks on the beach, and it generated a bunch of variations that I composited into one background. Then I added lighting and reflections to the Caddy and BOOM...Caddy on the beach!

That looks great ! It really enhances the Cadillac here.

I'm constantly amazed at the photographic skills of my fellow posters.