Building Urban Environments using various scale structures

@Paul Kallus

Paul:

I think the term that you seek is forced perspective, using smaller scale objects further back in the layout to give an increased sense of distance from the viewer. In the photo below, our Chrysler building and Empire State building are made from 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzles and are probably about N or Z scale. They are positioned about 5 feet from the front of the city section of this portion of the layout. Though they are greatly out of scale with the Department 56 city buildings, they appear to be a greater distance away giving the scene more depth.

I hope this helps.

Roger-that, Randy. You have a nice "forced perspective" layout going.

fwiw: TW Design has an Empire State Building at 42" high. The price is out of my league, however.

I recently watched "The Fountainhead" with Gary Cooper. It's based on a story by Ayn Rand novel. Much of it takes place in NYC and the backgrounds, likely painted or a collage of photographs, was outstanding. I believe this is the key to making a forced perspective background for my application. Hats off to those artists who hand crafted those old movie backgrounds. I for one appreciate that level of work more so than computer generated backgrounds.