# Not sure this is where to Post



## 41-willys (Jan 7, 2000)

I was able 400 1/87th standing people for 20 bucks. The problem is How to make most of them sitting people. Let's here your ideas because you guys are awesome at comming up great ideas:wave:


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

Find 399 1/87th chairs and play a game of musical chairs?

Paint a few up like mob goons and give them toothpicks to break some kneecaps?

Offer them treats?


:jest:


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## 41-willys (Jan 7, 2000)

:lol:Not quite what I was looking for but thanks (lmao)


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## Tsooko (Oct 15, 2009)

SwamperGene said:


> Find 399 1/87th chairs and play a game of musical chairs?
> 
> Paint a few up like mob goons and give them toothpicks to break some kneecaps?
> 
> ...


Too funny

If they are plastic could you boil them till they are soft then bend them?

Cheers Ted


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## coach61 (Sep 6, 2004)

stick em in the grandstands..


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## slotcarman12078 (Oct 3, 2008)

Buy a small bunch of sitting people. Place them on the front rows of the stands. Then cut the standing people off just below the belt line and glue them in place. The front row or 2 might hide the cut offs... Maybe?


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## Illinislotfan (Mar 8, 2009)

Cut em at waist, goop em like sitting, and paint em?


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## Hilltop Raceway (Feb 12, 2006)

Most races I'ver ever been to, people stand up the whole time anyways. Just stand em up in the stands...RM


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## SwamperGene (Dec 1, 2003)

Just leave 'em standing in the stands, then crash a lot.


...always gets people on their feet. :freak:


Buy 400 sitting people, cut 'em all in the middle, then glue the standing tops to the sitting bottoms. :thumbsup:


(obviously I don't have a clue)


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## roadrner (Jul 21, 1999)

Doesn't matter to me which way you do it, just make sure you post the pix before and after. This ought to be fun.  

:thumbsup::thumbsup: rr


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

*ahhahahahahahahhaah*



SwamperGene said:


> Find 399 1/87th chairs and play a game of musical chairs?
> 
> Paint a few up like mob goons and give them toothpicks to break some kneecaps?
> 
> ...


:lol::lol::lol::lol: hahahahahahahahaah man that is Funny....ahahahahahaahah

Bob...still laughing...zilla


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

Line them up in front of the HO-scale Porta-cans, then buy some of these.
And these.
And these, if the guy really means "Standard Flat Rate Shipping" and he'll ship a pile of packs for $3.
Or even these. They're small, but put them in a roofed grandstand, and they will make it look bigger, and probably nobody will notice that they're too small, after you put the screen safety mesh in front, with maybe a couple of bigger folks in the front rows. Or scatter them among the others for size variety and reduced cost. 
Oh yeah, and one of her, just because. :wave:

-- D


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## WaltB (Feb 21, 2010)

Easy, buy some policemen for track security and have them go thru the stands telling them to sit down!
Grab a bunch of sitting people and mix-em up!:thumbsup: Always lots of people standing,walking at the track

Walt


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

Seriously, 41-Willys,

Just standing the figures up in the bleachers is probably the best plan. Place them there, use a little tacky poster putty to hold them upright if necessary, then step back and see how they look to you. Remember, people will be watching the cars, not carefully checking out your grandstands. The 'mass effect' should be fine.

Actually reshaping 400 people would be a lot of finicky work. I tended to get bored at about the third one. You may have more determination.

The easiest way, using flush-cutters like Xurons, is to cut the figure off square just below the crotch level, and glue that piece to the seat, all the way to the front. Try about four or five rows of these, using actual purchased seated figures in the front row. Put the grandstand where it will be on your layout, stand back and see how you like it.

If you're not satisfied, go back and cut the legs just above the knees. Discard the upper thighs, and take the lower legs and glue them to the front of the seat, rising just above seat level in front of the torsos. After you've done a lot of them, go back and touch up the cut plastic color at the knees with paint to match the pants or dress.

The common commercial bleachers come all the way down to the ground. Adding a front wall with ad logos just ahead of the stand, can sometimes let you use legless figures even on the front row. You may want to add a back wall to those bleachers that have an open area under the benches so light from behind won't make it so obvious that the spectators are legless.

If you're just completely driven to fully reshape the figures, I'd _*guess*_ the best tool is the hot-knife. A hot knife is like an X-acto collet and blade on the end of a low-power soldering iron. It partly cuts, partly melts the plastic. (You can make a workable substitute to test the technique, by wrapping an X-acto or similar craft knife just above the collet with cloth tape to protect your fingers from the heat, then repeatedly heat the blade with a flame or a stove coil) You can try using the hot blade to cut partly through the figure below the waist from the back, then bending the figure forward while the area in front of the cut is still flexible from being hot. Then attack the knees from the back, cutting partially and bending the lower legs back while the hot blade is still melting that area.

I have not used the hot knife, but I have tried to make standing figures into sitting ones by holding the figures in thin nosed pliers, then cutting behind the knees and behind or in front of the crotch area with a thin steel blade at low speed in a Dremel. It's tough because the plastic is still brittle, even when thinned, and breaks when you bend it, even if you soften up the bend with liquid plastic cement. Then you're stuck with gluing together itsy-teeny pieces, using tweezers. You can eat up a lot of your life just doing the 75-100 figures that one set of bleachers takes.

A lot of what you can get away with, visually, depends on what angle and distance the bleachers will be seen at. If they are on the far side of the track and seen mostly from the front and somewhat above, you usually don't need lower legs on the people at all, especially if they are more than about a foot and a half away. If they are seen from directly above, or above and behind,
then you'll need legs or at least knees. Adding a roof to bleachers really increases what you can fudge because it restricts most of the figures to being seen from low angles where the view of the figures' legs is blocked by the figures in the row in front, and because it reduces the light that the rear figures receive. Add a bit of fine mesh to the front as chain-link safety screening, and you can get away with even more. If the figures won't be seen from behind, just paint the fronts of them. 

In roofed grandstands, I've found that I can even use flats in between 3-D figures. I just took one dark-background digital photo of six or eight painted seated figures from the front and printed it off at the right size from my computer several times. Then I cut around the printed figures, leaving a bit of black background. I darkened the cut paper edge with a black marker, and put blocks of three or four flat figures in between blocks of 3-D figures in the seats in the back half of the stand. It worked.

Good luck.

-- D


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

How about just getting your money back?


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## T-jetjim (Sep 12, 2005)

Dslot wrote a pretty thorough set of options. I would think that too much cutting and reshaping will be way too much unappreciated work.

Good luck with it. Let's see pics of the finished results.
Jim


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

NTxSlotCars said:


> How about just getting your money back?


No, wait! 

At $20 for 400, I'd definitely hang onto the standing figures. 400 sounds like an inexhaustible number, but racecourse layouts can soak up figures at an incredible rate and still look underpopulated.

You can stick them (standing) in the stands with weak glue until you get around to buying seated figures to replace them. Then move them out to other areas as they get replaced.

If you decide to fill the stands with new-bought seated figures, you need a number of the standing guys scattered throughout the stands, upright in front of their seats, both for realism and to stretch out the number of the more expensive seated figures. In addition, you need a few more standers/walkers going up the steps to their seats or coming down, standing on the ground in front of the seats and ticking off the first-row sitters, standing up on the top-row seats for a better view (if the stand has a back wall or railing), and walking into or out of the stands. 

Depending on the structures and scenery on your track, you'll also need standing/walking figures in and near the pits, and even on top (if your pits are flat-roofed and railed as a standing spectator area), in or on or hanging around the judges' stand, walking across the infield, lined up for the food vendors or the porta-cans, behind the crash barriers at trackside, at the First Aid tent, loafing beside the emergency vehicles or the winner's circle, manning the corner stations or the press towers, crossing the pedestrian bridges, etc.

To make the preparation of hundreds of figures manageable, do yourself a favor and don't go for painting detail (eyes, lips, belt buckles, etc), except for high-visibility figures in special "scenes" near the table edge that tell a story. If figures are to be positioned where nobody can see their backs or legs, don't waste time and effort painting their backs and legs. Don't go to a lot of effort to individualize many of the figures - a crowd of twenty figures three feet in from the layout edge won't look much different whether it's made of twenty uniquely painted individuals, or 3 each of seven standard figures. 

Don't worry too much about pre-painted colors - those 15 guys in the China-painted fuschia business suits are ghastly when looked at individually, but once they're scattered in rows 3 thru 10 of the grandstand where their legs are hidden by the figures in front of them, they just become somebody in a red shirt, and aren't distracting at all. I'd suggest gluing prepainted figures into the stands first, then looking at them at actual viewing distance, and only repainting the shirts or hair of the two or three which stand out as distracting. If you strap on the magnifocuser goggles and start repainting them before gluing them in, you'll whiz away a lot of time "correcting" stuff that wouldn't have been seen anyway and getting involved in needless detail which is invisible at a distance or not noticeable in a crowd. Now, if part of the fun for you is creating little unique characters, (you know, the bald-headed bruiser in the sleeveless denim jacket, the dapper guy with the moustachios, the kid in the T-shirt with the MG octagon on the front), knock yourself out; it's your hobby (I have those tendencies myself), but try to limit yourself to the foreground figures in the front row seats or front edges of crowds, or you'll just never get finished.

Just a few lessons I learned the hard way. Here are two pics of one of my reduced-depth covered stands made from foamcore board and cardstock (it still lacks the poles which support the safety netting). The first photo shows it as you will see it from up close when you're building it. Here you may notice that the 3D figures only extend three rows back -- the back four or five rows of people, the entry tunnels, and back steps are actually printed on the back wall of the building. The second photo shows it as your visitors and drivers will see it. Click on the thumbnails to see what I mean.





Note the factors that help the illusion: The roof casts a shadow that makes it hard to see the dummied up back rows clearly. The 3-D figures are not orderly rows of similar seated figures, but the eye is distracted from the break between 3-D and 2-D by the chaotic action of standing figures in the rows, at the entrance tunnels, climbing the stairs. The silver mesh from the fabric store representing chain-link safety netting, cuts down on the contrast, making it even more difficult to tell the painted from the printed. The couple in the entry tunnel are framed and draw the eye; it was worth painting on the guy's tie and his coat slung over his shoulder. It would have been a waste of time to do it for some schmuck sitting down in the third row.

-- D


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## 41-willys (Jan 7, 2000)

Thanks guys, I knew I could count on you guys for answers. 

Dslot the 3D to 2D stands look great:thumbsup:


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## tjd241 (Jan 25, 2004)

*Mostly all good suggestions Bill...*

Try some!!... Mix and match what you have for now and maybe keep looking for a deal on the seated ones. It's all about diffusing. Doesn't have to be a one by one dead on figure. Draw the eye to certain key points as Dslot suggests. Provide some filler in between, both foreground and background. It's an overall outcome. I do the same when I decal a car. I don't go for dead on match to any real car. I shoot for "a look" or and "indication" of a certain type of car.

Do yourself a favor though, skip this gal below. Sorry Dslot, but I be danged if she don't look like disgraced former Senator John Edwards. That's just wrong on so many more levels than I can even begin to explain. :lol: nd 



Dslot said:


> Oh yeah, and one of her, just because.


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## rbrunne1 (Sep 22, 2007)

Dslot said:


> Just a few lessons I learned the hard way. Here are two pics of one of my reduced-depth covered stands made from foamcore board and cardstock (it still lacks the poles which support the safety netting). The first photo shows it as you will see it from up close when you're building it. Here you may notice that the 3D figures only extend three rows back -- the back four or five rows of people, the entry tunnels, and back steps are actually printed on the back wall of the building. The second photo shows it as your visitors and drivers will see it. Click on the thumbnails to see what I mean.


D--Your reduced depth grandstand is very cool 

Just the inspiration I was looking for :thumbsup:

Bob B.


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## bobwoodly (Aug 25, 2008)

Doesn't that look like a guy's head on that bikini model?


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

> _Bob sez:_Doesn't that look like a guy's head on that bikini model?


Could be worse - could look like a goat's head.

I'll bet she's got her wet hair tied into a ponytail down her back.

-- D


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## Dslot (Sep 2, 2007)

> _Nuther sez:_ Sorry Dslot, but I be danged if she don't look like disgraced former Senator John Edwards. That's just wrong on so many more levels than I can even begin to explain.


Could be worse - could look like Dick Cheney.


:freak:

-- D


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