North Sandalwood Special Animal Control Van

Papercraft model prototype for John Beattie's "Good Hostesses" adventure for Savage Worlds RPG (Beautiful Brains Books and Games -- [link]). I made up the logo as per Beattie's specification -- it's left ambiguous whether those are three dogs crammed together in the logo, or whether it's a *three-headed dog*.

The premise of Beattie's adventure setting is that the heroes are newly-hired animal control recruits for the North Sandalwood office (located in a rural area in a vaguely-hinted area that might or might not be in upstate New York). This region has more than its fair share of rare creatures and escaped "exotic pets," and thus the North Sandalwood office has experience dealing with cryptozoological oddities. It's a bit of an offbeat, tongue-in-cheek setting.

Anyway, in addition to making figure flats of the pre-generated heroes and some NPCs for the first sample adventure, I made a paper model for the animal control van, plus (since I had some space left on the sheet) some animal-control cages. The adventure itself really doesn't involve any driving around or such, but I figure this is a prop that might see repeated use if John Beattie turns this adventure into a series or a campaign.

The model was made in Photoshop. I based the van design on a composite of different van models, as I didn't want it to be recognizable as any one particular brand, AND I had to get it to conform to a mostly boxy model shape. (The idea here is for easy assembly so the GM can quickly put these things together, and if it gets damaged or lost, it's not much of a big deal to just print and assemble another one. We're not talking exquisite papercraft here -- just a game prop.) As with my other more recent vehicle models, the PDF has layer options so the logo can be left off for a plain white van, or "distress" details can be added -- or a few more windows on the side in place of that logo.

This particular one was printed without the "distress" layer, and at 1:48 scale. The background scenery is from a "Toy Story" scrap yard play set that I've been repainting and modifying to use as tabletop gaming terrain, despite the scale issues.