Model Making: Habitation Dome, Sci-fi table-top scenery (Part 1)!

I started a project to make a centre piece for a retro sci-fi wargame sometime early last years. The project was inspired by a plastic domed light fitting that I had had lying around for several years and not really know what to do with.

The project has stalled somewhat at the moment, as I work on other things, but I have recently been working up a few more scenic items for the sci-fi game and so I will probably get around to finishing it off sometime very soon!

As I built the model I photographed the whole process and so here is a run through of the construction.

Cut two 18"x 18" squares of 1" polystyrene which will make up the base of the piece. This is quite a good size for me as I have a series of base boards that are either 18x18 or 18x36, so this will fit in nicely with those.
I have also knocked up a simple plan, just to give myself an idea on how to proceed. The ground floor will be set into the top layer of foam, giving an extra inch of depth for headroom within the dome.
There is a central lift shaft which also supports the first floor control room.

 
2 sheets of 1" styrofoam, cut 18"x18". The top sheet is marked out with the position of the dome the site of the entry ramp.

This is the base ring for the light fitting.

This is the dome in place.

Now I have to cut the ground floor out of the top sheet of foam and also cut the sloped entry ramp!
I just cut out the top layer of foam using a large hot wire cutter. I set the wire at about a 10 degree angle (just to make it a little more interesting than vertical).

 
I also cut the entry ramp, which was a little trickier due to the compound angles. So after cutting it I found I had to sand it quite a bit to get it level.

 
I have now glued the 2 layers of foam together and also glued in the entry ramp. I have used quick drying filler to fill the gaps and left the model to dry overnight.

 
Then I cut a 80mm diameter postal tube to use as the central lift shaft. Also, using 6mm MDF, I have cut the interior dividing walls. Due to time constraints and also some aesthetic concerns, I have abandoned the central ring corridor.
My projects always tend to evolve as I move them into 3D!

The black rectangle in the lower right of the photo is going to be a freight lift door set into the ground beside the dome, designed to suggest that there are more floors below ground.

 
This is the upper floor, cut slightly smaller than the outer ring of the building so that the roof dome will locate into the ring. Again 80mm postal tube used for the lift shaft.

Dome in place, checking the fit of the inner floors and postal tubes.

Then I cut the connecting doorways between each of the rooms. Normally on a wargaming model I would simply add door frames onto the wall and paint the wall as the door. But for this project I felt it would be nice to use some slightly thinner material for the doors, adding to the realism. I may also model one or two of the doors in the open position.

Here I am gluing the doors to the inside of the lift shaft. I used some of the same tube to make the doors with. Fortunately the difference in the curve was not enough to cause any problems.

I have been spreading flexible filler on the interior floor polystyrene, in an attempt to disguise the polystyrene beading. A slow process of fill, dry, sand, repeat!

I used a smaller diameter tube for the actual lift cabin. I thin the size will be deceptive, once the only way to see it is through the open doors!

The open atrium area is now cut, also the cream coloured object is part of a yogurt pot that is going to be my main computer bank (very retro).
Added doors to the doorways, glued the main walls in place and added a coat of gray paint.

Here you can see the open lift doors and open door on the lower deck.

I added the dividing wall on the upper deck. This will divide the control roof from Hydroponics.

The gray is darker than I would like. I will probably repaint a good bit lighter. Here you can also see the central lift shaft. I have placed a cone of card into it, and hopefully with some concentric rings and tapering lines painted onto the cone it will give an illusion of a deep shaft.

Looking straight down the shaft!

 
Close up of the open door on the lower deck. The walls are made of 6mm MDF, the doors from 2mm MDF.

At the moment I am working on strengthening the polystyrene sheets, mounting a card edge to it to match my terrain boards and covering it with papier mache for strength.

Card re-enforcements for the edges of the polystyrene:-

Papier-mâché used to cover the polystyrene, strengthen the whole board and hide the polystyrene's "bobbly" texture:-

Adding more paper:-

That is about where I have gotten to at the moment. I am slowly working on the main entry ramp and door at the moment. 

Also I have decided that even though the interior is purely 28mm scale I will keep any obvious scale items off of the outside, so that I can use it for my 15mm sci-fi games as well.

Part 2 of this post will hopefully come along sometime in the next month or two.

Model Making: Laser Cut Mobile Fort

Taking my inspiration from the Klendathu base in the movie Starship Troopers, I evolved the ideas I had developed in my the Gantry system to create a temporary military base.

As you can see from the photos, the watch towers are based on a similar design to that used as the look-out post in the gantry system. In fact the whole wall system is based on a scaled up version of the look-out post.

As such the work to develop the walls was very simple. It got more interesting when I moved on to designing the door. I decided I would make it a movable door so that a player could have  it open, closed or indeed open and close it during a game (as the patrol makes a dash for the door while the horde of bugs advances on the fort).

The door frame is build up of three layers, the outside, the inside and a spacer layer between. The doors have simple runner attachments at the top that sits over the inside wall. So that the door always closes in the correct position I have included a small stop in the middle at the top of the inside wall, which stops the doors passing the halfway mark.

Most of the fort is built in 3mm MDF, however, the look-out posts on top of the watch towers, the wall walkways and the stairs are 2mm MDF and the spacer in the door wall is 4mm (to allow the door to be painted without jamming).

 

Just as a little extra, a friend of mine is working on a 28mm scale Ork Gargant and asked me to knock up a circular saw for him, this was the result:-

 

Note: The minis in these photos are the the 28mm figures I sculpted for Defiance: Vital Ground!

Model Making: Laser Cut 28mm Gantry System

After my first attempts at creating wargames scenery and buildings with the laser cutter, I have evolved several new projects to develop and take laser cut wargaming buildings further.

This one started off simply as a staircase and grew into a whole 28mm gantry system, that I plan on using in everything from steampunk and pulp games, through modern skirmishes and on to science fiction gaming.

At the planning stage I decided I wanted a modular system that I could expand as and when I needed too…

After roughly sorting out the staircase, I decided I needed something for the staircase to reach up to so I started to work on the gantry platforms and the support  pylons.

 

These designs are the final ones and had to go through several different versions until I was happy with them. This involved modifying the fittings at either end of the platforms, try several grid mesh designs and also playing around with the scaling to get the width correct and the railing height looking right.

The photo below is one of the earlier versions that ended up looking a little under scale for the 28mm figure  (although a friend has pointed out that it looks pretty good for the  15mm sci-fi campaign that we are planning).

When planning a project like this it is vital that you decide on the material you are going to use. I decide to go with 2mm MDF, as it gives a nice crisp finish, is very light and fairly strong once put together. Once I had chosen the material I could start developing the various joins. You have to be very careful once you start to create the various parts as, if you want to rescale anything you have to make sure that the joints still suit the material thickness (i.e. 2mm in this case). So if I decided to do a 15mm version or indeed a 54mm version, it would not be as straight forward a simply resizing the designs to suit. All of the joints need to be rescaled individually!

 

Once I had the basic platforms and pylons, it was time to add some variation, so I designed the octagonal platform, the cross junction and the curved platform.

You can see one of the alternative mesh designs on the octagonal platform. The curved platform was developed both as a way of turning corners and also when combined with other curve sections to produce a ring.

Why did I want a ring, well I love the Pulp genre and it is ideal for rocket platforms or other diabolical bases set up by evil masterminds!

 

Now if you need to get to a higher level, having a double height pylon becomes necessary. I wanted the design for this to follow the design of the standard pylons, although with the need to go around the lower level platform as well as supporting the upper level there were design compromises and several versions before I was happy with this one…

I haven’t had a chance to cut enough of the double height pylons to create a good example but here are a couple of photos that show off the possibilities:-

On the top of the left photo there you can see the lookout platform, this seemed like a logical development for wargaming uses.

Finally, as an after thought (after someone suggested offshore platforms), I also came up with an alternate pylon design.

Once I had cut enough to really start playing around I was really pleased as the possibilities seem endless.

I am still coming up with ideas on how to expand this set with new components, and also looking at ways to use the bits I already have.

The lookout platform has now developed in to a full mobile fort, which will be the subject of my next post…