Underhive Buildings

Here are a couple of old terrain pieces that don't seem to have a home yet.  It's been a long time since I built them so let me try to walk though the process, if I can remember.

The Egg Room

This is a survivor from my original underhive set.  The walls and floor are all metal panels from inside computers; fan covers, power supply cases, etc.  They were arranged in a manner that let them look most like a room and actually hot glued together.  Suprisingly the hot glue has held up all these years!  Cross stitch fabric was glued over some some of the openings, and distressed to allow egress through them during gameplay. 

The alien pods are wooden eggs purchased at a craft store.  They were also glued in place with hot glue.

The entire piece was primed black and painted hunter green.  The structure was drybrushed a few lighter shades of green.  The pods were painted brown and given a green ink wash.  They were then drybrushed a ligher shade of brown.  The slime effect on the pods was achieved simply by stringing hot glue down the eggs. 

Industrial Structure

This piece is a sister piece to the Pumping Station.  This one is also based off of the case from a Battlebots RC car.  All of the techniques used on the first piece were also used here. 

Details were added using wire, straws, N scale railroad tracks, cross stitch fabric, and some numbers off of an old clock.   The biohazard sign was clipped form an industrial supply catalog and glued into place.

Underhive Terrain- Bridges Part 2

Again, all of the bridges are based on a double layer of foamcore; the top layer about 1/2" longer than the bottom. This gives the bridge a little "lip" to place on a platform and helps keep the bridge from sliding around too much. A short description of each type of bridge is below:

The Post Bridge

This short bridge uses the off- cuts of K'nex pieces for posts along the edges. Decking is done in granny grating. Edges are covered in drinking straws. The decking is drybrushed silver. The posts are yellow.

The Heavy Bridge

This bridge has PC hard drive brackets for railings. Drinking straws cover up any other exposed edges. Decking is granny grating. Painted tan, inked brown and drybrushed again.

Normal Bridges

These bridges are simple in construction. The left bridge simply has cross stitch fabric as the base, and thin card glued over the sides and top. Sections were cut from the card on top and it was simply glued over the decking. The bridge on the right also uses the fabric decking. The walls are thin card, the supports matchsticks cut to length and glued into the holes in the fabric. Punched plastic rivets accect the piece. Painting is green and silver, inked chestnut ink and black, then drybrushed.

Underhive Terrain- Bridges Part 1

All of the bridges are based on a double layer of foamcore; the top layer about 1/2" longer than the bottom. This gives the bridge a little "lip" to place on a platform and helps keep the bridge from sliding around too much. A short description of each type of bridge is below:

The Archaic Bridge

Named such because that's what it's called at Terragenesis. I basically copied that bridge. The entire piece is built from foamcore. The rods are bamboo skewers pressed through the foamcore. Strips of card were glued across the large arches and along the sides to cover the foamcore edges. A layer of white glue was spread over the other exposed edges. It covered like crap, like always. Plastic rivets were glued all over the bridge and the decking is cross- stitching fabric.

The bridge was primed black, then painted burnt sienna to give it a completely rusted look. Several brown washes were applied, and when dry orange was drybrushed all over.

The Metal Bridge

This T-shaped bridge was decked with cross- stitching fabric. The low railings are the discarded pieces of the floppy disk bulkheads. Little triangles were cut from plastic card and used as supports for the railings. The edges of the bridge were also covered in floppy disk parts. The entire piece was primed black and drybrushed silver. The whole thing was then inked with GW Chestnut Ink. It was then drybrushed with a bit of brown and burnt sienna.

The Disk Bridge

This bridge is pretty standard contruction. A couple of CD's were glued to the edges with hot glue (thanks N'Sync!) Small plastic jewels were glued to the center. Thin card was used to cover the edges, and plastic rivets were glued into place. Decking is granny grating again. This piece was painted orange, washing in brown, then highlighted again.

Underhive Terrain

This terrain project is a second attempt at usable terrain for Games Workshop's Necromunda game. My first set was large, ugly and completely incompatible with the carboard and plastic stuff put out by GW so it was disassembled and all pictures removed from the website due to a confrontation with a GW lawyer- type thug.
This second project has been designed to be completely compatible with the the GW set. All towers are 3" high to match up with the bulkheads in the GW set. Click pictures for a larger view.

The Platforms
The core of the collection is 15 platforms. They are all based on half of a metal tin AOL sent their junk CDs in for awhile. On top of these a bottle or container of some type (mostly saline and shampoo bottles) were glued to the center. These were measured so the platform plus the bottle were 3" high. Each of these will be stacked on top of each other to create the dizzying underhive.

On each side of the platform a set of holes were drilled 1/4" off each side of the center. A piece of wire was then bent into a "U" shape and run through the holes. The ends of the wire were then turned up to create hooks where ladders and bulkheads could be hung from to allow the set to be as flexible as possible.

On two opposite corners of each platform a 90 degree K'Nex adaptor was glued in place. A set of K'Nex rods were cut to size. These rods will connect the stacked platforms together to stabilize them during gameplay. They also add to the idustrial pile- 'o- crap look of the underhive.

Various pieces from model kits and my bitz box were glued on the tower portions to give them a suitable industrial look. Also, bits of thin card were cut from old VHS video boxes and glued onto the towers. Seed beads were glued on with super glue for rivets. Many of these started falling off right away. The super glue marks kind of looked like rivets so they were left as- is. The rest of the rivets were punched from plastic food container lids with a leather punch.

Ladders and Bulkheads

The ladders for the project were simply HO guage railroad tracks with the rails removed and cut to size. Holes were drilled in each laddersto it could be hung from the platforms.

The Bulkheads are 3.5" floppy disks that were split in half and then glued back together inside out. 1/2 inch was trimmed off the bottom of each one and a couple holes drilled towards the top so they could be hung from the platforms.

The ladders and bulkheads were primed black. The ladders were simply drybrushed silver. The bulkheads were base coated either silver, blue or green, then given various black, brown and burnt sienna washes to dirty them up. The were then drybrushed to bring out what little detail there was.

Technobridge

I picked up this Armorcast piece for a song at a local hobby shop. It is cast in resin and is a very nice piece. There is lots of detail, and cleaning was quite simple. The piece was primed black and then painting began.

I started off by drybrushing the entire piece silver, but seing that is was going to end to way too plain, even after detailing, I decided to do the edges in hunter green. The wooden parts were painted a very dark brown. Areas that were damaged were left silver, and a thin line of black was painted where the silver meets the green to give the effect of chipped paint.

The entire piece was given a wash of a mix of black paint, water and Future Floor Finish.

Once this was dried the silver parts were gently drybrushed silver again. The wood was drybrushed dark grey, then light grey. The green was lightly drybrushed again with Hunter green, then a slighly light shade was applied by mixing white in the base color.

The rust effects were then added. Surface rust was added simply by stippling burnt sienna over areas of the bridge. The rust streaks were done by loading a brush, removing some of the paint, then gently working it down the slope in long strokes. Citadel Blazing Orange was then lightly stippled onto the flat areas of burnt sienne, and streaked the middle of the runs.

Pegasus Hobbies Barbed Wire Review

Today we're going to examine the Pegasus Hobbies Barbed Wire kit.

This product interests me because the box advertises over 29 feet of wire, and it's only $8.99 USD.

Let's open the box and see what we get...

We get three sprues of wire and three sprues of posts.  The wire is very fine, and there is way more sprue here than there is product.  It seems so wasteful, but I suppose that is the limits of the manufacturing process.  They are soft plastic, maybe they can be recycled.

No instructions are included with the kit.  It's been so long since I looked at the box and I don't have it handy; there may be instructions printed on the edges of the box lid.

Here is a bit of the wire with the posts.  The wire is fairly flexable, and  hair dryer, heat gun or a flame would help in warming the wire and allow you to bend it to shape and have it hold.  The post come with hooks on them to attach the wire to.

Here is a close up of the wire.  It is well detailed, and the flash and mold lines are not too bad.  Which is good, because I think this would be near impossible to clean.

I have not had an opportunity to make anything from this wire yet, but to me it seems like this kit is a good deal.  I'm confident that I will be picking up more of them.

Tamiya 1:48 Jerry Can Set Review

This time we will review the Tamiya 1:48 Jerry Can Set.  This is a set that is useful for all kinds of gaming, from WWII up through near future to post apocalyptic, and even sci fi.  This kit retails for $11.00 USD.

The box art shows us getting six barrels, 16 jerry cans, some stowage and a bucket.  Let's see how much we actually get...

I got a bit carried away when I purchased this kit, and began assembling the barrels right away.  We do get two sprues of accessories and an instruction sheet.  This very well could have come with an ad for other 1:48 Tamiya kits, but if it did I have already tossed it out.

Here is a close up of one of the sprues.  Though not pictured correctly, each sprue comes with enough parts to make six barrels; three American and three German.  There are enough parts to build 16 jerry cans and 20 pieces of vehicle stowage.

The instructions are pretty straight forward, giving general info on the front and assembly instructions on the back.  Note that there is a big difference between the American and German barrel.  I didn't pay attention to what I was doing and assembled them some incorrectly.  The lids are not interchangable and do not fit on each other well.  Also, the jerry cans are 3 parts each; two halves and a handle.  The handle is thin and fiddly and the cans take care to assemble correctly.

Here is a shot of a sprue with an Amazon Miniatures 25mm/ 28mm Secrets of the Shadow Reich figure and a 1:48 Lindberg Tiger I.

And here is a close up with just the Amazon figure.

Here we see the lovely Greta posing with a collection of the barrels.  They look a bit small next to the model due to the thickness of her base.  She is based on a Litko 25mm round.

And finally a close up of the jerry cans.

Again, the Tamiya kit gives you about double what is pictured on the packaging.  It comes with tons of pieces for customizing and detailing vehicles in all kinds of genres, or anything else you'd want to use them for.  This kit really is a good value.

Small Landing Pads

The first thing I did was disassembled the toy and took all the cool electronic guts out. I then reassembled and glued the base to the model.

I added a plastic skull ring to the front for the proper techno- gothic look. Some GW Rhino tank bits were added as well. A hatch was used to plug the hole in the roof and a radar dish from the gun turrets was glued atop that. A Rhino rear hatch was added to the back of the structure to act as an access hatch (and to cover the hole that was there.) A handle made by bending floral wire into a "U" shape, drilling holes in the hatch and glueing into place. A plate was cut from carboard and glued over a large hole in the back. Seed beads were added to simulate rivets.

Each piece was primed black. Then each was drybrushed in either blue, brown or green and then additional and progressively lighter shades were drybrushed over those. The radar dish and skull were drybrushed silver. I left them unbased for two reasons: they are stable on their own, and without bases they can be used in a variety of environments.

Quonset Hut

The barracks is based on foamcore with the edges masked as usual. A Sunny Delight  bottle was cut in half and hot- glued to the base to create the arc of the barracks. Foamcore walls were cut to fit into the ends of the arc and they were hot glued into place. A foamcore support was also glued in the center of the arc as a support. Decorative corrugated paper (the kind used for covering corkboards in schools) was glued over the top of the barracks and to the front and back walls using rubber cement. I wouldn't recommend using rubber cement, however. .

The door is made from matchsticks glued together with a piece of corrugated paper glued to the back. The doorframe was constructed in the same manner. The door handle is a bit of floral wire bent into a "U" shape.

The piece was primed black. The barracks was painted light grey and given a black wash. Burnt Sienna was drybrushed on in areas to simulate rust. The door and doorframe were drybrushed from dark brown to tan and the handle was drybrushed silver.

Railroad ballast was applied to the base.

Be careful when applying washes to paper. When the piece got wet, the corrugation started separating from it's backing and bubbled all over. It had to be reglued. This was a very quick and simple project to complete.

Ruined Building #2

The original intent of the city project was to have a nice, new city to battle over. Building intact structures was taking a bit longer than I cared for, so in order to get some buildings on the table I opted for ruins. These ruins are built from Styrofoam packaging. 

Like all of the ruins, this is based on a 12"x 12" piece of double corrugated cardboard with the edges covered with masking tape to hide the corrugations.

The Styrofoam packaging was simply broken into various shapes and then arranged on the board in a pleasing fashion. Damage was inflicted upon the foam with a razor blade and my fingernails. I like the foam packaging because the outside has a fairly smooth surface, but when broken it has a very uneven look which helps it make look battered and broken.

Once the damage was done the pieces were hot glued into place. Drinking straws were glued in various locations as electrical conduit; old, electrical wires were glued into the ends of the straws to simulate old, electrical wires. Metal fencing pieces were jammed into the foam and glued into place in various areas. Other bits of debris and old keyboard keys were attached for rubble. Chunks of foam and sprue rubble are also used.

The top of a contact saline solution bottle was attached to the "roof" for an HVAC- thingy.

Once assembled the entire piece was given three coats of textured paint. the great thing about the textured paint is when applied to the flat areas of the foam buildings it fills in and helps hide the fact that it's beaded Styrofoam. When it's painted on the rough parts it takes away the "individual ball" look of the ripped foam, making it look more like crumbling concrete.

Once dry the concrete walls were drybrushed from dark grey to light grey to white; fences and HVAC-thingy were drybrushed silver, the conduit was painted dark green and drybrushed to a light green and the wires were painted red and given a very light dry brush of off- white. The keyboard keys were painted blue.

Once the base painting was complete, I stuck some weird Japanese stickers here and there. They wouldn't stay, so they were superglued into place. Light drybrushes of brown and green were applied to various parts of the piece to break up the grey and to add weathering. Burnt Sienna was drybrushed onto the metallic parts to simulate rust.

Chemical Storage Tank

This terrain piece was created for games that take place in industrial settings. It's a simple tank with an upper walkway. The materials used to make this piece are listed below:

Shampoo bottle
3.5" floppy disk drive part
Plastic bendy straws
Electrical components and odds and ends for junk
Double corrugated cardboard for the base
Glue (hot, PVA and super)
Metal fence material for ladder

I started out by cutting the base out of double corrugated cardboard, and covering the edges with masking tape to hide the corrugations. I then cut the cap end of the shampoo bottle off and dripped leftover shampoo all over the place. Make sure to rinse your containers out. I then dug through my box o' junk to build stuff out of and found a piece from an old floppy disk drive to use as the upper floor. The hole was already cut into it, so I just slid the bottle through. The upper floor was superglued into place and the bottle was superglued to the base.

Bendy straws were used for pipes coming out of the tower. They were routed through the upper floor via existing holes. One straw was placed toward the bottom and cut off to appear broken. An old gear was glued to another pipe to act as a valve handle.

Other off cut bits and electronic pieces were glued here and there on the base to provide cover for anyone on the ground level.

The ladder was made by cutting out a strip of metal fence material and then cutting out sections from the strip to make the rungs. The ladder was hot glued into place, promptly broke off, then superglued.
To make the slime pool in the top, I mixed some PVA glue with green paint and water and poured it onto the top of the tower. I then added some superglue to make a strange bubbly mess. That didn't work. The superglue instantly coagulated, so I pulled it out with a stick. It fell off the stick and landed on the board and dried almost instantly, so I left it on the piece (it’s the purple glob at the base of the tank.) Hot glue was dripped out of the end of the broken pipe to look like chemical dripping out.

After all the glues had dried, I spray primed the piece black and painted it. I then gave the entire thing a black wash and then a rust wash. After the washes were dried, I gave the various components a shade lighter dry brush than their base color.

After the paint was dry, I sprayed the piece with a sealant.