Colony Terrain 15mm Sci-fi

Since getting back into miniatures, I have wanted to build a set of colony terrain. I have started this but have temporarily put it on the back burner as I work on other projects, some miniature related some not.

I wanted to show some examples of the colony terrain I am working on. These are 99% foam core with a few added bits such as cardboard for detail, drywall plaster, 3d paint etc.

Main buildings

Largest building. Imagined as a main control area.	Control area with upper level removed.
Smaller utility building.	Smaller building with roof removed.

Other Structures

 

 

Control Tower. Bottom with resin cast door.	Control Tower. Big enought for 15mm to patrol the top.
Drop pod. Used to deliver supplied and then used as a colony building. Converted blockade buster and 15mm Khurasan human for scale.	View of part of the colony layout.

Still have a ways to go. Thinking some larger hexagonal buildings, pipes, tunnels etc. Overall though the buildings go together fairly quickly. The detailed card is probably the most fiddly bit. That's it for now. Hope to get some more work done on Man & Machine today or Friday.

Smooth Cast 300

All of my castings had been with Alumilite's Super Plastic.  It was readily available at my hobby store and I was anxious to start casting starships so I could work on a simple ruleset for ship to ship combat.

Over this weekend I went down to my local plastic store and picked up a $27 set of Smooth-on's Smooth Cast 300 on the advice of the great guys at https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/Stargrunt2/.  It has a pretty similar working and set time when compared with Super Plastic.

However the A and B part of Smoothcast are less viscous which allows it to take finer detail in the molds that are being cast.  That is a win.

I haven't seen a compareable size of Smoothcast vs Superplastic in the stores.  But I know from the small bottles of Super Plastic I got in a kit, that the $27 set of Smooth Cast will last me a lot of castings.

I also suspect the lower viscosity of this resin will allow air bubbles to be removed easier, although I haven't personally had an issue with it.

In the end Smooth Cast was easily worth the purchase price.

Thumbs up on this product.

Blockade Buster - Grav Tank: Part 2

Blockade Buster - Custom Turret

Oil based clay
Polymer clay
Small sticks
Scultping tools
X-acto knife
Super glue
2 part casting resin

Part 1 of this segment detailed how I took a Matchbox Blockade Buster and converted it into a Grav Tank.  Well I mostly converted it.  It was still in need of a turret.

How would I get a turret?  Buy it?  Design it in a 3D app and print it?

What to do.

Then I remembered a blog I came across last year.  It showed a gamer making custom starships.  His method was to take a basic shape, press it into clay and then detail it.  Once the mold was finished he would cast it in a 2 part resin.


So using this idea of impression casting with clay I thought it might work to build a turret fairly fast.

The first steps involved taking a polymer clay and creating a basic shape.

1. Roll clay out to approximate thickness for turret.

2. Cut edges off to make basic shape.

3. Add forward slanting armor by cutting away the clay.

4. Finalize your basic turret shape.

5. Final turret shape.

6. Size test on the grav tank.

The other tool we will need to complete this is a set of texture stamps.  These can be made from polymer clay as well and are used to texture the inside of the impression mold.

1. Lay out clay and create textures	2. Cut textures into stamp sizes
3. Bake according to instructions	4. Glue onto sticks.

Once we have the basic shape and a set of texturing tools, we are ready to start creating the mold.

1. Get a ball of oil based clay.	2. roll out clay and press shape into it.	3. Remove object (This can be tricky).
4. Use stamps to texture mold.	5. Mix casting resin and pour into mold.	6. Let cure and pull from mold.

These photos are my first attempt.  I feel I did not press the texturing tools in deep enough and got a lack luster turret.  The above photo is primed with a black wash.  I recast the turret and was much happier.

Full view of tank. Turret is primed, washed and dry brushed.

Closer view of the turret is primed, washed and dry brushed.

The tank needs painting, and I may use a different turret, but this shows how you can simply create a fairly cool sci-fi tank for 15mm wargames for not very much money.

Blockade Buster - Grav Tank: Part 1

 Blockade Buster Conversion

1 Blockade Buster

1 piece heavy plasticard

1 stir stick

2 part putty

Small washers

Misc other bits

Super glue

1 X-acto knife

1 drill

Matchbox toys are quite often pretty close in scale to 15mm and they make some cool models at this size if you can find them.  I am a fan of their Stryker model for instance, but can't find more than the one I bought originally.  They do however have a very inexpensive and simple IFV/AA type vehicle.  The Blockade Buster.  It runs at about the $1 mark depending where you are.  I get mine for $1.34 CAD from Walmart.

The parts of the blockade buster.

The vehicle has a plastic turret, metal upper body and plastic lower body.  It is held together with rivets, so to start this conversion the first step is to drill out the rivets and disassemble the model.
This leaves us with the tanks components.  You will notice that the upper metal body does not include the back.  The metal body is open at the back.  It will need to be sealed to make a new vehicle.

Back of the lower body has the entire back of the vehicle

We can either take what we need from the plastic body or make something new.  I opted to remove from the plastic body and glue into place.

Back panel cut free to close the back of the metal tank body

And glued into the main tank body

Here you can see the wood added to the back of the tank to even up the edges (and back)

Once this is done it well become apparent that the metal body needs to be evened out as it is not level all the way back.  I used small pieces of wood stir sticks to accomplish this.

Bottom view with axle mounts, wooden body and rivets

 I used the metal wheel axles in my design but he metal rivets proved to be in the way.  I had to cut these off flush with the base of the tank.










Once I had this completed I took a heavy piece of plasticard and drilled holes to make slots that I could pass the wheel mounts through.  I then used a 2 part putty to add a grave plate mounting bracket.  Basically a long rectangle with a 45 degree cut. along it's length.

Once at this stage I also used putty to try and seal the major gaps.  Once it cured I went in with sand paper to try and smooth out and reshape some areas.

The grav rails are some more heavy plasticard glued to the underside mounting plates.  Once they were glued in place I added some small washers for detail and gave everything a quick prime to see how it looked.

 Moving forward in the next part I will address how I will add the turret and get the model to a pre-painted stage.