She's not made of paper, Captain!

. . . except when she is. Paper is, in fact, the structural material of the sturdy little Genet VT-3 Pinzgauer.

You've probably seen this in the background of some of my pictures before, which is where it's really intended to go, but it deserves at least a moment in the sun. This build largely overlaps with the MB-1377 StarLifter Rainbow Connection. I think I started the StarLifter first, but that took a long time in gestation and I wanted something faster, so I turned to paper models. This was to be an experiment. The first part of the build went quickly enough to use as a set piece in some photography in late 2017. (So far so good.) But as things are wont to go, I got distracted and turned to shinier things and this sat. Long enough, in fact, that I lost parts. (Which is no big deal when they're made of paper.) But after I finished Rainbow Connection I decided I really needed to put the tail end on the Pinzgauer and finish the last details. Before I get into the nitty gritty of how this works let me expound a little on the model.

The Pinzgauer seems a clear reference to Battlestar Galactica. The general arrangement and proportions of the ship are very close to the original series shuttle. The sigil on the side of the default paint version is quite close to the new series symbol. It's simplified for ease of construction. (More on that later.) But really, it's not too bad at all. Even the original was pretty boxy. But what of the name, you say? Well, apart from being a breed of Austrian draught horse it's also apparently the name of a line of high-mobility trucks. Absurdly boxy things, even. Altogether a good heritage for a utility cargo shuttle, I'd say. Who knew?

Now, back to the build. As I said, this was an experiment. I probably worked faster than I should have. More care and a more forgiving glue than the CA+ that I impatiently insist on using for . . . everything . . . might have helped. But you know what? It worked. And here's the neat thing about paper models: You really have to pay attention to structure. That sturdy thing at the beginning isn't really a joke. The thing is well enough engineered (with beams and braces and gusset plates) that it actually holds together. It doesn't feel like it will fold up in the first breeze. It's still paper. You can crush it. (Or dent it. Or bend it.) It will flex. Much like a real airplane. But there's real structure in there. And there are void spaces galore where real systems would actually fit. That's kind of neat, really. I don't know that I'd engineer my ship so that the entire belly of the thing would become a giant elevator to lower things to the ground, but at least then you'd know the doors were properly locked. (Would help to avoid the kinds of disasters that befell the DC-10, C-5, and 747 when the sudden depressurization from doors that only looked closed broke important parts.) Of course, it does mean I can't so easily actually put a model inside the thing and leave it there, but that's a small complaint, really. It's primary function is to LOOK like it can carry something. It's quite good enough when that something fits.

I said they're fairly sturdy because of their internal structure, but as a result they do take a little longer to build than you might guess. There's nothing especially complicated. It's all cutting, folding, and gluing. Nothing fancy. But there's a lot of it. There are fully 42 ANSI A letter sized pages of printed parts. The thing is almost a novella. That's a lot of parts to cut out. And there are some complex and persnickety folds. Nothing truly origami grade, but still plenty of it. That's what makes it hold together and look halfway neat. What's more, I suspect you could make the things quite a bit sturdier still by building them from cardstock, which you could then paint and detail. At that point it might even be a serious foreground grade model. Even as is I think it's not bad, but I'll let you judge.

Note please that the boarding ramp actually holds a small metal miniature. And the cargo elevator is staying up with yet another such miniature sitting mostly on it. (And did with the miniature fully on it as well, though I've no photographic evidence of that. It just got too dark in the bay.)

And here's some proof that a small armored vehicle really will fit. Smaller early Imperial marks just make it inside the hoist legs. (APCs, tank destroyers, light support, that sort of thing. Nothing too hefty. You're not getting a Land Raider in there.)

I do cheat and use a small piece of tape to hold the chin up. I think if my build were more precise it would probably stay up on its own, but that is one of the weak features. The pedestrian ramp doesn't stay closed well and the chin doesn't stay up. And it's a touch weak at the rear away from the folds. (Which I solved by adding in a piece of cardscock as reinforcement. Much like you might reinforce a real vehicle when you realized the manufacturer's design had a spot prone to trouble.) So the verdict: it's not quite as quick as I would have hoped, but it looks good and works better than I expected. And the price was fantastic. The plans are free, so all it costs is time and materials. Paper. Not bad! Genet Models actually has a whole line of stuff. Check them out. They have plenty of other fun and free paper things to keep you building.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Intergalactic Hoosegow

Yesterday in Intentional Terrain I hinted that I was working on an abandoned jail for my temporarily orkified mine camp.

In general it's a pretty standard blue foam build. Press texture in. Draw blocks with a ball point pen. You know the drill . . . The only abnormality is that I insist on mudding things selectively, which I described yesterday. You can see below how I block-textured small sections of the wall and left the rest blank before covering the remainder with an irregular skim-coat of joint compound. (Or mud, if you prefer the trade name.)

Well, this morning when I went to paint the thing I made a little booboo. For those who are unaware styrene is a non-polar organic which is readily broken down by non-polar solvents, like those in CA+ or most rattle cans. When gluing this isn't necessarily a problem, because the melted styrene eventually solidifies together making a pretty decent bond. This is precisely how your old plastic glues work: they literally melt the plastic which then recrystallizes in a modified form. There's clearly a chemical reaction as the resulting material is rather different (probably not polymerized) and you can often detect a slight release of heat when you drip a lot of solvent based glue onto foam. Further, the odor is rather distinct. But it works, and fairly quickly at that, which is the important thing from my perspective. I don't have the patience for PVA.

But I digress . . . when you're painting styrene based foam, like the blue stuff (and pink and white, for that matter) it's generally best to use a plastic friendly, i.e. acrylic paint. Some hardware stores do indeed sell this in a rattle can. I have bought some. . . . But that wasn't the rattle can I grabbed this morning. Somehow I didn't look at the label, just the color on the cap: grey. Grey is good sometimes. Styrofoam and xylene, however, aren't the best of friends. You might notice a rather distinct change in texture between the above pictures and those below. Thanks to the xylene (and possibly the acetone) my blocks became much rougher and more porous on the surface. Hey, that's okay. Just makes 'em look all that much more arid/deserty. I have, in point of fact, used this property in the distant past. Xylene REALLY eats into low density white styrofoam making positively gorgeous battle damage. Todays experiment was something of a happy accident. Not complaining, mind you, just observing.

The interior isn't much to write home about, but it's there. The railing isn't pretty, but it should serve to help keep players from knocking miniatures down the stairs. (Much as it would in reality.)

The pillars are likewise crude, but they work to hold the floor. And the stairs would be a splendid trip hazard to unwary attackers or escaping prisoners. (Uneven stairs trip people up terribly. And these are very, very uneven.)

I suppose this isn't really most properly a jail. It's really more of a small blockhouse for the local constabulary. As you can see, the windows were cut with defense in mind.

Of course, one can't completely resist the urge to see what the view might be like from the inside.

I'm sorry, what did you say about Squiggycap's ride? He's got good taste. And it's red, so it'll go faster, as every orc (and police officer) knows.

There will be more later, as there's still some small structures and set dressing to be made, but the camp is well on it's way. Honestly, it's pretty well usable for the upcoming episode right now, but I still have time before filming begins, so I'll use that to improve what's beginning to look like a good thing.

As always, thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Intentional Terrain

The continuing adventures of the Lace-Rock Gang requires me to craft a new set. You may recall that in the last episode Kitty Luong was abducted by some rather green looking pirates. This isn't to say that they were seasick, or inexperienced, or anything else of the sort. They were, in point of fact hale, hearty, and as far from water as possible. Also quite accustomed to the work they were doing. However, all this notwithstanding they were quite green, being orks.

Well, if the gang is to rescue their girl in "Hello Kitty on a Hot Tin Roof" then I need an orky place where orky pirates might take her. This is something of a quickbuild, though not a one day project, as I figure I need to slap together a small village or at least a decent cluster of huts. Fortunately, orks aren't known for the quality carpentry. As I see it they probably live in conditions generally similar to many semi-nomadic desert dwellers. Which means I figure I can use the ork huts for other purposes in the future with the addition of some reasonable set dressing.

I already have a small circular hut made from a cookie tin that you've perhaps seen around the back earlier shots:

I'm not repeating this yet, but I want the new buildings to fit with it. This time I went with a more conventional foam-board experiment. In the first shot below you can see two structures, one substantially complete, though not as yet fully painted, and the other still in early days.

I'm loosely drawing on adobe or stucco structures one might find in the Middle East or the American West for inspiration. I moved away from the round building for now, as squares are easier to build, more temporally flexible, and facilitate greater building density should the need arise.The basic structure is, as you can see, pretty standard.

The one element of the building that might be a little novel is my use of wallboard joint compound. I bought this a fair number of years ago. It's served me fairly well. You might argue that it's too brittle and delicate, but I figure if you can finish a wall with the stuff you can finish a model with it. Once it's cleaned up and sealed with paint it becomes a fairly durable surface. Below you can see it applied to the exterior walls. Thinner coats will dry faster, but you can build it up to cover miniature sins. (Hey, that's what it's for in real walls too!) If you want a smooth coat you can sand it down to a very fine finish, but I wanted roughness and irregularity. I use it first foe texture and only second to fill gaps. You don't even need to completely cover a wall to create an effective texture. On the long windowless wall at right you can see where the dark foam-board shows through, but once it's painted it looks much the same as the other walls.

Here's a few pictures of the finished structures with some of the fine fellows who might inhabit them.

Ever wondered how a vacation picture at an ork settlement might look? Wonder no more. Here's one of Kitty's shots from her very pleasant stay in the Moab Wastes outside Logansport.

The next build will be a little different, though you can see that some of the same techniques apply. More on this one later when it's complete. This will ultimately be the town jail. I suspect the ork settlement is really a reclaimed mining camp, given the remarkably similarity of the buildings to human architecture from old Terra.

The second part of the build is up and running in Intergalactic Hoosegow. Take a peek to see how the jail came out. It's a twist ending, boys and girls. Keeps you on the edge of your seats. And do check back. There's more coming soon, as this build progresses, and there are a few other bits of old business and back-burner projects that could use updating. As always, thank you. See you soon, space fans.

Sincerely,

The Composer

Light Industry for Heavier Metals

In just under a week I'm planning to run a game of Pulp Alley. For the uninitiated, PA is a fast-paced miniature gaming system designed to produce fun and cinematic adventures. Players create "leagues" of perhaps a half dozen characters. The conflict is developed and detailed with card-driven-events which are resolved with several different kinds of dice against a target number of four. (Thus more and bigger dice are both better.)

Not only do I have to learn the system in a hurry . . . I also need to finish some episode specific sets. (But for the fact that I've decided that everything about this game must be in film-industry speak I'd probably call this terrain.) Specifically, I need to finish a machine shed and a mine. You've seen hints of the shed in an A Place Worth the Fight. Bear with me as I re-use two photographs to get this started.

One day at work I found a nice plastic packing piece for a box of something or other. I thought this something really looked like a factory roof, so I pulled it out of the trash, put it in my trunk, and took it home . . .

But what do you do with that? Factories aren't just a roof. They also need walls and equipment. And people to run them, or in this case shoot in and at them and maybe break stuff there. But let's leave the people out of it for now and concentrate on walls and stuff. The walls (and floor) were easy enough. I used blue foam cut to resemble rough concrete and put flatter part of the plastic sheet on one side. A piece of cardstock works for a floor and some balsa-beams hold it all together nicely. (You have to actually think about structure when you do this stuff? Who knew?)

All of this appeared in our last installment . . . so on to the new. Previously I said I wanted to add catwalks and pipes and panels and things. In a very odd and sideways fashion I work in the construction trade (the entertainment part of it, if you can believe such a thing.) And so I've spent a fair amount of time on jobsites lately. I now have a pocket jobsite in my basement. And while this building doesn't really need to be sprinkled or have HVAC or any of that closed flamable building in a world with a building code stuff, it does need electricity and access. Thus I give you . . . catwalks and conduit:

I have to thank a Chicago area gaming group I stumbled across for turning me on to the idea of using this needelpoint grid material for catwalks. It looks great for the purpose and vast quantities of it are fairly cheap. It does need a little (balsa) support. (Which is fine. It would look darned odd just sitting up there on the beams.)

Next we have a ladder made from more balsa wood with some of my favorite cylindrical styrene stock. The little gate at the bottom was an interesting challenge. While this isn't strictly required on a desert world with no functional government, maybe the mine owner wanted to keep his granddaughter from climbing into the attic without permission. (Which is another way of saying I'd already glued the ladder to the back and I needed a good excuse for this.) The materials and techniques should be self evident. The gate works quite well and is plenty tall enough to keep most would be interlopers out. Judicious placement of the hasp even provides enough friction to keep the thing closed.

With attic access covered, I needed power. My conduit runs are not going to win any beauty contests, but they would all work, and this is the backside of nowhere. It was probably hard to get good union electricians out here. There's not even an IBEW local in the quadrant. So crooked conduit it is . . .

Above you can see the feed from the main panel (part of the island from a 1/2400 WWI USS Vestal) to the lighting. In retrospect, that's too much conduit for the job, but if you've ever had to make a three hundred foot pull by hand, better too much than too little.

Here's the lighting and the materials I used to make it. The fixtures themselves are acrylic sparklies of the vejazzling sort. (Don't look that up at work, folks. Wait until you're safely at home.)  The blue pole provided cookies that make great circular boxes to hang my crooked lights in my crooked shed. Apart from that pole (a fishing toy, I think) the rest of the bits are standard Michaels issue.

Here you can see two of the lights hung and the conduit run out to them. Applied to the face of the center beam is another conduit run. This will be the control run for a chain hoist. Power for the hoist is on the opposite side . . . 

. . . and hanging very awkwardly below the beam. Will someone get me a new electrical contractor? These clowns can't find their plum-bob from their . . . or hang a box stright, or well . . . @#%! . . . Geeze people!

Here's the same talbleau with the catwalk and ladder set in place. I don't plan to attach them until ex-post-paint, but maybe they can remain as removable as the roof. More flexible that way. They do need railings, though. Well, not technically, but without railings they're what Pulp Alley calls a "peril" and I'd feel bad if I made the mad Ramshackle scientist who commissioned this ramshackle mess face too many all at once.

After adding the light fixtures, I promptly removed them. Putting up conduit with hands forty feet wide is a little difficult, and light fixtures are delicate.

Like I said, no beauty contests, but it should work, were it real. You can now see where the power from the transformer feeds into the bottom of the main panel. Now there are five (hideously ugly) conduit runs in assorted sizes coming from said panel. Much more respectable for a factory. And there's a variety of (presumably high voltage) outlet boxes scattered around the shed floor. You can see three of them here and a conduit run heading off across to more on the other side.

Here's an unpainted bug-man in an incomplete factory to give scale.

"Master! The door opens and we can climb the ladder. What shall we do master? What shall we do? Do you wants us to climb up and rain death on the horrible beakies?"

Next time, we put the appliances back. First up, manufacturing a chain hoist from blue leftovers from a random mecha kit . . . 

As always, thank you for reading. Hope this provides you as much inspiration as it provides me.

Sincerely,

The Composer

A Place Worth the Fight

There are several ironclad laws to my gaming. I believe them and believe other people should adhere to them as much as I . . .

No game is complete without scenery.

I am a cheapskate (large collections of miniatures notwithstanding).

On the surface of them, this might seem a contradiction in terms, but just beneath this tumultuous upper layer the sea is a deep and tranquil calm. For starters. the scenery for naval games consists mostly of one or another blue bedsheet. Added to this, random found objects make GREAT sci-fi terrain. 

Some of that is construction debris. My supervisor calls them "robot parts" and a coworker refers to them as "bunkers." Both look at me a little funny when I take home obvious collections of dumpster worthy junk, while both being terrible pack-rats themselves. (With barns and storage units to prove it. Actual barns, not the model kind. Filled with real debris. Suddenly I have a modeling idea. Farmer Kurtis . . . ?) But most of us will have some of that or something similar to it. Anyone who has read the original Rogue Trader or old White Dwarf will remember a similar pile of debris depicted in the modeling section. They'll also be well familiar with the classic "butter-tub bunker" and probably also the "deodorant-stick skimmer."

Obviously the skimmer has seen better days, but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a little time and patience . . . 

Well, in that vein here's some of my more recent scenery made partially or primarily from found objects and leftovers . . . 

This little chemical terminal is made from several found objects. One of them is probably recognizable to the ordinary layman. The other two might be more of a stretch unless you're a specialist. The tank is, of course, an empty aspirin bottle. (Or perhaps technically ibuprofin. I can't quite remember as a certainty. A "pill bottle" anyway. There's a cardboard inspection hatch atop it to cover the recycling number. (2, I think?) Less recognizable are some theatrical leftovers. The pumping gizmo on the side is the remains of a male XLR connector (microphone cable for the layman) that I destroyed in a failed soldering attempt at work. (Chris, I swear to god I don't do this on purpose to create spare parts. It was, after all, one out of thirty or so.) The building itself was at one time one half of a surface mount box for another mic jack. (Long since demolished. No failures on my part this time. The rest of the box and the jacks themselves are visible in earlier buildings.)

This next guy is somewhat more "leftover" than "found."

The bulk of this structure was a raffle prize at a railfans convention I atended. Suffice it to say it was a raffle prize because no self-respecting railfan would buy a kit that poorly made. (It's supposed to be a "precast concrete" station, but it's a resin kit with so many voids and such a rough texture that it could just as easily depict a wattle and daub hut. I've gone for a sort of compromise, raising it's undersized HO proportions a few millimeters so the freight door can admit a normal height 30ish mm individual. Assuming 30mm is 6 feet (a good rule of thumb for 28 mm "heroics" who are all the same 30mm height) the freight door would be about 9 feet, though the usable opening is only about 7. In any case, this little Wabash pre-fab makes a nice security shack in 30, er 28 mm.

The next building is not as yet complete, but makes fair use of both found bits, raw materials, and leftovers.

The interior walls and roof of this factory/barn/warehouse are the plastic packing materials that surrounded some . . . CDs? Puzzle boxes? 

Something small and squarish we were selling at a pharmacy where I worked for a while. The walls of course are the ubiquitous blue insulating construction foam and the beams added thus far are balsa wood. The machinery inside is a packing carton from some small model aircraft and two worn out faucet cartridges. This one is still ongoing, of course. The shed could use some lighting and a good coat of paint. (Or a bad coat, as the case may well be.) Maybe a catwalk and a chain hoist or two. The machinery needs some applied details. (Hoese, controls . . . stuff.) But it's starting to take shape.

More models are of course needed for my settlement slowly emerging from the desert rocks, but things are looking better every day. All in all I am fairly pleased. Hopefully this will give you a little inspiration to go out and find the interest in your own household debris, but maybe you'll find a better way to organize it than I.

So that'll do for now. As always, thank you for reading and may everyone have a wonder-filled game.

Sincerely,

The Composer.

Industrial Scale

In preparation for the Grand Imperial Fleet Review that's, as usual, overdue I have been working on harbor improvements for the industrial sector of New Cai Lay. This has amounted to building a few new factories and warehouses, painting up some extant ones, and building a new wharf. I've described the painting in plenty of detail elsewhere, so I won't belabor that, but I experimented with some different ways to build the new structures.

Those readers who have been banging around this blog for a while might remember that I scratch built Long Island a few years back. (In this case the escort carrier and not the land-form.) To some appreciable extent I reprised the same techniques for my new factories. (And to a lesser extent also for the wharf.) All are built of balsa, though not all in quite the same ways.

First off, let's talk about the wharf.

This one was pretty simple. At  essence I took a plank, glued some stuff to it, and painted it.

The fun comes in what I glued to it, some of which is itself manufactured. The hawser in the upper left corner is a tight spiral of .01" styrene on top of a cookie cut from a larger diameter styrene rod. Other pieces include small rectangles cut from stock, a pair of LCIs, a stack leftover from some model or other, a boat, and some styrene rod stacked up to look like . . . well . . . rod or pipe maybe. Or even telephone poles. Who knows? Something round and long. 

The tiny factories were a little more creative. For the first one I assembled several pieces of balsa into a rough structural shell. I didn't take any pictures of this on "in progress", but the shell is nevertheless obvious from underneath.

The single biggest problem with my earlier structural project, an administration building, was the lack of roof treatment. 

This I have corrected by adding small plastic cookies from a larger plastic rod as ventilators. The chimney is a piece of square balsa stock.

Of course, a simpler method for building a basic background structure is to cut out a building shape and just paint the thing. This isn't the most elegant, but if you don't put the buildings in the middle of the picture (as below) it works fine.

I'm interspersing my new buildings into the middle of a variety of Davco buildings that are technically the wrong scale, but which seem . . . more or less adequate given the lack of identifiable detail and the wide array of building types and sizes in your average city. So one of my goals is to mix in as wide a variety of shapes, sizes, styles, and apparent ages as practical. The next two buildings are of a more "medium" size, and are meant to be from the same complex. The body of the buildings is a simple balsa block. I added a strip to the top to create a clerestory roof, for interior lighting in the middle of a cavernous factory building, gooped CA onto the things to fill the wood grain, sanded them down, and made some roof details out of styrene: ventilators and chimneys, perhaps from a forge. (These remind me a little of a foundry that was near my childhood home.)

I'd been planning to add all other details, windows and doors, with paint, but I decided I wanted a little more variation, and added am exterior loading dock with awning to the building below. The dock and awning are simple styrene strips cut from a larger sheet.

Here's a couple of pictures of the buildings added to the harbor scene. I plan to keep this all separate in order to make it "modular." The next step is to weather the roads and maybe add some stripes and perhaps find a way to create foundations that hide the gaps between building and ground. (And generally create a more cluttered urban landscape to surround the structures.) This is all pretty quick and dirty, but if you squint a little it works all right.