The continued quest for good
“sci-fi” buildings is a never-ending one. Like many 15mm sci-fi gamers, I have
boxes of clear plastic electronic packaging in interesting shapes, packed away
in boxes, awaiting conversion. This is often time consuming, so when a manufacturer offers a pre-made kit, I'm quick to investigate.
M205 Small Houses |
M206 Medium House |
I recommend filling the
polystyrene shells with fine/light household insulation foam to prevent
bending/bowing/warping. Priming the
interior is necessary to insure the foam doesn’t melt the polystyrene. I used Testors gray primer as a base prime,
inside and out, followed by Citadel white, inside and out. The Citadel was necessary to provide
something for my water-thinned acrylic paint to grip to.
Before filling with foam, I
recommend testing the foam on some of the off-cut bits that come with the
buildings. The home insulating kit in
the hand-held can from my local Do-It-Yourself franchise worked well for
me. Foam tends to expand outward as it
dries, so I left the models base-up for the foam to set. In the process, some of the curing foam did
rise above the lip of the base; this was removed with a hobby knife and a
spoon.
Once the fittings were in
place, after priming, I spray painted the outsides of the houses with Testors Sand Yellow. Oops!…so much for using the
Citadel primer. The acrylic paints had some trouble covering the Testors, though
nothing an extra coat or two couldn’t cure.
Size Comparison |
The end result was a
Middle-Eastern Pre-Fabricated Futuristic look, rather like one would expect
from a Vilani Mining franchise. Ethnic AND Utilitarian. These are the sort of dichotomies which give
depth to the scenario and which make sci-fi gaming so enjoyable. Ω
No comments:
Post a Comment