How many panels is enough? Always one more than you have!

Progress! I burned through another sheet of plasticard (okay, two) but made some exterior panels, as well as some small vertical panels for the ends of the corridors..

This gave me the level of interior detail I was hoping for, without protruding too much from the walls to make model movement difficult (of course, the actual rooms themselves is another story). I painted them up and fitted them in place, then followed Tom Schadle's colour scheme for the Warsenal Cosmica terrain - more or less - since the base colour of orange and white is what Antenocitis use on their own pre-coloured Forward Base set.

..and here it is, finally finished!

Back on the horse.. and then it died

So after a long time of ruefully eyeing up my Silhouette Portrait (which has been buried under a pile of hobby clutter for the last six months) I was finally motivated to break it out by the release of the Antenocitis Workshop "Forward Base" terrain, which I wanted to use on my Mars table for Warzone.

It arrived and was moderately fancy (not as shiny as the Cosmica stuff from Warsenal, but not as expensive, either.. so it just comes out ahead!) but the large flat colours give the terrain an overly simple look that doesn't suit Warzone. So with the Portrait literally dusted off, I got to work on some interior and exterior panel designs. Three sheets of 10 thou plasticard later, and I have these (left side is before punching out the cut away parts)

..which combine to make one of these!

..which goes here!

I was all set to prime and paint these interior panels and then when I started up my airbrush, the compressor died. I'm not confident I can get the desired level of smoothness if I paint these by hand, so for now I will have to continue making panels while I wait for the replacement pressure switch to arrive for the compressor.

Fudge! I was really hoping to finish off those corridor sections quickly.

Airlock progress

So it turns out that it's actually five times the charm. With four sheets consigned to the bin, the fifth one finally turned out okay well enough to do 90% of the airlock. I will be adding a space behind the four smaller doors to store some EVA suits  (most likely the Ainsty ones) but right now the only other detailing step are the four walls leading into / out of the airlock. I was originally going to leave them blank but now I think I might put some detail on the lower part of those walls.

A watched pot never boils..

..but an unwatched Portrait never cuts. Three more sheets of plasticard and four hours down the drain. Let's hope 4th times the charm because I was hoping to get most of the airlock done tonight.

Exits are: North, South, East and West

Have now assembled enough parts to do all four walls. One strip seems higher on the wall than the rest and my superglue seems to be turning into a gel when it dries which is another thing I have to clean up when it's done.

But.. we're getting there.

No really, actual progress!

3 layers of .25mm (10 thou) plasticard per doorway detailing. Ouch! Luckily I can still do the floors in the thicker .38mm with 'etchings' and there are only 8 or so rooms to do. Er, plus about 20 freestanding door sections. Gulp!

Progress

So, some progress with the plasticard. The new blade still wouldn't cut through the .38mm / 15 thou material but at least it cuts the .25mm / 10 thou card without crumpling it. Of course for every step forwards there are two steps back - even with the sheet taped to the mat, the fact that I have to run it through the Portrait twice means that a lot of the horizontal cuts are lifting off the mat and catching, causing all kinds of mayhem. I've salvaged a few pieces from tonight's test but now that I need two pieces so they can be sandwiched together (a single piece of .25mm just isn't thick enough for detailing) I still don't have enough pieces to build anything. Bah.

Tomorrow, maybe..

It begins with the end..

So after months and months of watching my sci-fi corridor mdf kits pile up, I decided I should finally make a start on building it now that my AvP pledge has (mostly) arrived.

I have started with the simplest components in the set - the dead ends - both to test how easy it is to customise the pieces and to get a feeling for practical its going to be to paint the parts individually before gluing them together. The primer is drying on those pieces right now but I'm already running into some problems with the detailing. It turns out my Silhouette Portrait just doesn't have the chops to cut through the 0.3mm plasticard I am using, even at the highest settings. This isn't a problem when it comes to separating large pieces from the sheet as I can bend the material and pop those pieces off.. but the small details have to be removed with a knife and the results aren't good enough.

Damn.