Data Sphere

Subject is pretty self explanatory my Level 3 Pledge for the recent Kick Starter product - Bug Hunt Corridors has arrived in the post today.



Now I've put a fair bit of thought into this project and the corridors themselves will only make up part of the table. I'm looking to get them done reasonably quickly and in a vary unique way to compared to how most people have taken on this product so far. This isn't nice clean space ship or a hulk slowing going to rust in space. Nor will it be a clean hazmat lab or under ground military complex. No I've decided to make it look like a 1950's medical complex/asylum with a deep secret secret. Think 'AREA 51' and the old space invader type of movies and you shouldn't be too far off.



I'll be off to the local super hardware store later today to pick up some paint and will hopefully have a test piece finished today. I intend on starting with rattle cans for the majority of the work then take to the finished base colours with my airbrush when I've got it all ready. The 2nd phase will be the 'AREA 51' parts of the complex and hopefully the good people over at BP Laser terrain will be able to help with some interesting bits and pieces I have planned for that!

Keep an eye peeled to this thread peep's should be fun!

P.S. It won't be this good ..... but I bloody wish it would be! That said totally made for the wrong system shunnnn shunnnn the non-believer.

Right some work has started and let me tell you straight off the bat I know I'm going to regret every cent of the $300 I pledge to this. When I unpacked the box I was just god smacked at all the little bags that were in there its allot of work.

Anyway less crying more work or the thing will never be done.



Base paints from left to right.

Fiddly Bits: Grey Primer $3.40 a can and a must have for this project the pieces soak up the normal rattle cans a bit to much.

Dulux Spraypak: Flat White $9.72 a can and the first non-enamel white I could find that would do the job.

Ironlak: Placid (Green or is it Blue?) $5.00 a can and the only available brand I could find that made the right sort of 'green' to get that 1950's feel.

Ironlaks is a a pretty interesting little group check out their website for more details and if your interested in where I got it. I purchased it from Crush City over on the southside of Brisbane. I highly recommend it even if you have never being a painter its still an interesting place to go and the Ironlak range is pretty decent for models as its acrylic not enamel.



First test piece gets its base coast.

Primer + Placid for the walls and Flat White for the floor and floor.

I'm hoping to get this together in a few mins and see how it looks!

Batch painting is the only way to go with this project me thinks there is just to much to do! I've do a little bit for my test hall piece today.



All the walls primed and base coated.



Braces are just primed, I think I'll leave them grey.



Floors/grates are primed and hit with the white base coat.



Bracing really helps with some of the rooms.



Close up of the test piece with a Nomad Zero for size/comparison.



Overview of the test piece with a Nomad Zero for size/comparison.

Now I have not painted the outside of anything yet. It will be black but for now because I'm trying to get a good test piece out quickly I'm cutting corners a little.

Right I'm pretty much calling these finished at this point. Short of a few finishing touches when the entire board is complete such as some hazard signs and the like.



Sponge Weather liberally with a Neutral Grey and then a lesser amount with Dark Brown and finally even less Black

Wash: 40 parts Water, 5 parts Dark Brown, 1 part Red and 1 part Orange mix vigorously

Wash is then applied to areas where rain water/seepage would naturally occur. Example around corners and out of air/circulation vents.

Decals are the same printed hazard stripes as I use on all of my terrain and the bases of my miniatures as seen here on the Nomad: Mobile Brigada.



So ladies and gents have I hit the look on the head or what?

P.S. Excuse the horrible hand painting of the outside I'll spray the rest of the pieces black on the outside from now on before I assemble them all. -_-

Totally looks like a 50's institution. Great job.

Great colour scheme and execution.

This is just a shot of how each straight piece comes in its own bag.

Every single product has every single one of its fully cut pieces in a bag and any small fiddly bits are in a 2nd bag withing the first. I really like this compared to other methods of packaging I have seen. Also I have to say after making a number of pieces from more than a few different suppliers of lazer cut terrain plywood is a much better product than MDF for this application.



Batch painting its the way of the future right? These are all floors for all 18 straight sections .... alllllll 18 -_-



Right?



Come on its got to be.



So bloody over it by this stage.

However I did try something new today! Lets have a look at some gravel weathering; yeah bet you weren't expecting that!



A little tutorial on GRAVEL WEATHERING! It takes the things, primes it and then when its still a little sticky to the touch.



It add's the GRAVEL!



It then puts on the next coat of paint and lets dry.



Then using something sharp/flat scrap/rub the gravel off and this is what you get a very distressed looking bit of terrain ready for washes and weathering powders. Don't do this one models for the love of god!

Finally here are all 18 x Straight Sections base coated and assembled.



Many thanks to my good mate Chopper for helping with the assembly line today!

Looks good Daniel, it kind of reminds me of Silent Hill. The only thing missing is the odd "sinister" bloodstain.

Sihook wrote:Looks good Daniel, it kind of reminds me of Silent Hill. The only thing missing is the odd "sinister" bloodstain.

Ohh there coming ... wait till I get the airbrush into this thing.

BTW: I plan on bringing this to IF in a few weeks time and organizing a special game. Spec Op vs Zombies: 4 or so players for a single spec ops each and 1 GM to control the zombies. Should be pretty dam fun.

VisOne wrote:BTW: I plan on bringing this to IF in a few weeks time and organizing a special game. Spec Op vs Zombies: 4 or so players for a single spec ops each and 1 GM to control the zombies. Should be pretty dam fun.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

Very cool stuff! Looking forward to seeing them done.

VisOne wrote:Don't do this one models for the love of god!

With models, you use hairspray and salt. Or one of the chipping products launched in recent years.

Mob of Blondes wrote:

VisOne wrote:Don't do this one models for the love of god!

With models, you use hairspray and salt. Or one of the chipping products launched in recent years.

Which as you full well know is then washed away with water.

Something I wasn't keen to do with plywood of MDF.

Seal it first? What is more, after some coats of acrylic, it should be sealed already.

Right moving along then.

I've made some meaningful progress on the table today.



Well here is what I have achieved over the last couple of days. This is maybe 20% complete in regards to building and getting it table top quality.

If I'm serious about going the whole way on this project its really only more like 7% the amount of time you could spend on the little things like aligning the pieces perfectly and painting every leading or hidden edge is mind boggling.



Close up of what I've done with the floors and a bit of scatter and minis for scale. I'm not happy with everything so far in regards to painting but the airbrush will fix allot of it later. Including the hard to reach areas for the foam/brush weathering and also just generally getting the clean as to dirty areas to transition better.

However right now its story time!



Elements of the Nomad Society are forced to barricade themselves up in one of their Caravansary's after a threat is made on one of key Diplomats to the Haqqislam Nation.



Little do they know the enemy is not at the gates but already within.

The Hassassin's never make idle threats and care not about escaping after the fact.

So why is it when ever your trying to get something done before a dead line life, wife and baby throws everything they can at you to stop you getting there?

Anyway I've gotten allot built; most of it needs ALLOT of touch up when it comes to paint and other than what I have shown previously nothing has being weathered.





Still progress is progress.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh after just doing a photo shoot for the terrain competition I'm going to say without a doubt this thing needs magnets. Ohhh god how it needs magnets.

Well that's pretty much everything built now and on the table.

Not on the table: 1 x straight section

Not built: 6 x Interior Doors & 6 x End Caps

So basically stuff that isn't 'needed' to play tonight.

Here have some pictures of a recent game on here.







Micky and I played my zombie scenario for the first game on this table and it was pretty fun.

Here you can see this setup is on a true 4' by 4' board and its sitting just a touch over one edge.

So it fills a board pretty easy but your still really lose about 1' square of playable area easily.

It looks amazing. Heck, it looks AMAZING! But it's got be nasty to play on! FIRING LANES!

It looks fantastic, I wish you posted these picture in the contest. Ho is playing on this? It looks to me lik you need more cover.

AMAZING!

kidterminal wrote:It looks fantastic, I wish you posted these picture in the contest. Ho is playing on this? It looks to me lik you need more cover.

When I took the comp pictures I only had those components built, painted and weather. The rest wasn't all weathered yet.

As for cover actually you don't need more; infact were you to put any more down the game would be unplayable. Their just isn't enough playable area on the table as it is.











The doors that slip in between sections do all the hard work and I've only built 3 of them I think I have 10 in total so once their all put together on the board fire lanes are cut down immeasurably and cover both partial and total abounds. Then just the little bits of scatter terrain such as barrels and crates does the rest.

Most of those pictures tell a pretty funny tale really. Basically I had 25 zombies and half of them kept getting bottled up by the doors. They had a decent WIP of 10 but the first one to the door would fail its roll, then the 2nd one would make it to the door and fail its roll and the rest would be forced to stack up behind them. All because we played they only had a single impetuous order and it made sense that the zombie hoard would just keep stacking up and up and up until one accidentally opened the door.

I'm glad to hear that. I do love these action shots. Is that a burning tire I see?

beautiful!

I think I'm going to need to buy a few of those sets, myself. They'll make the spaceship board I have in mind much easier to build.

kidterminal wrote:I'm glad to hear that. I do love these action shots. Is that a burning tire I see?

Yeah some of my burning wreck markers ended up in the box so I put it in a tire on the table for shits and giggles.

VisOne wrote:

kidterminal wrote:I'm glad to hear that. I do love these action shots. Is that a burning tire I see?

Yeah some of my burning wreck markers ended up in the box so I put it in a tire on the table for shits and giggles.

Burning tires in a closed environment... Need BTS-3 just to function, and MSV2+ to see!

So I was just down undercoating some Ariadna models for my newest Infinity force and since I had my trust camera phone with me I thought I would get a shot of something I've being working on.

Its a pile of Rattle Cans!


....

Yeah lets count the cost of this table so far.

$37.40 in Fiddly Bits Grey Primer.
$15.00 in Ironlaks: Crazy Green counting the can which isn't finished but has being tapped.
$29.16 in Dulux: Spray Paks White counting the can which isn't finished but has being tapped.
$15.90 in White Knights: Squirts Black.

Thats a little under $97.46 just in paint.

The corridors cost me about $383.00 straight out of the kickstarter w/ postage included.

That is a whopping $480.46 AUD and I've had one game on it so far.

Me thinks I need to start doing something about getting some value for money here.

LOL! Ouch, that's got to hurt. But you do get an awesome table in return.