Junkfort and color

 Adding some color to the Junkfort today. Initially I did a heavy rust weathering but it was a bit too monochrome. Adding in some colors to add some visual depth and make the barricades more interesting.

The corrugated panels could be a lot of colors and even different materials like metal or fiberglass so there is a lot of potential there. I’m wrestling with colors for the recliners and sofas since there is already a lot of earthtones.

Back to the desk!

Forward Base: Habitat 5 part 5 "Beyond the Rough Guide"

 

From here forward we're kind of on our own. The "Rough Guide" over at Antenocitis Workshop does not cover the interior catwalks and stairs or the external resin bits. This building is from the Forward Base Kickstarter and may have been redesigned when the range was revamped a while back.

First order of business is to identify parts and dry fit everything... and I mean everything! I can't stress this enough.

Here I've found the stringers for the stairs and set them dry into the sockets.

Here I set in the "T" shaped catwalk. My first surprise came here. The catwalk did not fall into position on  the stringers. Like by a full 1/8". I though wow... I've never had a piece, that I was certain was the right part, miss by this much. Turns out the error was entirely mine. I had assumed that the catwalk was intended to be removable and would just sit, unglued, on the frame but this is not the case.

There is a slot on the back wall that accepts the Catwalk. When in position it settles securely onto the stringers. The fit is tight enough, and the snap effect pronounced enough, that I am positive this is intended to be a one-time operation. This really exemplifies why the dry fit is such an important step.

Next up... the steps. I finally identified the yellow frames as steps... I know... I'm a bit slow... I had wondered for a while what those were... and where the steps were... and didn't put it together until now.

On the plus side these steps were loads easier to build than the usual system Antenocitis Workshop uses. they also are very broad and it looks like models with modest bases could actually stand securely on them!

 

I started by dry fitting all the steps to make sure they didn't need any adjustment and to note the way they fit was supposed to work. From there it was gluing the top step and the bottom step into position and then placing the stringers and Catwalk in position before everything had dried.

Once that step had dried I added in the remaining steps and leveled them as I went. The notches are a little shallow so its easy to get something just a bit tilted... you can see through he bay door that the center step droops a bit. This got adjusted after the picture.

A view of the adjusted steps through the regular door.

With the interior wrapped up it was time to look at the exterior details. Here you can see that a resin vent has been added. The upgrade kit also included resin replacements for the two lower square white vents but these were not perforated and I ended up liking the way they looked when painted so will save those bits for another project.

The large resin exhaust fans are in position. The slotted MDF remains as is on the inside and would have looked fine on the outside but the resin caps are very nice and help with the flatness that MDF designs tend to have.

At this point I began dry fitting the ladders and made a major discovery!

The ladders extended downward well below the level of the floor...

... which allowed me to finally identify what these bits were! These are part of the Hab X Booster packets. Apparently the boosters are for lifting the Habs off the ground and allow for cool stairs etc...

I got these Boosters for all the Habitats but now have to decide which buildings can take them. Habitat 3 for example is a small living quarters Habitat that can be stacked on top of other Habitat types via an MDF clip arrangement.  In that case the Booster doesn't get used.

Fortunately the Larger Habitats like Hab 5 will all take them so there is not decision to make... on with the Boosting!

Now that the building is boosted those pesky ladders fit perfectly. Another victory for the dry-fit!

There are three ladders. This long one, a shorter one that is affixed between the Bay Doors, and a very short one that allows access between the shorter roof and the taller section.  These ladders interact very much with the removable roof panels so care needs to be taken when fitting and gluing these into position. Pay particular attention to the fit of the shortest ladder as one of the roof panels has to be able to slot in under it and the other panel slots in from the side. Just be sure that the lower roof panel is not obstructed, or accidentally glued in... either condition would be a major fail!

The other two ladders can be seen here under clamps.

The bay door ladder has a tight fit between the bay doors and should be used to help position them. I did not do this and ended up having to shave  a bit off the back side of one of the lower tabs to get a flush fit.

For next time... non-functional exterior acrylic rod lights, possibly some functional interior (key fob style) lights, and some odds and ends like resin covers for the etched power couplings.

 Other than some weathering, all that will remain is to make some decisions about the various doors. Non of them are "working" doors and are either stood into place, held in place by compression, or Glued in place.  At the moment I'm leaving these unglued and will revisit them if that doesn't work out in practice. When the range was redesigned one of the big revisions was to replace the non-functional acrylic "Hologram" doors with working MDF/acrylic doors, many of which have a structure that implies a small airlock. 
 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP part 3

 

A quickie today as the resin/MDF hybrid vents get installed en masse.

Lots of clamps!

I think there were 9 small vents and 8 Large ones.

These were fussy to paint even though the scheme is simple.

The end result however was very cool.  The vents show well on both sides and the final glue up went without a hitch.  In the bottom picture the MDF inside vents are visible as well as the resin outer pieces.

The important part is to assemble the vents so that the smaller MDF portion is precisely centered on the larger resin bit and the overhang is even all the way round.  This has the effect of lining everything up nicely with no adjustment required during the clamping.

The White Formula is: Graveyard Bone (Reaper (R)) x2 over Black Primer, Dry-Brush Splintered Bone (R) edge with Storm Shadow wash (Secret Weapon) wash interior areas of vent grilles with Storm Shadow on both large and small vents.

Next up for Hab 5 are the ramps to the vehicle doors and the resin upgrades to that same area.  After the ramps we'll be moving beyond the "Rough Guide" to do the remaining interior details, access ladders, additional air handlers, figure out what to do about the area around the side door that looks unfinished and out of place... and finally... add the acrylic light fixtures to the outside.  That should finish the build except for any weathering that I decide to do later.  That will be done as a batch of buildings to help me keep the effects consistent. 

Mixed Stone Ruin Process

 After working for a long time in the Greystone Village format I started thinking that I needed some other complimentary stone colors to liven the place up!

This is a step by step of the process used to get to the end state you see on the left.  

This is a very fast process but gave a solid result.

The model is a ruined doorway from the Reaper Bones 4 Kickstarter Fantasy Scenics set.

I undercoated this with Krylon Camo Brown paint/primer.

Picked out some areas of color with 4 basic colors.

Stormy Grey (Reaper(R)), Grey Mist (R), Handle Wood (R), and Krylon Camo Brown. (This is the undercoat color and was not re-applied... just left "bare")

 Stormy Grey is a very dark grey, Grey Mist is a lighter grey with a fair bit of blue added. Handle Wood is a very light brown that is almost tan and the Krylon Camo Brown is a very dark bark brown.

Base coats of the greys were brushed on damp while the handle wood was wet stippled on to give the uneven coverage an irregular rocky texture instead of weak brush strokes.

First highlight layer:

Sky Gray (R) Drybrush over all grays.

Sunny Skin Tone (Vallejo (V)) Drybrush over all browns except the "ground" part of the base.

This starts tying the different colors together so they will look like they've been standing in a pile together for a long time.  The underlying color differences are reduced a little but still have a variegated appearance.

Lining:

Sewer Water Wash (Secret Weapon (SW))

Line all rocks and cracks edge the divots. This is fast and easy and uses a mid size brush with a decent tip just wipe off any excess that looks like a brush stroke.

Damp brush Saddle Brown (R) over the "Ground"

Of course more could be done with the ground but this is a generic game piece that to look at home in a dungeon, a jungle, or in the frozen wilds so it remains neutral here.

Final Step before sealer!

Lightly drybrush the whole model with Splintered Bone (R) focus a little extra coverage on the tops, edges, and broken stone to make them pop.

Splintered Bone is a bright off-white color.

Reaper Dwarf for scale.

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP part 2

Today sees the construction of the main structure. But first a little more painting of panels and resin bits.

A few of the vent panels were not laser cut so were painted in while painting the punched out vents and their resin replacements/additions. All the vents, windows, doors, etc. were punched out prior to assembling anything and dry fitted to see if they could be easily installed after assembly. This turned out to be true for the vents and garage bay doors but not for the acrylic windows and doors which fit very tightly and were installed prior to general construction.

The MDF vents were glued to the resin parts and painted both sides. You can see the left side are the painted MDF and the right are the painted resin. The white is Graveyard Bone (Reaper(R)) and Splintered Bone (R) over black primer on the resin and clear sealer on the MDF.  On the MDF side the vent cavities are Glowing Mist (R). For the resin Cavities Soft Body Black (Secret Weapon( SW)) wash to clean up the dry brush bleed.

On the interior rear wall of the building the rollup doors for the toolboxes got a thinned  Phoenix Red (R) and the clear acrylic door was placed.  

 This was a tight fit and, in retrospect, I might have positioned it a little differently because this wall gets doubled by the outside wall which leaves this door recessed vis-à-vis the outer wall. Its not a big deal just something to add to my lessons learned when doing future builds.

Now construction can commence in earnest!

Before attempting to slot things together I carefully trim one side of the coating off the tiny tabs.  This coating helps give these kits a smooth finish but it often seems to bunch up when going into slots and the excess has to be cut away afterwards. Cutting off just one side retains the strengthening effect of the coating while reducing the bunching and occurrence of too tight fits to practically zero.

"The Rough Guide to building habitat 5" on the Antenocitis Workshop site notes that this kit is a little complicated and should be approached in a certain way. Believe it!

The first assembly is the Lattice with Beam, Support Struts, Top Side Panels and Roof Guides for the rear part of the building.

 True to its name the guide is a little quirky. As is the usual case with these kits all of the components of the model have very specific names but the parts are not labeled so have to be carefully selected and test fitting is essential. Some of the parts have names that imply the existence of other parts for example "Beam 1" seems to be the only part named "Beam" in the kit so I spent some extra time trying to located the other "Beams" to make sure the one I had selected was actually "Beam 1"

Next up come the first aid stations.  Volgren Troller has very generously supplied a full First Aid Station and sink for each vehicle bay. The Rough Guide was a little fuzzy here. It details about half of building the most complicated side without mentioning the small positional markings on the struts or how the First Aid stations are constructed... and do the same for the other side... which I mistook for a comment about installing the other side wall when it really specifically was referring to the First Aid Stations.  The kit is very well designed so once I started dry fits it became immediately obvious how things were meant to go.

The inner framework, complete with matching First Aid Stations and side catwalks. The catwalks are not only great places for miniatures to lurk but help a lot with giving the tool boxes and other etched features an illusion of depth.

Now comes the Interior Rear Wall.  Once this wall is in position the whole framework can be slotted into the floor.

Floor installed. For as many slots as the floor part has this went together very easily.  The precision of the laser cutting is really great. The Rough Guide helpfully mentions that the floor should be worked starting from the rear wall. The front wall is not yet on and the side walls are still a bit flexible at this point making them a lot easier to deal with in the fitting.

Time for the Front Wall.  This slots into the floor and relies on the flexibility of the Top Side Panels to be lifted enough to get the wall into position.

Next comes the Exterior Rear Wall which completes the main structure.  There ae still a lot of things remaining to do but this was the tricky bit.

Remember those resin vent panels? Add them in here as they get painted. The printed side is reversed to show the etched detail on the other side of the wall panel and the slightly larger resin side allows for the whole thing to be glued in flush.

First picture shows the resin side.

Second picture shows the painted MDF side.

These slide in very easily and add some extra detail. 

Back to the desk to work on the ramps, doors, ladders, interior details etc...

 

Temporary Military Command Centre

This is from Antenocitis' Workshop (AW)survival line and is described on the website as "Temporary Military Command Centre" but is also described in the kit as "Military Office". Whichever handle it goes by it Makes a handy addition to the Post Apocalypse collection. 

Shown here with Canoness Veridyan for scale this is one of the easier of AW's models to build. Its got a lot of space inside due to the magic of laser etching.  There are a lot of interior details like desks, fire extinguishers, weapon racks, computers, data storage banks, maps, and clocks but none of them intrude on the playspace. Quite clever really. It allows you to cram a squad in there without acrobatics.

Its one of AW's pre-painted MDF line and the only things I painted at all were the gray desks and server cabinets and the blue water of the wall map.  Touch up the MDF snip points with Nut Brown (Reaper) and its done.  Like all the models in this line the prepaint is pretty basic but is totally playable straight out of the box and provides a nice launch point if you want a more detailed finish.  I'll likely add some weathering and graffiti to match the themes on the AZ Mart I did earlier. 

Lots of windows and the lack of actual furniture makes it easy to see which models have access.

I love the real furniture that is available for many of these buildings but there is a certain practicality in having some frequent use structures without a lot of clutter for a travel set or a pick up game.

The exterior is complete with an Air Conditioner that serves as the handle for removing the roof and a freely rotating removable radar/satellite dish. 

A great, quick to build, addition to the tabletop!
 

Forward Base Habitat 3 construction process part 2

 One of the common issues with MDF buildings is that they look like MDF buildings.  Part of this is the way they interlock with visible joins but another way is that the overlap surfaces tend to be ignored in terms of details.

Antenocitis Workshop addresses the second issue by including a detail card for the end-caps.  This glues in place and ensures that the nooks and crannies have detailing that is thematically similar to the rest of the model. 

 These thin cards are easily attached with tacky glue or Super-Phatic (very thin, strong, PVA).  I clamp them in place for a few minutes to ensure a strong bond.

 Here is a "before" shot showing the plain end-caps.  Since the MDF is pre-painted it actually looks fine as it is... but its gonna be so much better after!

 To the right the end-caps have been installed and the detailing is very nice.  You will notice a difference in color between the edges of the end-caps and the base MDF.  This is easily sorted later with a quick touch-up pass using Nut Brown (Reaper) paint.











Clamping up the rest of the assembled shell.

 The remaining bits.  The two topmost thin strips that we were careful not to glue into place during the build, the roof/lid, and the end-caps for them.  Its best to wait to install the end-caps for these parts until after the resin goes in.  For the most part they work if the ends are aligned but small differences in the shell construction can be adjusted for in the final fit of these.

 Moving on to the remaining resin. Some of the resin was installed earlier in "part 1". To the left is what remains. (There is one extra locker shown as I was touching up a part from a previous Hab 3).

The large bunk wall usually requires a hot water bath to adjust for warping.  This is likely due to the big hole in it for the bunk assembly.  Its easy to straighten and when the bunk is attached to the wall it reinforces the shape nicely.

 At this point all the remaining resin gets pre-fitted, sanded as required to adjust the fit and then painted.  These are often a very tight fit that should be adjusted via sanding the edges of the resin bits until they fit snugly but don't require force to get into position. Keep in mind that the height of the resin will also likely need to be adjusted to be level with the top of the MDF.  I failed to notice that during this build and the top retaining strips were very tricky to get installed.

 The pre-fit of these parts is critical and should not be skipped.

 The painted walls can now be slid into place.  I align them using the printed floor graphics.

   Antenocitis Workshop really excels at minute details and photographic elements like video screens etc.  All the graphic elements here are from them except the tabletop which is repurposed from some hobby packaging.

Once the interior resin is in place the Topmost strips are finally glued into position and  the remaining end-caps can be installed.

Test fit the roof/lid for alignment mark with pencil and glue in the lid end-caps.  There can be some variation so be careful to get the alignment right before gluing these in place. Carefully trim the overhang, if any, with a sharp hobby knife.

Now its touch up time.  Go round the whole model with Nut Brown and toch up the spots where the MDF shows bare... like where it was previously attached to the frame etc... 

 A "in progress" view to the right.  you can clearly see the difference between the touched up end caps and those not touched up.

All that remains for "part 3" are the exterior acrylic lights... which are a tiny bit tricksey..., the interior/exterior scatter, and the lower "feet"  which are unique to Hab 3 and help it interlock when stacking with other buildings in the series (specifically Habitat 1 or Habitat 4) and should not be installed until their companion buildings top lugs have been installed to make sure they line up properly. 

Part 3 will be a bit coming as I'll want to finish this after building Habitat 1 or 4...

Cheers