Landing area terrain for 40K (and other sci-fi games) finished

I'm quite sure I'm not the only one starting out projects with an enormous amount of enthusiasm, only to find it all gone halfway through. This generic landing area is an extreme example of this kind of project. It started out with me wanting to make my own space ship like in this post at Warlord Games. I changed the tune slightly when I saw two discounted Star Wars toys while doing the December shopping for the family. Now, having spend some money on it, I was committed to making a small space port. Well long story short it is (more or less) finished.

A group of Space Wolves scouts checks out the new cargo ships. Where are all the inhabitants? 

The idea was to wink back at Rogue Trader and just build a nice outpost. I spotted a control building over on the Maelstrom's Edge online store and as I already had a few of those excellent terrain sprues I decided to just steal the concept from the art there.

Never mind creativity, there's noting wrong with stealing other peoples ideas when you like them, is there?

The wheels and big barrels are part of some excess toys I bought at a thrift store. The smaller barrels are from the old GW set. The plasma generators are made from the containers for (disgusting) bubble gum.

I think those wheels orignaly formed part of an Action Man vehicle.

The large radar dish was rather stupidly simple to put together. It held ribbon used to decorate gifts handed out at my wedding. I combined it with more thrift store toy parts and a watch tower used for plastic army men.

The radar dish was put together so quickly, I felt quite ashamed when the wife complimented me on it.

At this point I was feeling a bit bored with the entire project, but it was also taking up rather a lot of space. I decided over the past few weeks (in between massive bouts of Subnautica) to just pray and spray the whole project away. All of it was basecoated using rattlecan gun-fu as outlined in an older post here.

Making little posters is a lot of fun, I've printed up a lot of old WW2 propaganda posters that seem fitting to the setting. All the way to the right is a scan from an old Tyranid codex. 

I decided to go for slightly less lazy then previously and add a top coat to most buildings. Seeing this video over at the Tabletop Miniouns channel on YouTube helped inspire that as well. By the way, it is bloody hard to get rid of all the salt if you use the salt and hairspray method shown here (I may have oversalted the dish though).

I love these bubblegum containers, they are just made for sci-fi.

Now I should put more detail on the space ships (guns and engines come to mind), and I might paint more detail on the barrels and the generators. But I'm not going to (for now). Because for right now I'm quite done with this piece and I think it is 'ok for now'.

Another close up of the Action Man wheels, glued together crookedly in some factory somewhere.

So here are a few more pictures as I quickly descend back to the Mortal Realms. GW is dropping a rather interesting looking supplement and I've already seen one idea I'm going to steal quite shamelessly as soon as I'm able.

I love the window on the control tower, everything went right painting that one. It made the utter failure to replicate the technique on the windows of the space ships all the more miserable. 

In the meantime, hope you enjoy the sight of this collection of scenery. I'll probably neaten it up at a later point (most likely around the time I've painted all my miniatures ;) ).

I should plan a game around this scenery set somewhere soon. Pity it is rather too fragile to store over at the gaming club.