Warhammer Townscape challenge part 2: actually building something (35. Tower)

Oh dear I seem to be stuck in one of those 'tear-off calendar losing it's pages' time-passes shots. This Sunday I realized August is almost over and I had yet to get to building my Townscape Challenge. Missing the deadline is unacceptable of course. Long story short: I powered on the hot-wire cutter and went to work on a bit of high density polystyrene. Here is the (almost) end result. 

The outline of my interpretation of building 35 of the Townscape set.

With the foreshadowing out of the way we can get back to the start. I had been doodling a bit, wondering what to do with the tower. I thought about a collapsed tower, an overgrown ruin or maybe a tower made out of floating rocks. When I put my technical pencil to paper all that came out was this.

A long time back I found this pretty blank paged book to scribble building ideas in. With years using this to plan, it has become quite a lot of fun to leave through and see what came to fruition and what should be made 'one day'. 

Yes, I was in trouble, especially as there isn't much left of August 2021. Time for plan B: Improvise! I hopped over to my garage get started on the rough work. There I hit an immediate snag. I discovered I'd been using my workbench for 'let me put that down here for a day'-storage for quite a few months. In other words I needed to take some time to clean up things I should've put away after use. I'll repeat that to myself in my 'stern father speaking' voice ten times after posting this blog ;). 

This hot-wire cutter was way too expensive and turned out to be utterly useless when first bought. Then I discovered the brilliant laser cut invention by Shifting Sands (pictured sitting on top of it). 

In the end my hot-wire cutter was reachable and my work area was clean enough to work in and I finally could get started cutting the shape of my tower. 

Spoiler alert: this will be turned into a 15 cm high tower.

After a few false starts I picked out a likely looking piece of polystyrene to cut sections of 6 by 15 centimeters. The dimensions of the tower (according to my measurement of an on-screen PDF) where 6.2 by 15.3 centimeters. For sanity's sake I went with even numbers. There's always some discrepancy in measurements by the time I'm finished building (not a good thing to put on the website of a precision instrument maker or construction company I would say). 

The sides of my tower have been cut. Pictured above an oil palette I should've cleaned up (instead I spend a few minutes cleaning red oil paint of the kitchen door (you can also see red oil paint on the polystyrene in the pictures)).

I used the excellent tools from Shifting Lands to cut the sides of my tower with 45 degree angles to easily stick them together. I also made two inlay floors and a few random small strips of polystyrene 'just in case'. I then rather foolishly decided to 'freehand' the battlements. Let's say I learned that I'm not very good at freehanding with a polystyrene cutter. Luckily I stacked the four pieces on top one another to get the same result on each side. In this case the stacking worked and I got four miserable results in one effort. I decided to fix that up with a sharp blade. 

The ability to draw straight lines with a metal ruler is what separates professionals from rank amateurs. I guess I know where I stand...

The next step consisted of moving all the materials to my hobby room's cutting mat and (using a ruler) to draw straight lines with a 5B soft pencil. Please stop sniggering, I don't quite know how I managed to get the lines on that crooked either. Especially considering I was using a metal ruler and working from a straight line made with a set square. The problem is that any line you draw on polystyrene with a pencil is there to stay. They make indents. I decided to just shrug it off and count my lucky stars I wasn't making straight angled industrial sci-fi terrain. This was still the 'improvise' plan after all. 

Bet you didn't think I could fix the mess above, ha! Years of experience righting my sloppy work pays off.

The next step consisted of a few hours of drawing deeper lines and stonework on the polystyrene. The hard part here was that each side of the tower needed to more or less match the ones on it's sides. I did have my 'just in case' strips to cover up big mistakes (and there's always creeping vine at the end of a build), but I didn't really want to use that. So I went on with correction. You can see some of them on the third side from the left through the brickwork. Drawing in texture on polystyrene with a soft pencil is serious fun by the way, even for those of us who can't draw a straight line with a metal ruler...

Glue: it dries too slow when you want to move on and too fast when the damn parts just refuse to stick together. But its still faster than oil paints.

After the basic stone work I dented the sides with a large rock and a small rock to get some extra texture on there. I then glued the sides together. This helped me discover just how badly everything  aligned. No need for despair. I just pretended to be a 'building acupuncturist'. I shifted things in place and use pins to hold it there giving the glue time to sort off set (no time to wait for it to truly dry out and harden as I started this project too late). 

If you want to work with foam board or polystyrene: invest in a big box of sewing pins.

Next I turned the tower halves right side up and added the upper landing (too late, should have done that BEFORE gluing the sides together). I then used a zenithal coated miniature that was on hand to check the height of the platform versus the battlements. Not quite handy for real life (you want the high  part of the battlement to be higher than your head). For a fantasy battle where you want to see your pretty painted miniatures this works a lot better. Yes you occasionally need to remember you're going to be playing a game with these things too.  

This monster started out greyish brown, then bone colored and then dust colored as it looked at me with accusing undead eyes saying 'why don't you finish painting me?' A lot of oil paint will finally make its dream come true.

At this point I really had to give the poor glue some time to set . To kill time I decided to splosh away at a neglected Terrorgheist with oil paints. When you really get stuck painting a big model and no longer know how to color it, oil paints are the most therapeutic solution. The only downside is that I most likely have to wait a month before those wings are dry enough to finish the bones with acrylics. Maybe I'll just give the oils some time to get tacky and then try to use oils for the bones too. There's a thought...

All that's needed now are some door fittings (and a hatch on top, a base to sit on and some added detailing).

With the glue dry enough to stick the sides together I quickly improvised the makings of the door. I also took out a rather ugly side of the building so I can have my collapsed wall after all. I then took a box cutter to level out the upper battlements where my miserable attempt at drawing straight lines drew the most attention. Not pictured is a piece of paper glued in so I can fit a hatch on top of the tower and a lot of reinforcement (aka: pouring in extra glue) and pinning to make the platform (and sides) strong enough for gaming.

I finally started my A Billion Suns fleet. That took me long enough. Now to figure out some item that'll make interesting looking 'cockpit windows' or 'bridge viewports'.

I found a discarded MDF base to use for the tower and then filled another hour happily making a start at some improvised space ships for A Billion Suns. I will need to make a separate blog post (or ten) and give that wonderful game my full attention. Anyway with regards to the Townscape Challenge I think I am reasonably on my way. Hopefully I'll find a few lost hours over the course of this week to detail the building and strengthen it for painting. Then I'll just paint it in the coming weekend so I can finish this challenge just before the deadline hits.