Saturday, April 22, 2023

Stargrave terrain: the Oversight Office and data terminals

You'd think this finished Oversight Office follows rather fast on the heels of the Snack Stacks I wrote about two days ago. This is a carefully crafted illusion*. In all honestly this tower has been standing on a shelf (and on the tabletop) for quite a bit longer than the Snack Stacks. I just hadn't gotten around to writing about it yet. Let's remedy that. 

* Why publish in chronological order when you can let chaos rule? 

The message above the main gate reminds me of the computers I owned in the nineties. 

The rather tall building featured above is called the 'Oversight Office'. It's another MDF kit by TTCombat and part of their Sci-Fi Gothic, Freighter Graveyard line. There's also a ruined variant of this one. Right now there's a rather hard and heavy fight going on between my poor impulse control and my logical sense that I have too many projects already. The subject is whether I'll add the ruin to my collection (just so I can have a game where we can actually blow up buildings*) or if I should look for some interesting looking MDF walkways instead.**

* This will most likely never happen ;)
** I'm afraid the answers is going to end up being 'both'.

I should compose an ode to the joys of messy painting. 

The oversight office is tall (about 10 inches from bottom to the top), has walkways and works as a wonderful bit of scenery to add to any sci-fi game, especially a game of Stargrave (or a similar skirmishing title). 

This was one of the containers that helped me discover I should look for different MDF painting techniques. 

I took a very lazy approach to painting it, just slapping on a concrete colored grey with the airbrush, sponging this with different colors of grey to get it to look reasonably convincing. I brished on the rust colors and used an airbrush and sponges to add tone to that. Being lazy, I decided not to make to much effort to avoid overspray. Rust tends to stain concrete anyway, so I've decided it just adds to the effect. The two containers where part of my experiment with airbrushing MDF. I talk a bit more about that in my previous post om de Snack Stacks. Most of the work painting this model actually went into the lettering (it's burned into the wood, but needed a rather steady hand to be properly painted) and the hazard stripes (same story).

Considering how quick, easy and fun it was to paint these terminals, they have no business looking this good. 

One of the fun things is that you can remove the roof. This makes it a viable area to place models in during games (it's also the reason I haven't use a bit of transparent plastic to add windows yet). Aside from that I get to show off my new data terminals. These wonderful things actually gave me a reason to use some square bases again. They are 3D-prints and part of the Starship bridge and terminals set. I painted them with (the wonderfully named color) Vallejo Duck Egg Green/Eau de Nil. It gives of the fifties electronics vibe. The screens started with Caliban Green (highlighted towards the center) and ended with a freehand in each and a dollop of Flue Green over that. A bit of sponged on corrosion and wash and here they are. I'm quite chuffed with these to be honest (and maybe I should've taken pictures for a proper tutorial there :o). 

By my estimation it will be another 2 to 3 weeks before I'm completely done printing titan parts. 

Ah well, that's neither here nor there. Let's end with a quick shot of my Warlord Titan so far. The entire upper body has been printed and glued together (there's a number of horrendous gaps that need filling). It's also only slightly shorter than my (almost) three year old. The armor plates for the legs have been printed. Currently the main guns are lined up for printing. So far I've used about 5 liters of resin. I expect it'll take another 1 to 3 liters to finish this madness. I does look rather spectacular though :)

3 comments:

  1. Great stuff. I particularly like the computers etc, they seem to glow with that eighties screen look

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    1. Thanks. I did have a lot of fun painting those screen. I actually used the screen on the marine lander in Aliens as a reference for the odd squares and circles nonsense to put in :)

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  2. Nice work again.

    Although I seem to recall one of the first posts of yours I read here was about making necromunda walkways? Something about leaping around like a ninja with spray cans? So go for the ruin...

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