Deodorant Container Scratchbuilding and Contest Announcement!

One of my favorite parts of wargaming in the early days was the need to construct most of our own vehicles from scrounged parts. It seemed like a natural cycle somehow that many of the kids I used to play 40K with would repurpose their GI Joe toys into vehicles for Orks or Space Marines. Toys long ago abandoned to the deep recesses of closets and garages were given a second life as bodged together death machines.

I had been building my own robots and spacecraft for years from model kits and junk. So when I found Rogue Trader it was like finding my true tribe. From issue #98 of White Dwarf and  for years afterward I painted and played various chapters of Space Marines. Although I painted far more than I ever played I love the openness of Rogue Trader and the fact that so many of the pieces in the game needed to be created from imagination, junk, and glue. Lots of glue.

The staff of Games Workshop in those days seemed like the coolest people I could imagine. They liked heavy metal, drinking, and playing sci-fi and fantasy games. They seemed smart but not too disciplined and had a work ethic that got things done. And in the early days of Rogue Trader when someone realized that the game had no vehicles to speak of, a brave man armed only with some junk and toy parts hacked together a legend. I am of course referring to Rick Priestley’s deodorant Grav-Attack Vehicle.

And the Michael Immig mini is aces as well!

Created from said container, spoons, and various Zoids bits this vehicle captured my imagination and led to an extended period of deodorant container shopping. Who cared what the scent was? I was looking for suitable transport for my Space Marine Chapter! (The Archangels sadly fly no more). And as my bits boxes were already overflowing with junk I was quick to get into the gluing and painting of these great little models.

It even got painted purple and fought in The Horus Heresy.

Over the years I developed what I jokingly call “trash bashing”. This involves using primarily discarded plastic bits to make terrain and vehicles for the various games that I wanted to play and rarely had time for. Building stuff was always more important to me than rolling dice anyway. Trash bashing tends to focus more on actual junk than model kits or toys, although these often get used for extra details. There’s a legend that on a dare I even made a piece of terrain from a used coffee filter. But like most legends is probably better left under-researched. Trash bashing was, and still is, great fun to me but it has one drawback: We all tend to accumulate mass quantities of cool looking garbage that never gets used for anything.

It is to address this gaming societal ill that I created the Camel Class Storage Transport or Camel Crawler. The main hull is of course a deodorant container with a scratchbuilt undercarriage and bunches of junk glued onto it. Since I’ve been working on buildings and miniatures based on our comic Yva and the town of Colton’s Curse I thought it would be fun to start building some of the vehicles found around town. This Camel is part of Tasker Mining, a mining company run by the unscrupulous Chad Tasker. Although it is not armed in any way it will be useful for gaming as a moving objective or just good cover. And since I only used bits that I already owned it helped to use up some of my garbage trove.

Tasker Mining for all your deep desert mining needs!

I based the design on one of my favorite classic arcade games, Moon Patrol, as well as Judge Dredd comics. Early 2000AD stuff is something that we draw from for a lot of Yva’s settings so I wanted something that looked like it was designed by the 2000AD crew. And if I ever get anyone to play the new Judge Dredd miniature game it’ll come in handy in Mega City One as well.

The game was tough when I was a kid but I've always loved these cabinet graphics.

I used a combination of cyanoacrylate glue, JB Weld epoxy, and standard model cement. Bondo polyester putty for gap filling and rebuilding some parts. Sheet and strip styrene for detailing. And a pretty odd collection of other greeblies.

This project was 100% inspiration and 0% perspiration.

After going over the whole model with sandpaper to roughen the surface, this is especially important with the deodorant container since the plastic it’s made of doesn’t like paint very well, I used Rust-oleum Multicolor Textured spray paint to texture the surface. This gives a very rough and pitted surface, one that is great for drybrushing but might be a little over the top for most vehicles. It works really well for buildings or for a vehicle like the Camel that must endure powerful sandstorms of the planet Coronus. I think it might also work well for any kind of cast metal like Victorian iron plate.

I then used Rust-oleum Ultra Cover Flat Black spray paint to prime it. This is one of my favorite parts of trash bashing, when the first complete coat of primer makes all of the odd looking parts suddenly come together as a cohesive whole. I then drybrushed the daylights out of the thing before adding some grime with Citadel Washes and adding some Tasker Mining signs to the sides. These were printed on an inkjet printer and varnished before being decoupaged onto the sides.

There we have it! The totally trash bashed Camel Crawler ready to roll over the sands of Coronus. Now to make a stega-tank out of my next container of deodorant...

CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT

This build was so much fun that I’d like to see what my fellow builders can come up with. Beginning on April 1st (no it’s no joke) and ending April 30th I will be accepting entires for the First Annual Roebeast’s Trash Bash Contest! I’ve already got $150 worth of prizes lined up from various companies and a group of gaming celebrity judges to make the big decision.

I’ll be posting complete rules and information next week (March 21st) so you’ve got a month and a half to use up some lovely smelling deodorant and get building. Check back at Roebeast’s Magical House of Sunshine for more information!

Building Colton's Curse Continued...

Just a quick post showing a couple of new buildings. Tomorrow I'm off to Toronto for The Shuster Awards and the Toronto Comicon Fan Appreciation Event 2010. Hopefully meet some new folks and promote Yva.

The Dandee Diner is built pretty much like the first small building that I made except that it's a bit bigger and has half round trim along the top for a more decorative effect. I was a bit surprised while doing research on diners that many real world diners used the little buttresses that I use on my Colton's Curse buildings. Merely for decoration but still looks groovy. The diner features two vent fans on top to keep the place cool, portal windows (a rarity on Coronus), and a fume vent coming out of the kitchen. The portals were made from scrapbooking supplies that are in the shape of small buttons. They are self adhesive but I peeled the sticky foam off so that they sit flat. The sign is a plastic cavalry base with styrene bits. I added a few bullet holes since some yokel would have to take drunken potshots at such a bright and smiling face. A bit more painted trim than the other buildings in town classes up the joint.


Next up is an atmosphere processor or air mining rig. It's made from a Rescue Heroes toy bit that I nicked from Chris FitzPatrick while spending the afternoon at Herb Gundt's making terrain. The piece was originally a small tower like shape but I took it apart and laid it flat by glueing it end to end. I made the round ends from an ubiquitous vending machine capsule and then sanded the living heck out of the thing. toy plastic is notoriously smooth and hard so paint won't hold on to it. The sanding also helps to make a more metallic looking surface after it's painted. I added a few pieces of plasticard for access panels and an X wing engine for the stack. the cool thing about this building is that it will work well for 28mm miniatures or micro scale games like OGRE or Battletech. I am currently painting some oil drums and such to sit on the base while I'm using it for 28mm games.

The next major building will be the Sheriff's Office and jail. This one is turning into more of a small fortress than a normal building. But they need the protection since Colton's Curse is such a danged tough town.

Next Time Fantasy Modeling #3!

Building Colton's Curse

When I first started writing the first issue of our comic called YVA: Blood and Sand I had some very clear mental ideas of what I wanted the setting to look like. Since I build better than I draw I made a small mock-up of the type of buildings that I wanted.

Blood and Sand takes place on a distant mining world called Coronus. One of the small towns where the action takes place is called Colton's Curse (current population 65). Our hero, Yva, has to pass through this dismal hellhole on her way to visit an old army buddy. During her time in Colton's Curse she shows a few ruffians why she's one of the highest paid troubleshooters in the cosmos.



In our story the buildings would be made of fused sand and I wanted an industrial, pre-fab look to them. I used Hirst Arts mold #300 to make the edge pieces and door frame of the first small building. I built the walls with foamcore to save some weight. The building was then textured with Rust-Oleum Textured spraypaint. I use the color Aged Iron so if the outer paint gets dinged it just shows the metal underneath. A custom-made vac-u-formed ventilator, a hatchway from a Platformer set, and a door cut from the bottom of a rotisserie chicken container from the supermarket.

I sent pictures of this building to Des Hanley who is drawing the first issue of Yva and the art that he sent back inspired me to start building the whole town of Colton's Curse. The next building would be the town saloon, Mugsy's.



This building was more involved than the first. It would have two levels and a larger floorplan. I built this in much the same way as the first with the exception of using 1/4 round wooden molding for the edge pieces. This saves a lot of casting time and is much tougher than the cast plaster pieces. The heavier ventilator on this building comes from ArmorCast, Platformer hatchway, more chicken container plastic, and a sign made from styrene. The cow skull and rifles on the front are from Iron Wind Metals. The buttresses on these pieces work nicely as cover for gunfighting miniatures.



The next building is of an older style from the days when Coronus was first colonized. This was inspired by the "bucket of wet sand" domes from the first version of Warhammer 40,000/Rogue Trader. In the terrain section of the book it was explaned how sci-fi domes could be made by pushing rubber balls into wet sand and then pouring plaster in the depression to make highly textured domes. These were kind of cool but sand always came off everwhere and they were heavy as lead.

My dome was cast from Celluclay papier mache using a container from a a microwave Christmas pudding. These containers have a particular texture that seems to release the dried papier mache more easily than other plastic domes I've tried. The doorway was built up from Celluclay and then the entry ground out of it with a Dremel tool once it had hardened. The top of the dome was sawn off and the entire dome sanded. I used Durham's Water Putty (which is also what my Hirst blocks are cast from) to fill the larger spaces in the dome. Then the whole thing was sanded again.



The top of the dome was made from a large Games Workshop plastic base, two angle cut pieces of PVC pipe and a couple of random greeblies. The door was made from sheet and strip styrene. I primed the whole dome flat black since Celluclay seems to absorb paint very quickly and the texture spray works better on a non-porous surface. Since I didn't want the metallic pieces to be overly textured I masked them off with aluminum foil before spraying the dome with texture paint. I did mist a light spray of texture onto the metal pieces but not too much.

After painting the small pieces I realized that they were a bit bland visually so I added a stripe of red ochre color to the bottoms. I picked this up from Herb Gundt who has made several Star Wars Tatooine style buildings. It really helps to brighten up the buildings and I figure that at one time it served a purpose, perhaps to keep out insects, but now has become a stylistic trait.

The miniatures in these images are from Mongoose's Gangs of Mega City One game. Although this is no longer being published boxes of these little fellows can still be gotten cheaply and make a great source of sci-fi thugs.

The full issue of Yva: Blood and Sand will be ready this year. The 8 page ashcan is available now from IndyPlanet: Yva #0

One of the joys of writing comics, besides seeing new art, is the creation of worlds. Designing and creating these buildings really helps me to understand the world of Coronus and why it looks the way it does. I'll continue posting images of Colton's Curse as I finish them.

Next Time: Fantasy Modeling #2!