Another photo dump of the last ten days or so progress on my Build Something Contest 2025 entry. My LAF project thread is getting much more regular updates (new photos every other day or so at this point) if you want to follow along!
As of the last blog post the nose had been skinned but not much else. Since then I’ve tried several designs for the wings, disliked every single one of them, built and detailed the removable roof for the cargo bay, and started doing detail panels on the nose.
Check the captions of the photos below for more details.
Engine/wing mockup in cardstock. This is the second, smaller, angular wing.Second wing in place, with the first bigger slab-like wing on the cutting mat. Still not happy with either design, so I left the wings alone to do other stuff for a bit!One of the wing mockups taped in place alongside the open cargo bay.The underside, showing the three landing gear bays and the un-skinned belly.Primer! I’m going to be painting the cargo bay before gluing the rear bulkhead & ramp in place, so it got primed.Rear ramp deployed, couple of 28mm figures hanging out for scale.Wider view of the rear bulkhead & ramp with the whole shuttle propped up to about the height it’ll sit on it’s landing gear.The ceiling of the cargo bay all detailed.Roof! The start of the removable roof of the cargo bay.The top of the roof, with the docking port/escape hatch detailed. It’s recessed into the roof.The roof in place, looking foward toward the nose of the shuttle.Detail panels in 0.5mm styrene being installed. When installing across a bend like this, much easier to glue one side down, let the solvent glue cure, then do the other side across the bend!Second detail panel installation, side view.
The belly skin will be installed today, and then I’ll be able to carry the detail panels aft from the nose, down the belly, and around the landing gear bays.
I’ve also (finally) started building the actual landing gear, because I need to set the height of that before I can make some detailing decisions for the underside of the beast.
Then it’ll be back to the engine & wing subassemblies, where I have a third wing planoform I want to try out that I think will work better than attempts 1 and 2!
Decided to go with the nose next instead of the wings and engines, and as predicted in my last post, it required a lot of mockup work, in two stages.
First, I did an internal frame to establish the basic proportions of the nose and give me a nice solid frame to hang the skin from.
I redid parts of the skin mockup three times, including scrapping round three for part of the sides and going back to round two’s ideas. The advantage of all of the fiddling with cardstock and masking tape, of course, is that I knew what I was doing (mostly) when I switched to 1mm sheet styrene and started the real thing.
I also cut back the outer (top/bottom) corners of the sides where they extended forward, and that was the right call, it made integrating the nose and sides easier.
The hammerhead nose was a spur of the moment idea while planning the first mockup piece and I really like how it’s come together; the hammerhead let me play with the angles and bulk of the nose area more than a more straightforward taper would have.
Mockup for the nose frame.Nose frame finished in 1mm styrene. I wound up cutting most of the long thin brace on the outer side off, but all the internal bracing gave me a nice solid, trouble-free start to doing the skin.Finished nose frame. The whole beast is just under 11 inches long, nose to back end, which is perfect.Closeup of the top left with skin mockups in progress.Nose skin mockup in progress, figuring out what to do between the hammerheads and the start of the body/sides.The underside of the nose, mockups in progress.Finally cutting styrene! The big panel behind the hammerheads has a twist to it, so it got anchored down with elastic bands and left for the plastic cement to cure for a bit.Styrene skin in place, sanding and puttying cleanup started. There is going to be a LOT of sanding.Current state of the nose, with putty smeared around a lot of the seams and sanding in progress.
I really like how the whole thing is shaping up, it has a good bulky angular look to it. There’s going to be a round of detail panels over this initial skin, after the endless sanding and puttying is done – some of the seams didn’t come out quite as well fitted as I’d like, so there’s going to be some remediation before detailing can start!
Still to do, in rough order of size/complexity of the subassembly: the engine pods and wings; the roof for the cargo bay; landing gear and landing gear bay doors; skin on the belly.
I’m away this coming long weekend and have some things to get organized before we go away for the long weekend, and as mentioned, the next while is likely to be mostly sanding, so it might be ten days or so before there’s another blog-worthy update to this project!
My Build Something Contest 2025 thread on LAF is here; the rest of the contest has some very cool entries – there’s another couple of shuttles or dropships, some neat magical walking constructs, and a bunch of other cool concepts among the other contestants! Entries just closed on February 8th so everyone who’s in for this year is in!
Mocking up the sides with light card. I didn’t get a photo but there’s three pieces under each of the big side panels to give strength.Mockup stage showing the in-progress underside of the shuttle.Local supervisor hard at work.Styrene sides cut and installed, with the angular extensions at the back.Designing the initial panel of the rear bulkhead.Never enough clamps. Or clothes pins in this case. Adding bulk to the underside of the extension on top of the rear bulkhead.Rear bulkhead and ramp complete and detailed, outside view.Rear bulkhead and ramp, inside view.Rear bulkhead and ramp dry fitted to the body. I won’t be gluing the subassembly in until quite late to make painting the interior easier.Rear subassembly dry fitted, outside view. There will be small panels in each lower corner to cover the groove the ramp hinge pin rides in, and detail panels on the insides of the fuselage extensions.
Very pleased with progress so far. Up next will be either the engine/wing subassemblies on either side, or the nose, depending on my mood. Both are going to require more cardstock mockups, especially figuring out how the nose is going to join up to the front of the current body assembly…
It’s Build Something Competition on the Lead Adventure Forums again and once again I’m running them, so have been a bit behind on my own entry (unlike Brian, who is racing ahead with construction).
This year’s theme is Vessel or Conveyance, so most are doing movable things like shuttles. Although we have law firms, we do have two alcohol-related entries – my distillery and Tarnegol’s brewed. May the best booze win!
Inspiration and initial thoughts
to start, I did a bunch of Googling to find good images. There’s actually a whole 3D printable stl for a distillery by MiniatureLand on MyMiniFactory, so that was a good place to look for inspiration:
Distilling itself is a product of alchemy, which are basically the same art with different outcomes. And historically, people did a lot of a alchemy, but strangely really only started distilling drinkable alcohol in large quantities in the early Renaissance, right as European alchemists started building on what the Arabic scholars had done. That does mean we get lots of great art about alchemy:
Il laboratorio dell’alchimista by Giovanni StradanoThe Alchemist by David Teniers the YoungerThe Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers, by Joseph Wright of Derby
And of distilling itself, it really flourished in Renaissance Italy, which happens to be what I’m based on fantasy city on, so happy times. There are lots pieces of art of the key part of distilling: the still (the vessel from the competition theme):
Planning the building
With all those inspiration pieces done, I start the process of figuring out how big I wanted to make the building. I really want to tie it into my planned sewer/basements I’m doing for my city, so that fixes one part of the building: one edge must be 3″ tall for the basement, with the building on top.
With that set, I drew up some simple plans, ultimately deciding on a 6″x9″ building, with big double doors in the long end. The base of the building will be 3D printed, with foam building on top.
Base of the building including the basement.
And thus ends today’s post – with an initial base printing. Onward to actual construction tomorrow
The campaign funded (just!) which was cool, and I put in for 3 sprues. Molding up an injection molded plastic production run takes time and it was late October 2024 before I got my loot, but communication from Pete was good the whole time.
So what do you get? The sprue is roughly 6″ by 8.5″ and well-supplied with everything from shark jaws to antlers to femurs to hacked-off hands on spikes or hooks! I was mostly interested in the antlers and goat horns, but there’s lots of other neat stuff to accessorize scratchbuilding or kitbashing with!
The front of the Dead Animal Bits sprue. See text for details.The back of the sprue. See text for details!
Right in the centre of the sprue there’s half a dozen big shark jaws; the top of the sprue has two different style of goat/sheep (demon?) horn each in several sizes, and deer/elk antlers in three sizes. Below the shark’s jaws there’s some feathers (the small things off to the left of the front view), some rib cages, a bunch of severed hands on spikes or hooks, another style of curled goat horn in two different sizes, a few individual shark teeth, and finally a batch of femur-looking bones, again in several sizes.
A closeup – this is the top left of the front of the sprue. Horns, antlers, hands and heads on hooks, and shark teeth here.
If you want to do whole units of antlered or horned troops you’ll likely burn through a bunch of sprues, but if you just want to add general weirdness here and there a set of these sprues should keep you happily adding weirdness for a good long while.
I’ll be adding horns and antlers to a batch of undead infantry I have in progress, and they’ll definitely be showing up in some of the stranger plans for my slow-burn 17th C pike and shot fantasy project, and in the best tradition of being inspired by random stuff that’s now in your Pile of Opportunity, I’m sure they’ll be showing up elsewhere too…
For the past year I’ve been building some modular fantasy/medieval city tiles for our Sellswords and Guilders games. It has been a long process of building as I’ve chosen the hardest method possible – laying the cut foam stones individually. But I finally have a full 2′ x 2′ square of them done. The impetus this time was our local move into Mordheim and yet another competition – this time the quarterly painting competition on Bloodbeard’s Garage Discord, which had a theme of “unfinished”. Talk about the ultimate un never finished project!
Building the tiles
As with my other modular boards, these are all based on 3D printed Open Lock tiles. I then used my Proxxon hot wire cutter to cut a few different sizes of tiles. I tested two initially: 1/8″ and 1/4″. Ultimately, I liked the look of 1/8″ (as did my wife, but she thought it was nuts).
First test tiles
I also made a 2nd change early on – for the sidewalk I moved from just 1/4″ cubes to a mixture of 1/2″ squares, 1/2″ by 1/4″ rectangles and 1/4″ cubes, always tessalated so that no two of the same touched fully on their long side.
Original style in the upper right, new style in the other pieces
After a lot of work, I had bits and pieces of a table, but certainly nothing enough for even a 3’x3′ (our standard board size). After a hiatus, I got moving again. I also switched glues – from standard PVA to Aleene’s Tacky, which sped up production. So I planned out my initial 2′ x 2′ planned out (well, sort of, I tweaked it almost immediately):
Initial layout2nd layoutFinal layout
One of the pieces I’m most proud of is the curved road section. I was (w)racking my brain to figure out how to make it look good, thinking I was going to have draw lines at angles, but then I realized I could just lay the stones outward from the inner curve.
Outer curbs laidFully laidPainted but not yet dirty
And then, a few (a small number, really) of hours later, I was finished tiling:
Construction done
Painting
For painting, I started simple – a coat of craft black paint mixed with white glue (and a bit of wetting agent to make it flow better), and then airbrushed on some thinned Vallejo Black Surface Primer (a hateful paint if I’ve ever used one).
The first black primer, to tie to all togetherTaping the edges prior to painting
I then re-watched RP Archive’s inspiring city tile video again and decided to follow his painting and weathering method as much as possible. I highly recommend it – it certainly inspired me in my project.
To start the colour, I airbrushed a neutral grey (Demco Artist acrylic) onto the cobblestones and linen (Folkart craft paint) onto the sidewalks. This is also when I noticed I’d left one 1″ x 3″ piece in the painting box. Oops.
Grey cobblestone base layer (with new tiles in the upper right)Whole board painted
Next up I highlighted some of the cobblestones with a dark grey (Army Painter Gravelord Grey Speed Paint) and light grey (Reaper Paint Misty Grey mixed with a satin glazing medium). I wasn’t too fussed about painting exactly here – there were multiple additional layers of paint and weathering coming to hide any issues.
With highlighted cobblestonesOnly cobblestones, not sidewalk, were highlighted
And then a white dry brush across the whole thing:
To finish off painting, I did a black-brown wash. Unlike RP Archive, I did it a bit heavier in pigment – 6 drops of carbon black, 3-4 of burnt umber and 3-4 of sepia in 50ml (all were Liquitex acrylic Inks). It took ~100ml to coat the full 2′ x 2′ board.
Washed tiles on the left, unwashed on the right
And then we get onto dirt. Here I also differed slightly from RP Archive. I had a dark brown grout, so I mixed it 50/50 with dirt, which I sieved with a 1/4″ chicken wire, then baked for a few hours and then sieved a second time in an old tea strainer. This left me with a very fine powder mixture of dirt/grout.
To apply the dirt, I tried the method he suggested in his video but found it didn’t work for me. So I changed it up:
Sprinkle on dry
Spray lightly with watered PVA + wetting agent
Use my fingers to smear the damp mixture around the tile
Dip my hand in water, thoroughly soak the tile
Use a towel to clean off the tile
Repeat 4 and 5 until I was happy with the level of dirt
I left a fair amount of dirt on the cobblestones, especially in the corners and in deeper pockets, and almost none on the sidewalk pieces. I found the grout and dirt dried almost instantly, so by the time I was finished all the tiles, they were dry enough to take outside and soak in watered PVA to seal them in. I’m going to have to do a 2nd coat, as some of the dirt is still a bit loose.
Comparing dirty (on left) with just painted (on right)Very dirty process of dirty-ing up the tilesDirty tiles 1Dirty tiles 2Dirty tiles 3
Lastly, I had punched a bunch of leaves using an AliExpress leaf punch (non-affiliate link – I used the 05 colour). I dried some straight and soaked some in glycerin first, then dried. I found the glycerin ones were slightly translucent and showed the tile through them, so I’ll use them for something else (I’m going to try dyeing with inks and fabric dye next). Note that some of the colours were lost as they were dried, which was a bit unfortunate but expected.
Punching leaves from leaves.
I glued them down on the edges where leaves would naturally blow to, a truly finnicky process as the dried leaves were quite stiff. I tried soaking them in watered down PVA, but that didn’t seem to help – although I suspect I could rehydrate them by soaking them overnight. Some definitely will still lift (and have), but they are trivial to replace.
Leaves glued in the corners
Painting the Statues
For the statues, I painted them fairly simply. They were both on foam plinths or backgrounds. They were base-coated along with the tiles.
The bleeding eyes girl was quite simple – dry brush various greys on her and her plinth, along with some thinned greys for the streaks. Her eyes are painted with Reaper Fresh Blood.
For the Ganesh statue, I painted the statue itself with Reaper Old Bronze and then found Army Painter’s Verdigris Technical Paint, which I applied in a couple of coats. It works, but honestly this paint job is a bit simple and for larger statues I’d want to follow something like Garden of Hecate’s excellent tutorial. For the stone backing, I tried some stippling and washes, but ultimately went with sponged on greys and whites.
The Tree
The tree is fairly simple – a bunch of pipe-cleaners twisted up and then melted, with a texture paint (in my case, a DIY texture paste of brown paint + sawdust). It isn’t done, but eventually am going to try and match some of the look here:
Finished Look
And just like that, this 2′ x 2′ set of tiles was done.
The finished tiles
But of course, I need a lot more, especially if I want to get a full 4′ x 4′ Mordheim table done. So the next set is already underway:
Well, maybe not. The next set already underway, aided by Halloween candy.
Well, round 1 of the Build Something Competition is done and I have been beat, badly. The vote wasn’t even close. Ouch. Anyway, at least I have a pretty building for my table.
With me out, means I can share some process photos and discussion here. I ended up painting and gluing the building together pieces by piece – paint some, glue some, paint some, just because of the way I needed to paint the inside.
First thing I did was assemble the upper back section (with the walkway) as a separate piece and then paint the inside of it. I also added mud/spackle to cover the 3D printing texture on the lower section and painted the concrete floor (with a few cracks added with an exacto blade).
After that, I added the inside graffiti to both the lower walls and the upper section. After I had added them, I glued the two pieces together and then added some mud/spackle to cover the gaps and then roughly painted it grey. I wasn’t overly worried, as I knew that I was going to be badly painting the inside white again (to partially cover up the graffiti, as if somebody was working to renovate the building).
Assembled back with spackle/mud covering the gap between the foam upper parts and the 3D printed lower bits.
Then I rusted up the hangers and doors. For this I sponged on paint quite thickly – mostly Burnt Umber but some Burnt Sienna and Raw Sienna for accents. This is what gives these the bumpy texture. I would note that the grey paint was not fully dry under the tape here, so I ended up pulling off a fair amount and needing to repaint it. Oops.
Rusty door hangerRusty doors
After that, I glued the front panels on and then the lower walkway (which touched both the back walls and the front walls). You can see the interior has been painted white at this point.
Gluing in the lower walkway, with the inside now painted white.
Once those were done, I cleaned up the front where the joins were to make the grey tones more consistent. I then masked off the green sections and the upper ghost lettering.
The lettering was over-sprayed with Golden’s Shading Grey, a semi-transparent grey that was amazing for darkening things subtly. I pulled off the letters, which were cut out of Oracal mask on my Silhouette, in a random order, spraying a bit more of the shading grey over the whole area each time.
The last bits I didn’t get any photos of, but this is the “draw the rest of the owl” directions:
The green lower sections I added blue stuff to mask off the damaged sections where the exposed rebar was and then sprayed the lower area, hangers and the doors with chipping medium, and then all three with a random mixture of greens roughly mixed in the airbrush. To chip it I used three methods – light sanding, using tape to pull off random sections and water with a brush. If you use water with a brush, you get lighter sections. I ended up putting an undercoat of white on the doors after I tried just straight green, but that wasn’t covering the rust well.
Lastly, I glued in the windows after painting them separately, painted the exposed rebar and then weathered with oil paints. Overall, the painting felt a bit rushed and I should have taken more time. I also missed a bunch of small details that I’d like to get back to.
And voila! The final product:
Oblique angle shotGraffiti detail 1Graffiti detail 2Inside looking at doorsInside looking at walkwayOther main door
Another year keeps marching on and Build Something 2024 has come to an end and unlike nearly every prior year, I actually finished this year! No pictures of the painted model yet due to the rules, but here are some updates on the construction.
Overall, I managed to only get the warehouse done of the whole set I planned – will have to do the actual landing pad later. But I was happy with where I ended up with the warehouse.
For the warehouse, I ended up with a more “ruined 20th century concrete” vibe than I initially planned, largely because of the design of the windows – rectangular with thin frame pieces.
With that, I switched out a lot of my concept and leaned more heavily into that look. Here’s a few pieces of inspiration I pulled from the internet:
Closed old white metal door in an industrial building
I then decided on a heavy, old-style large doors, with a small door that roughly followed the inspiration above. Both were modelled in FreeCAD and then printed on my Ender 5. The large doors…
FreeCAD design for the large door and hangerLarge door testLarge door hangers glued in place
…and the small door. I first did a test with it printed flat to the bed, which worked. Once I designed the door itself, I tried it vertical. That failed, so I switched back to horizontal and printed it at 0.12 layer height. The white you see on the final image a piece of styrene rod which acts as the hinge.
Small door early testLater test that failedFinal print
After the doors were printed, I moved onto the interior walkway, which by pure accident ended up being perfect height for a figure to shoot out of. I really didn’t plan that at all, but it was awesome. There are two levels of walkway – one at 3″ where the small door opens and the main walkway at 4″.
FreeCAD designFirst test of the walkwayFinal piece, with mesh glued on
And then onto the windows. I ended up printing them twice – the first round I didn’t think were thick enough, so I ended up printing them a second time at double the thickness. I decided to keep the first round windows and used them as external frames, to which I glued clear PETG and styrene too to make broken and boarded up windows.
FreeCAD window designFinished windows
And with all those pieces, the design was basically done! I decided to assemble as a I painted, so this is the final shot before painting:
All the final pieces of the building, not yet assembled.
Onwards to painting, which I can’t show you yet, but here’s a photo of my photo setup. Good photos needs lots of light, so I did just that.
Been doing gaming fairly regularly, had a good weekend at Trumpter Salute 2024 in Vancouver early in March, but apparently haven’t managed to blog a thing in ages.
Here, have a chill painting video in lieu of original content.
Bunch of stuff in progress including a gloriously over the top Gaslands war-bus based on a city busy chassis, which I have been taking a bunch of progress photos of and will try to assemble into a gallery here to show off sometime soon.
Speaking of Gaslands, and somewhat time-sensitive as the Kickstarter closes in 3 days, Fogou Models are running a KS for various Gaslands-scale scenery items. These aren’t STLs but actually physical cast resin pieces. Rad Trax Toy Car Scale Terrain on Kickstarter. The items will likely be available on Fogou’s webstore post-KS, useful for those of us who (say) just had to cough up a home insurance deductible after a plumbing leak and are a bit short on cash…
I’ve had various (ed: poor) success with building things competitions in the past. I’ve singularly failed to finish a single one I’ve entered, even the Build Something Small and Encounter Terrain 10×10, both of which were small things. So the natural thing to do was to organize the next round of Building Something Competition (BSC) on Lead Adventure!
If you’re not familiar with BSC, it is a friendly competition on the Lead Adventure Forum, running for more than a decade. Both Brian and I have entered at various times, he’s even finished something:
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to build this year – either a spaceport or a vertical mill thing for my hellscape terrain. As you can probably gather from the title, I decided on a spaceport. I’ve been doodling a few different options for a little bit, starting with one giant 12″x18″ piece, but nothing was really gelling for me.
First concepts 1First concepts 2First concepts 3
So I decided to try a few different layouts in FreeCAD, see what I liked. I found this cardboard tube from something paper that I wanted to use as the main upright. And I knew I wanted a 9″x9″ building for the main warehouse building. I initially tried a single larger building on a 12″x12″ base, but that didn’t work either. I also tried the landing pad on a big 12″x12″ base. I also didn’t like that
Concept 1Concept 1 with pillarConcept for landing pad
So I decided to split it into multiple bases, the building and starport each on one. And I knew I needed a way to have pads lift up into the sky, so I decided on magnets and printed pads. That is what the orange vertical pieces are – holders for either magnets or metal strips. Those pads will land on a yet another 6″x”6 base.
Main warehouse buildingStarport plus landing pad
Printing things!
I’ve been fighting off some sort of stomach issue for the past few weeks, so progress has been slow, but I finally have printed pieces ready to show at least. But first, a whole lot of failures. I needed to find out if I’d measured the tube correctly (which I hadn’t) and then I decided to use an empty pill bottle as a fuel tank to add on. So several failed prints for those look like this:
Test pieces for main tube holderTest and successful pieces for fuel tank
And finally, the printed pieces (mostly). I haven’t been able to print the holder fully successfully yet, but that is next to go on the printer again tonight. But I have the borders at least done – base, starport base, landing pad base and fuel tank.
