Terrain Showcase: Cosmic Spaceport

Here's a look at the cosmic spaceport scenery that I built for Atomic Mass Games and their Marvel Crisis Protocol miniatures game:

 
These are two scenic pieces, constructed for use as backdrops for miniatures photography. AMG's miniatures director Dallas Kemp provided me with a sketch of the basic layout, and I brought it to life with foam core board and styrene plastic.

 

 

To make the recessed tech details, I applied a layer of styrene card over the foam core building frame. This layer of card had circles cut out with a hole punch, and connecting lines cut between them to evoke a classic "Jack Kirby" style of architecture.

 

 

The pieces were housed in a box with a ceiling.

 

 

Above the "street level" I built a hangar bay with a large door and control panels under a view screen.

 

 

Once all of the construction was complete, I sprayed everything with a dark silver spray paint.

 

 

The consoles and screens were made by stacking layers of thick styrene card, and etching lines into them with a sculpting tool.

 

 

Details like the sign were made similarly to the buildings– by placing a layer of card with cutouts for the symbols over a piece of foam core board. L-strips and U-strips were used for the framing around the sign, window, and door.

 

 

The "glass" for the windows was to be painted with bright colors, so I kept it separate for painting and inserted it afterward.

 

 

The final detail was to add a ceiling, with pipes, cables, and conduits, made from styrene rod bent with a heat gun, and guitar wire. The large, segmented pipes on the roofs of the buildings were made from plastic electrical conduit tubing.

 

 

The ceiling was magnetized to it could be removed as required for photography.

 

 

Here's everything painted. The color palette was chosen to match the scenery in Atomic Mass Games' Cosmic Terrain Pack.

 

 

'Til next time!