Terrain Showcase: Ultron City, Part 4

In the final installment of this series about the terrain board that I built for the Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures game, I'll show you how I built the large Ultron head and the apartment building with the mechanical tentacles growing through it. 

 

Atomic Mass Games had asked me to make the apartment building removable, with an exposed basement below the building's ruins. During the construction of the table frame, I cut the center out of an apartment's base panel, and used this as a stencil to mark a rectangle on the MDF sidewalk. This rectangle was then cut out with a scroll saw, and I glued the remaining frame of the apartment base onto the surface of the sidewalk. The basement walls were created with layers of pink insulation foam boards, and I attached a piece of MDF underneath for the floor.

 

The interior of the basement was then detailed with sections of brick from the apartment walls, and stairs that I made by gluing ABS plastic L-strips onto a sheet of thick styrene. I added some water pipes along the walls with styrene rod. (You can see how I make these kinds of pipes in more detail in my terrain tutorial: Making Pipes.) 

 

 

The techno-tentacles were made in the same manner as the ones running under the sidewalk– Thin styrene wrapped over an under structure, in this case foam and thin PVC pipe. In reality, a collapsed building would fill in the entire basement with rubble, but this needed to accommodate miniatures, so I kept the floor fairly open, with some wooden planks scattered about. Around the top, I used basswood strips to make the broken floorboards.

 

 

The final touch was to build some washers and driers to turn this basement into the apartment's laundry room. I made four foam cubes and covered each side with a thin layer of Liquid Nails construction adhesive. Over this, I was able to super glue some styrene sheets to build the sides of the machines. I sanded the corners smooth to eliminate the joins, and rounded off the corners a bit. I built the dryer doors by gluing a slice of large styrene tube onto the front, and adding some hinges and latches with small bits of styrene. The dials were made by gluing different sizes of round styrene rod onto the control panel, which itself was made from a thick strip of styrene, and modeling putty.

 

 

The front porch stairs and surrounding area was covered with rubble, but I kept the wall inserts clear so the finished apartment walls could be inserted into them. I also made a smaller frame of ruined walls (seen in the image below) that could plug into the base when the apartment itself was "destroyed" and removed from the table.

 

 

As this was late in the project, with the deadline looming, I didn't take as many photos of the apartment under construction. It took a lot of planning to get the parts to fit together the way I wanted. The large tentacles were cut out of layers of pink insulation foam, rounded and coated with Liquid Nails, and then the "metal skin" of the tentacles was made by wrapping overlapping layers of thin styrene sheet around the foam, working my way up from the bottom. Each segment of styrene needed to be individually measured and cut to ensure the flanges lined up and didn't skew out of position as I layered them over top of each other.

I sculpted some round details to add to the tentacles, and resin cast a a bunch so the part could be repeated along the length of the structure. The apartment itself had sections cut out to fit over the tentacles. Where the walls were breaking open, I made bricks out of styrene rod. I found that 2.5mm x 4.0mm square rod was the ideal size to match the size of the bricks in the apartment walls. I cut the rod into lengths matching the length of the bricks, and glued the hundreds of individual bricks in place. Along the wall, you can see a few "popped out" bricks that were made by gluing thin slices of the styrene rod over the position of the bricks in the wall. Wherever the tentacles broke through a window frame, I cut out the window section in the wall and used the separate windows to make broken window frames (which were painted separately and glued on afterward).

On the roof, I broke open the top of the apartment and bent the plastic outward. This was further embellished with panels of styrene to resemble sections of tar paper breaking apart as the tentacle punches through. The roof access door housing and the skylight were also cut up to add extra detail.

 

 

The large Ultron head had to be completely fabricated from scratch. I had drawn a concept sketch of what I would build, and formed the structural shapes out of insulation foam panels. These were all cut into the general shape, and then rounded with a coarse sanding tool.

 

 

The parts were coated with Liquid Nails and left to dry.

 

 

Then, I began covering them with layers of styrene sheets to build up the armor plates. The "face" panel was made from foam core board. To curve it, I made rows of cuts on one side, and then flexed the board into shape. The foam core was also covered with styrene strips and overlapping styrene sheets to build a smooth "metal" surface.

 

 

More of the round resin details were added to the top of the head. To get the discs to wrap around the curved shape, I pressed the fresh casting around the head before it had completely hardened. Once the resin was completely set, I super glued the component in place.

 

Once the outer skin was complete, I made a spot on the board where the head could plug in. I built up a mound of Aves Apoxie Sculpt around the base of the head, and once that had cured, I covered it with sand and gravel.

 

 

Some of the tentacles in the sidewalk converge at the Ultron head, and i added a few more in its "mouth." Since the MDF sidewalk in this area wasn't cut into separate sections, I created the angled and raised paving stones by sculpting them out of Aves putty.

 

 

The final touch was to make some smaller adjoining tentacles growing out of the ground. These were made out of plastic conduit tubing, with sections of styrene tube glued over top to make the segmented armor. The ends were filled with thick square rod and square tube to create the appearance of the techno-organic circuitry growing. 

 

 

A few of the tentacles connect to the apartment next door, and I spaced the tentacles so they looked like they were growing to connect with each other. This allowed the apartment to be tied into the Ultron head while remaining a separate, removable piece.

 

 

I did something similar on the opposite side where I made a base of broken street with tentacles growing up and into the building. The rubble on the ground around the apartment, I made some recesses to accommodate the large tentacles, which are slightly hollowed out on the bottom to fit over the debris.

 

 

The metal components were painted with different silver sprays, and some grey details picked out. I added some rust chips with a sponge. On the two tentacle bases, I matched the street markings so everything lines up when they are in position.

 

 

The tops of the two large tentacles have been given a similar treatment to the growing techno-cables. In this case, I made some resin copies of the bits of square rod so I could repeat them quickly and fill in the entire area.

 

 

Here's a look at the final painted pieces:

 

This was a great project to work on, and posed a lot of unique challenges when designing the various elements of the terrain. 

 

 

This, however, is not the only city that I have built for Marvel: Crisis Protocol, and some of my work on the second one puts this to shame. But you'll have to have to wait a while before I can unveil it here...

Keep an eye on the Atomic Mass Games website, because I have a few tutorial transmissions in the pipeline. The first Star Wars: Shatterpoint Transmission about the scrapyard that I built for them is already live: Rob Hawkins on Kitbashing Star Wars Buildings

 

One final thing before I close out– Before I packed up the Ultron City for its journey to Atomic Mass, I took some shots of my converted Punisher model in the city. You can see how I made him in the post: Converting the Punisher

 

 

'Til next time!