Terrain Showcase: The Danger Room, Part 2

In this post, I'll cover the construction of the Danger Room backdrop and the detailing of its floor. I'll also tackle the painting of the sidewalk and streets on the main board.

 

 

Detailing the Danger Room Floor
 

To spice up the flat hex tiles, I drew out tome tech lines, and then used a sharp hobby knife and steel ruler to make V-cuts and cut out the grooves. I also used some styrene plastic to make raised panels and add a bit of texture to the floor. The final touch was gouging out some rectangular channels and adding thicker, ridged styrene into the recesses to look like vents.

 

 

To help transition from the hex tiles into the city streets hologram, I used Aves Apoxie Sculpt to continue the hex grid up onto the sidewalk and cork street.

 

 

Here's the entire three-foot board, with all its detail finalized and the cutouts where the manhole covers and storm drains will go:

 

 

Atomic Mass Games also wanted some hazards (saw blade arms, blasters, and such) for the Danger Room. While I was working on the flooring, I made some bases for the hazards– I used some spare MDF hex tiles and built a lip of ridged styrene card around the edge. These bases could fit over any hex floor, neatly seated in the recesses. (I'll cover the hazards in a future post.)

 

 

Constructing the Danger Room Backdrop
 

The base of the backdrop is frame measuring six inches by three feet. It is not attached, so it can be removed or placed behind the main board for photography. I designed the layout with the control room in the center, and two recessed openings on either side. The whole thing was framed out with foam core board, including steps up to the level of the doors.
The control room itself is a modular piece that fits in the middle gap. Atomic Mass Games wanted the control room to have an adjustable height, so I made two one-inch risers. 

 

 

The risers stack with the control room. (The Punisher miniature and Professor-X were used as scale reference.)

 

 

The control room can be at the bottom...

 

 

...at the top...

 

 

...or in the middle level of the configuration:

 

 

Then it was simply a matter of adding surface detail to the walls. I constructed the stairs, each with a layer of 1/4-inch foam core board, and a sheet of .75mm styrene for the top surface, with a slight overhang at the edge of the step. The same went for the bottom level of the floor. At the front of each step, I covered the foam edge with a thin strip of styrene card.

 

 

All of the walls were skinned with large sheet styrene, super glued in place and sanded at the corners to blend and hide any seams. I drew out the tech details , and then used a Tamiya plastic scribe to etch panel lines into the styrene. Thicker styrene card was used to add raised surface detail and panels. Details like the window and door frames were constructed with various styrene strips and rods.

 

 

To break up the obvious pattern of horizontal seams where the control room and risers stack, I added some surface panels that overlap the layer above or below.

 

 

That was a bit tricky, because the overlapping panels needed to fit together properly in every possible configuration– It required some planning to ensure that an overlap at the top of one riser wouldn't collide with an overlap on the bottom of another.

 

 

For photography, the backdrop also needed to extend further upward to ensure that the top of the "film set" would not be visible in-frame. So, I built an extension that sat atop the backdrop.

 

 

Since that component was mainly for photographic purposes, I only finished the front of it– It was also constructed out of foam core board and the durface detailed with styrene card.

 

 

It could easily lift off for access to the control room...

 

 

...and the underside was detailed and framed with styrene so it could be seated in place and create the ceiling above the entry alcoves.

 

 

The thick black styrene card shapes extended past the bottom, overlapping the wall to help hide the join between the two sections.

 

 

Here's a look at the fully detailed backdrop:

 

 

Painting the Danger Room Tiles and City Streets
 

My usual drybrushing and washing technique was fine for highly textured stone and woodwork, but in order to maintain a clean, consistent color on the flat surfaces of the Danger Room's walls and floor, I needed to accomplish as much of it as I could with sprays. It's always a chore to find two spray paints that are similar enough to create a subtle shade variance without being a different hue. For the blue-metal color of the Danger Room, I settled on Rust-Oleum Satin Peaceful Blue for the main color, and Rust-Oleum American Accents Satin French Blue for the shade color, buth sprayed over a base spray of silver. (And "satin" is a subjective term, because one was noticeably shinier than the other! No worries, though, it just meant that I needed to give everything a spray of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear when finished.)

 

 

I made a small section of hex tile that I could test out the sprays. I also made a masking wall for spraying the shadow color. I Don't have any photos of it, but it was a cardboard wall about 18-inches long, bent to follow a hexagonal row of tiles. It fit into the gaps between the tiles, allowing me to spray half of the tile with the darker color, creating a gradient from light to dark on each tile. (This image below doesn't show it properly; I had taken that photo before I had everything completely dialed in.)

 

 

Outside, I primed the board with dark grey Duplicolor Sandable Primer, and then used some lighter shades of grey to lighten the sidewalk areas.

 

 

By using a light touch on the spray nozzle, I was able to get the can to "spit" a little, creating a speckled surface on the sidewalks. I also used s toothbrush and thinned grey and white paint to flick some paint onto the sidewalks. Then, I masked off everything up to the hex area and sprayed the lighter Peaceful Blue, leaving it a bit faint at the edge of the transition. From there, I used my masking hex wall to add the darker French Blue spray on the "shadow side" of each hex.

 

 

I also used the blues to spray the walls of the Danger Room, with the darker shadow color at the bottom and top edges of the wall, and in the recesses of the alcoves.

 

 

Here you can really see how the two-tone color makes each hex tile pop:

 

 

And here is a close-up of the sidewalk's "concrete" speckle pattern. I gave everything a solid coat of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear to seal it with a matte finish, and then applied a wash of brown ink into the recesses of the sidewalk. The TS-80 protected the underlying paint, allowing me to use some isopropyl alcohol to wipe the excess ink from the surface without stripping off the paint. (Much faster than my old technique of meticulously painting each individual line!)

 

 

With the sidewalks finished, I darkened the streets up to the edge with a wash of grey-black, and then drybrushed the street surface with a medium grey and lighter grey to highlight the edges of the broken areas. A little more brown ink was washed and blended in the rubble along the street edge and in the recesses of the cracked sidewalk.

 

 

Where the hexes fade into the concrete, I stippled the various grey colors to match the rest of the surface and create the illusion of the hologram fading at the edge of the transition point.

 

 

I applied two coats of white into all the recesses of the tiles and raised hex outlines at the edge of the hologram.

 

 

The magenta glow in the recesses was painted with a mix of GW Doomfire Magenta and GW Vulpus Pink Contrast paints.

 

 

Then I added white into that mix and blended it in the intersections to create a brighter glow. The edges of the hex paneling were highlighted with Formula P3 Underbelly Blue and then white at the corners. Then I sprayed the board with Tamiya TS-80 to matte seal it, and applied a wash of GW Nuln Oil into the recesses, wiping away any overspill with some alcohol. The result was a fairly clean blue-metal panel.

 

 

Here's the finished painting at the hologram transition:

 

 

For the lines in the street, I masked off everything and then cut out crosswalk patterns and the yellow lines.

 

 

First, I sprayed all the lines with GW Wraithbone spray and a bit of white spray. Then I covered those spots and sprayed the yellow lines with Tamiya Camel Yellow.

 

 

The tape was carefully peeled off (leaving only one small repair spot where the paint below pulled up– at the left edge).

 

 

Wherever the paint bled under the tape, I simply touched up the street surface with some matching color as I added chips to the white lines.

 

 

Here's a peek at the intersection looked on the finished board. You'll notice that the yellow lines were farther apart so some concrete barriers could be placed between them.

 

 

The final bit of painting on the board was the raised detail of the hex grid, which I decided to pick out in silver. Those bits were masked off and painted with a basecoat of Army Painter Gun Metal and then highlighted with Army Painter Shining Silver. 

 

 

There were a lot of them, and there was maybe a mishap with the paint at the lower left corner that needed some sanding and touch-up? I can't tell if that's glare on the paint, or if it was a spot that I had to sand smoothed because the paint was bubbled and cracked (because, despite it being the best color for the job, the quality and consistency of Rust-Oleum is trash), which I know happened in at least one spot on this project.

 

 

Coming up, I'll finish the painting and the construction of the control room interior, and then I'll show you the Danger Room hazards and how I added interiors to the Marvel: Crisis Protocol cars.

 

 

'Til next time!