Terrain Showcase: The Danger Room, Part 4

Charles Xavier's Danger Room is famous for its obstacles and hazards which hone the skills of the X-Men to a razor's edge. Here's a look at the scratch-built hazards I made for this project, along with a tutorial for adding interiors to the Marvel: Crisis Protocol cars.

 

 

 

Building the Danger Room Hazards
 

I built three types of hazards: Saw blades, laser turrets, and crushing walls. Atomic Mass Games also asked to have a car that was being cut in half by one of the saws, and I made a handful of other wrecked vehicles to populate the city ruins. The hazards and cars were among the final elements I built for this project (as you can tell by all of the finished buildings in the background), but I'm showcasing them here to organize all of the Danger Room content into the first half of this series.

 

 

As mentioned previously, I made bases for the hazards out of the same MDF hex tiles that I used for the floor. The edge of each was covered with strips cut from Evergreen "Metal Siding" polystyrene sheet, 1mm thick with 1.5mm spacing on the ridges. This allowed the bases for the hazards to fit over top of the floor tiles and lock into the hex grid.

 

 

Because these were built at the end of the project, I was coming up against the deadline, didn't take as many step-by-step photos as I would have liked; I only have images of the final assembly. Atomic Mass sent me some 3D-printed saw blades, and I constructed the arms to hold them.

 

 

Each arm segment was made by layering thick styrene. The elbow hinge was made from a styrene tube, with a thick rod in the center and a round bit made with a hole punch in the center. The ends of the arm were rounded to fit around the hinge and were pinned in place for stability. (Alas, the hinges do not move.) The pistons were made with small styrene tube and rod, with different bits of styrene to make the attachment points and bolts. The housing for the circular saw blade was made by placing a strip on each side.

 

 

The crushing walls use the same arm design as the saw blades, with a large plate of thick styrene attached to the end. To make the teeth of the walls, I glued rows of L-Strips onto the card, sanded the ends smooth and flush, and glued a strip of thin card to cover the ends. Once the glue was set, I trimmed the card along the "stair step" edge of the teeth, and then framed the entire thing with small L-strips.

 

 

I engineered the walls and positioned the teeth so they could fit together:

 

 

The laser turrets were made with styrene tubes and rods, and some other styrene bits. The angled, dark grey body of the turret was made from combining two halves of the small cover above the garage door on the back of the Marvel: Crisis Protocol apartment building, with bits from the dumpster underneath.

 

 

All of the hazards were painted with silver and grey– GW The Fang grey, highlighted with Formula P3 Underbelly Blue, and a darker grey for the bases.

 

 

 

Adding Interior Detail to the Cars
 

The Marvel: Crisis Protocol cars are hollow (with some support structure and connecting pins) and an easy solution I found to add detail to the car's interior was using cheap toy cars that you can find at the grocery store. They were about the same scale, and these metal trucks had plastic interior seats and dashboards that were easily removable.

 

 

Once the top and bottom of the truck was unscrewed, I popped out the guts:

 

 

The most challenging part was cutting out all the windows on the Crisis Protocol cars. The plastic on the cars is quite thick, and it's easy to accidentally cut the trim around the edge, or the windshield wipers. My technique was to drill a few large holes in the window and clip out as much material as possible as close as I could comfortably get to the edge of the window frame. Then, I went in with a hobby knife and carefully sliced away the remaining material, leaving a clean edge to the now open window. The toy car interior only needed a little trimming to fit inside: 

 

 

Even the dashboard and steering wheel fits snugly.

 

 

The seats were glued to the bottom of the car, and the dashboard went in the top. Because these are wrecks, I used a heat gun and some smooth needle-nose pliers to bend and dent the front. The bottom of the car needed to be trimmed to fit the new contour of the smashed-in front end.

 

 

The toy trucks even had inner door panels that I was able to remove and fit into the Crisis Protocol car. You'll notice that the rods and pegs that normally hold the two halves of the car together have been trimmed away; I didn't bother cleaning up the ones on the ceiling since they wouldn't be visible.

 

 

I also added some grooved styrene in the back to represent the trunk cover in the hatchback and SUV, and it does a great job of hiding the empty interior behind the back seat.

 

 

These toy car interiors fit on both the hatchback and SUV. Since the SUV was already smashed up, I didn't need to do much extra "body work" on it other than cutting out the windows. The hatchbacks really needed a good working over with the heat gun and pliers to make them look like wrecks.

 

 

As I mentioned at the top, there needed to be a car getting cut in half by the saw blade.

 

 

For this car, I cut the whole thing apart, and cut the seats in half as well. To add some extra framing detail on the floor, I used some spare bits of plastic.

 

 

Painting the Holographic Buildings

 
I'll cover the buildings themselves in a later post, but I wanted to talk about two of the buildings, and how I painted the backs to appear as though they were fading into the edge of the hologram. First, I finished painting the building normally:

 

 

Then, I carefully sprayed it with a mix of Rust-Oleum Satin French Blue and Peaceful Blue. I didn't really mask anything off, I just held the building at angles so the spray would only hit one side. Details like the roof stairwell and the fire escape were sprayed separately. The rattle can spray allowed me to get a gradual fade along the edge where it transitions from hologram to solid building.

 

 

As with the Danger Room floor tiles, I edge highlighted the details in the blue area with Underbelly Blue and white. Then I sealed everything with Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear spray, and washed some of the purple mix (GW Doomfire Magenta and Vulpus Pink Contrast) into the recesses.

 

 

I stacked two levels of the small shops together to create a taller building. After finishing the front and sides of the building, I sprayed the back and gave it the holographic treatment.

 

 

These two buildings help extend the backdrop for the "exposed" area of the Danger Room, and the fronts still match the rest of the city.

 

 

Finishing the hazards and holographic buildings was the end of this project, but we're just getting started here– There's still the rest of the ruined city and a bunch of wrecked Sentinels to talk about!

 

 

'Til next time!