Finally, at the very end of the less than stellar past years, I managed to get some more work in on this project.
I had some days off, and I took one of those days to create another building for my Tatooine scenery. It literally took me one day, including drying time, even though I did schedule in a little break in the evening to play a game of Gaslands on my desert table (but that's for a different thread).
There was always going to be a moisture farmer's homestead, obviously. It may not be the Lars family one exactly (read; a burnt out hole in the ground
), but it could pass for it, or any other generic moisture farmer's house. Or at least, what's on the actual surface of course.
I started with a styrene ball cut in half. I believe it was 12cm in diameter. Then I cut a block of styrofoam into a low cilinder, with a diameter slightly larger than the half sphere, and these were glued together with hot glue.
Previously I dabled with PVA and cocktail sticks, but the waiting time was annoying (and dear), so I switched to my glue gun, and this seems to be the way forward.
After this, I cut three blocks of the same height as the cilinder, and cut one side of each concave to match the curvature of the cilinder, so they would have a good surface for glueing them to the main body.
On top of these, I glued down some half cilinders, cut to shape to match the curvature of the dome on one end, and finally, flush witht he protruding blocks. For the front (center) one, I did the same, but I cut off about a centimeter or so off the half cilinder and cut out the top half of the door. I then also cut out the same depth and width from the lower block before glueing the two parts to that same block.
This was to be the door. I glued in a length of zip-tie again, to get that ribbed look on the inside of the doorframe. The door itself was made from polystyrene sheet, with a pattern cut out of a second piece, and glued on with plastic cement. This was then simply slid into the door opening from underneath, behind the zip-tie ribbing. Pressure would keep it in place, but I added some PVA for good measure anyway.
The control panel was a made from a few pieces of polystyrene cut-offs. Used were a small rectangle of 2mm thick sheet, and some different diameter polystyrene (or ABS?) rod, both round and square.
The end result would later be pushed into its place by cutting away the wall-filler, and pushing in the foam to the desired depth. A drop of PVA went into the hole and the panel was pressed into it.
On the back, I added a vent of sorts from my 40K bits box. A space buck for the first one to guess its origins
The surface of the entire structure was then coated with wall filler, and smoothed out with water here and there. When dry, it was then sanded down to bring the surface relief moderately into scale, using homemade sanding sticks (icrecream sticks with glued on sanding paper; cheap and effective
).
The rest of the proces was actually (very) similar to that of the first Tatooine building I made, so if you're interested, read all about that on the first page of this thread
I then added some crates etc to the front of the building, to make it look that little bit more like Owen Lars' real estate; in pictures from A New Hope, there are quite some boxes, crates and bottles scattered around the doorway, so I emulated that with an assortment of suitable items.
There's a crate (or crates?) from Oshiro modelterrain, two different crates from the previously used Star Wars Legion Battlefield Objectives set, and some other random scifi resin bits, like a barrel and a fuel(?) can.
As a final touch, I ran a wire from a deep crack in the front wall, to the vent thingy on the back of the building. Judging by the moisture leaking from the thing, it must be some sort of airconditioning unit. Any passing Tusken would have an immediate fit at the sight of such a waste though!
Now, the final weathering still has to be done, but I will only break out the weathering powders once I get my hands on more matt spray varnish. I'm all out at the moment, and we're currently in another lockdown, meaning all non-essential businesses are closed (to me, hobby supply shops are very essential, but apparently, nobody seems to take my phone calls on the matter seriously).
So that'll have to wait a little bit longer.
For now, here's some pictures of the newest addition to the Star Wars fold...
And a few gratouitous pictures of all my current finished Star Wars terrain:
'Hello peasant. Nice place. Want to keep it that way?'