APC "sculpting"

[Ajsalium]

With the bunch of very inspirational threads that have appeared here recently, I've felt like doing something for my (procastinated) aliens boardgame: my own take on the APC from the movie.
I know there are some brilliant models out there, but I wanted to craft a smaller one, for the teams of 4-5 minis of my game.

Brandlin or Sangennaru (for example), are showing us what can be done with digital sculpts. Me, I'm not going to use the latest technology... it's going to be a little old-school... even rustic... I'm crafting the APC from cardstock.

And this is the log for it.

The first step was grabing pen and paper, and draw the basic shape of the thing. Below, on the left you can see the main side panels, both the "internal" and the "external" ones. It is the latests that pick up the essence of the M577 APC, except that on a clearly more compact size.
Once happy with that it was a matter of designing the other panels. Since it's going to be a cardstock model, I grouped them in as big a piece as possible. The result is the pic on the right.



The next step was thinking on the best posible way to "join" the pieces to make the cardboard model as easy to assemble as possible. Not as straightforward as you may think. The main question was whether to keep the whole internal panels (despite almost none of them ending visible) and the wheel arches as separate pieces, or reducing said panels to the only visible parts, which could have the wheel arches joined in the same big piece. And even though with cardstock models you try to reduce the number of pieces (to save on cutting and gluing), thus prompting the second option, I finally opted for the first one, as having the whole internal panels would help in making the model more robust.

(More later...)

[Inso]

My advice would be to make the model in three modules: middle bit (hull) left wheel chunk and right wheel chunk. Then glue them together.

If I wasn't going out drinking now, I'd throw a sketch together... but I love making cardboard mock-ups of things so if you can wait until tomorrow (when I may have sobered up), then I would be more than happy to put a sketch or two together.

Do you happen to have microsoft excel on your computer (or a suitable spreadsheet alternative)? You can design all sorts of stuff on there just by making the fields into squares and then adding borders or drawing between corners.

Please feel free to PM me and I'll bore you to death with making maps of geometric shapes etc (obviously I will also help in your project if you wish me to).

[Ajsalium]

Thanks for the ideas and offer, Inso.

Don't worry, there's more work already done; I just didn't want to post an humongous wall-of-text to start with (and I'm trying to make the crappy mobile pics I have a little less crappy).

The "module" approach to cutting and building a model that you have suggested is one I know from Ebbles' and Topo's paper models (link and link). While almost a need with complex models, this one is basically a box with an indent, so I'm not using that method. I may regret things later... we'll see.

And I had never thought about using Excel as a drawing program. Rather clever idea. Although I do love drawing on grided paper. I've used that same type of paper, even the same brand, in school, high school and university. How many doodles they've seen! Making these little draws is one of the few things that actually relax me.

[beefcake]

Nice design. Looking forward to seeng it started.

[OSHIROmodels]

Nothing wrong with using card 

Looking forward to seeing progress.

cheers

James

[Brandlin]

Looks interesting.

And I'll echo the comments of the others here, nothing wrong with old school - it requires different skills is all.  I still model things this way when I'm doing one offs. If I am designing something for production, or its complex then i head to CAD.

As to your questions - my best guess would be to design this into as many separate boxes as possible, regardless of cardboard that is wasted or not seen. Interconnected boxes are much stronger than one large one and i find them much easier to build.

[Ajsalium]

Thanks for your words, guys.

Before I post the latest progress, something I forgot to mention earlier. The dimensions of the finished APC will be 110 x 60 x 40 milimeters (length, width, heigth) without turret (I'll add that later).

As you'll see below, I have started to transfer the sketches onto card. I have started with the "inner structure", so to speak. The internal side panels are joined with the base, then there's the four wheel arches, and the "windshield" area/indent (bear in mind that it's not really a windshield because this is an armoured vehicle). On the right you can see the pieces cut and pre-folded.



And this is when I realized that I had run out of glue! Don't worry, that problem has already been solved, and the pieces are glued.

[Brandlin]

Looks like neat workmanship :-)

How are you going to colour it in? I wondered whether printing the paper before assembly was viable?

[Ajsalium]

Painting? That's so faaar away...
In theory, this card APC is just a prototype, to check if the real thing looks as nice as it looks in my head. If it does, then I'd like to give a go at creating something more "solid" (out of plasticard? with Sketchup?).

Anyway, a little fluff.
As I said, this is made to feature in a boardgame I'm working on, one of hunting aliens. A cross between Space Hulk and Doom, but with the real deal, the linguafoeda acheronsis. Because the game is going to be played mostly on tight corridors and small romos the vehicle needed to be small enough to fit there. Being 110 x 60mm, that's just a little bigger that 4 x 2 squares, so hopefully it should be fine.
For the time being, I don't plan on writing rules for vehicle use, so this is going to be merely an objective. As Arnie would say: Get to da APC!
For gauging size, I've made a little research on real world APCs; but I'm also using as an important reference the size of armoured anti-riot police vans, that I know well ( ). Of course, there's the issue that wargaming minis are not really to any proper scale: the proportions are all skewed up to allow for casting. The minis I have are 32mm tall, and not chunky, but still wider than a real human would be. 32mm is roughly 1:55, and that would mean my APC is six meters long, and more than three meters wide! But make it any less wide, and no one will believe two minis can sit in it side by side.
To end this wall-o-text, I rate this as being a 2+6 vehicle; 2 crew (driver and gunner), and up to 6 personnel.

And here you have the previous pieces glued, including a space marine bike (on the process of becoming a lawmaster) and one of the minis that will be used as light infantry in the game, for size comparison purposes.

[Ajsalium]

(Sorry for the double post)

A further step. The "outer hull" has already been drawn on card (left), cut and pre-folded (right):



Now onto the most important step: gluing it all together. I'm starting to regret not following Inso's and Brandlin's advice and assemble the vehicle in a number of modules...
I foresee a lot of swearing and cursing in my inmediate future!


Umh... Turns out that what I really really really regret is not double-checking measurements...

When gluing it all together, I've noticed that there was a disparity between the "inner" and "outer" parts. Basically, the base protusions are 40mm when they should have been 44mm.

Actually I wasn't very surprised to find that. There had been one thing nagging at me, that the rear wheel arches didn't get to the back, as I expected them to do. I kind of dismissed it because I was sure all the measures were correct, and it was me not being able to visualize the geometry. Turns out my spatial visualization is better that my measuring ability.

Nevertheless not everything is lost. And sure as hell I can't be bother redrawing the thing. Resourceful (and lazy) that I am, I have just taken the scissors and cut the inner piece, salvaging the wheel arches. After all, those were the only things that will be seen anyway. Although now the APC is going to be hollow, so rather flimsy. Photos (hopefully) tomorrow.