Abandoned Listening Post

Something a little different, it's a scratch build.

But before jumping in on the images, let's have a little story.

My son builds Gundam and wanted to make a few pieces of his own from scratch, so it was a lovely opportunity to pull out a classic book from my painting shelf, the How To Make Wargames Terrain book that got all my nerd synapses firing as a child myself. Frankly it still does.

From there, we raised my bits box, took some plastic shot glasses, straws, cardboard lollipop sticks and other assorted elements. Throw in some PVA glue, clippers, superglue That's right, this is oldschool model making!

You can see a general idea coming together. A couple of towers, a pathway, some pipes inbetween. Simple, because there's no value overcomplicating ... but obviously I'm stupid and opted to complicate my life by sticking lots of things onto my building. Some lessons were learned here. I'd go back and scratch up the plastic surface to aid materials sticking to it. I'd think more about how to use the rounded surface better and break up the surface more with thin cardboard. If it's white, then it's 220gsm card, if it's yellow then it's straw, and if it's light brown it's parts of toothpick or lollipop stick. I found some old plastic beads for putting in paint bottles as mixers, so popped a few of those on the roof. Here's a better photograph of the various elements stuck on.

At this point we had a small change of plan. My son wanted to change his scene around, so instead of two buildings, there needed to be space for a Gundam. This did give me leeway to take my building away and make a separate scene, but first we needed to understand what my son's scene would be. After consultation, we decided on a Gundam sat on the floor, as though it had been punched backwards across the ground, and come to a halt in the ground. So the base would be mostly grass, but mud and soil where  the robot was sitting. We marked it out, applied mud texture paint, waited for that to dry, then applied static grass elsewhere et voila! 

My son's very pleased with his first scene, and I'm delighted he did something different. There's still a lot he can add, like weathering the tower and the pipes, but the fact he opted to create it from nothing is a reward in itself. He's already planning his second diorama, which will be a Gundam building factory, and might even take it to model shows this year, which would be fantastic.

I went a little further with mine, aiming for a Tales from the Loop feel to the piece.

Decals are Space Marine transfers I had. Some big tufts of grass, more static grass of different lengths and enamel washes to give the feeling of a corroded building. You don't need a list of paints for this one. Just build, have fun, do something you don't usually, and enjoy the process.