Monday 17 July 2017

Commission: Salute 2017 X wing table.

Well it's been a while and i figured it was about time I actually did the write up for this.

Sadly i don't work from diagrams or technical drawings, So you'll just have to make do with my WIP pics and the image of me using a piece of folded A4 paper to fudge my measurements.

The table is built on 3 levels,
.The ground level featuring the actual scenery with the scarif citadel.
.the playing level. clear acrylic with the top of the citadel poking out.
.the shield gate.a top level of acrylic featuring the scarif shield gate and armada ships.










































Well that's it for the image dump!

In terms of construction there were a few odd points to work around.
First was the sliding scale of the tower, Which had to go from 1:2000 scale at the base to 1:260 at the playing level. This was mostly done by eye , Working on my cuts until it looked right without having a dramatic shrinking point.

Second was the tower construction itself. I'm not the neatest builder so getting the tower symmetrical and stable ,let alone the right size to sit under the playing surface was a bit of a challenge.Again this was mostly done by eye, Cutting one shape until it looked right then replicating it by using it to build a template.

The frame is build of standard off the shelf pine and 12mm mdf.

The tower is build from 2.5mm polyboard. Polyboard is much better than foamboard for hobby applications.IT's slightly more rigid, much more moisture resistant and most importantly completely resistant to solvents. This means it can be fixed quickly with super glue and sprayed with any standard spraypaint.

The gribbling of the tower and the ground level details are all scratch build from your basic off the shelf plasticard .

The trees are push drawing pins , sprayed black and flocked. This was by far the most time consuming part of the project, With over 1000 hand made trees flocked, mapped and drilled into place.

The water is 3 tones of Vallejo blue ,working from a mid turquoise to a sky blue , with a very fine drybrush of white on the shore line. It's all gone over with about 6 bottles of Vallejo still water effect. If I were doing this again I'd most likely switch to clear poly resin to increase coverage.


So that's basically it. The construction went up without too much of a hitch and it was really great to see so many people enjoying the table at salute.
(if you were at salute and have any pics of the table let me know, I'd love to see them! )

And to finish, here's me being interviewed by Beasts of War at 8 in the morning before I'd had any tea, breakfast or real sleep.