Colony 754 - A sci-fi settlement in the making

 

Small housing hubs for Rogue Trader/Stargrave/Whatever sci-fi tabletop game.

The OWAC did saturate my hobby project queues. The end result was even more satisfying than what I could have expected. But it is time to move onto the fantasy a little bit and end some stuff I was delaying for some time in my other blog (Tales of Brush and Sorcery). 

For now I cannot advance in the eldar vehicles and I am not going to commit in another large portion of my army for some time. Also, I will reserve some of the older sculpts for a future OWAC. 

I had a lot of fun painting the old eldar pirates and my plan is still using them in Stargrave. So I thought that in the meantime I can make some terrain that is fast to paint and do not alter my somewhat organized plans before the V Old World Army Challenge (which will be old metal dwarfs!). 

Reading the rulebook, I noticed I lack some sci-fi houses. So I am going to give a solution for this “housing problem” as I did with the fantasy scenery I own. 

I got some of these vanilla custard plastic cups laiying around with the idea of making some recycled small compoundds or hubs. They are perfect in size, both for storage and as some sort of small colonial prefabricated or easy to build hub. I was lately reading the Martian trilogy and thinking of the small construction that the small automated rover would do in a colony, besides the prefabricated tents. 

 

Adding some elements to the exteriors that resemble conducts, filters, storages or electronic bits improves the aesthetics while mainting the same hub structure made en masse during the colonization process. 

 

The door have a small control or access panel. 

 

The buttons were made using an old trick for doing rivets I learned from the people converting heresy-era marines back in the day, when there were no alternative armour types. 

 

Lastly, I textured it a little bit with fine sand all over the non mechanical parts. The idea is giving the aspect of a sort of concrete material when it is painted.

 

The first layer is an umber or burnt brown acrylic. The main colour will be bone and white, but a good start before drybrushing is convering every non-machine part with this brown. The drybrush is applied getting more pale sand or bone colour to the middle of the height of the house. Then, switch to a pure white or ivory and drybrush several times from the mid height to the top. When the external layer of the hub is complete, we can move to the more mechanical parts. 

First we will repeat the colour in the main door and the roof part with a bit of layering instead of drybrush. We can paint in the same manner some of the external equipment. Then, the tubes, filters, etc. 

Here I used a dark metalic, I recommend even darker than the usual boltgun metal. I add some variety with some parts in bronzes. It is almost done with a pair of watered down washes like nuln oil or your favourite black/burnt wash. It could be called done if you want to. But I enjoy adding some extra details. Like astripped warning sign in the disposal unit of some of the mechanical parts of the hubs. I also added a small painting in the wall, I am going to separate like three different hub sectors for spicing the colonies in my games. 

The windows are made from a thin layer of transparent plastic cut to be glued in the inside of the window frame. Obviously, after applying a coat of varnish to protect the terrain pieces, si this is like an aftermat of the whole process that you can skip if you want to.

After gluing a stipple with a violet ink or some kind of transparent/translucent paint of your liking, so the windows remain like windows.

 

And that’s it, two hub sectors done. In the future I will add another one and probably make another type of hub or building. Until the next entry.