Friday 4 September 2015

Steampunk Machinery

So had keenly been awaiting the arrival of my Battle Systems Dungeon Terrain Kickstarter (blame these guys :) ) when I decided to start putting together some ad-ons for when it arrived. The Battle Systems terrain is very much geared towards classic fantasy dungeon delves, but I wanted to use it for steampunk themed games too. Yeah, I could have just spraypainted everything brown and glued cogs on, I know... :-P Anyhow, without any real forethought or planning (or measuring of parts, as you will see...) I grabbed some random bits and off I went...


First up, I had some laser-cut gears made from MDF I had picked up a while ago. I selected a few of the most appropriate looking and sliced through some of them, working on the assumption that some part of the gears would be below the dungeon floor...


I PVA'ed the gears down to a sheet of card (doing my best to ignore the fact that the gears were never going to mesh together...) and placed a frame around 3 sides using balsa wood off-cuts.


A shot from the front to show the 'half gears' recessed in to the floor.



Next, used some MDF to make up a quick backing for the mechanism. Again, failing to measure anything accurately (it's OK, I really DO know better... :-P )


To the back of this I affixed a 90 degree copper pipe I had procured from the hardware shop, and that old staple of scratch-built terrain, 'bendy' straws. MDF casing was tidied up with some card, and smaller spare gears and whatnot glued down to the base.



Shot from the front with more random bits of mechanical scatter.


Ah greenstuff, concealer of all my sins...


A liberal coating of grey primer and things were starting to take shape



Last step involved tidying up the greenstuff, painting, adding rust and corrosion effects, grime on the gears, water effects mixed with a little ink wash to represent leaking pipes, and penning some cracks in to the concrete base.  Pictures above are on the Battle Systems terrain. The grey base contrasts strongly with the mats, which I'm not sure if I like or not. It might look less out of place once I get some more scenery built up to accompany, will see.

No comments:

Post a Comment