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<td>This fortified tower by Jon Enge would be equally at home in a
Sci-Fi or fantasy setting. It's a great example of foam core
construction from a new modeller to TerraGenesis. Over to Jon:</td>
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This is the bunker tower I've been working on, it seems like,
forever. I based it partly on a tower bunker that they had in White
Dwarf when the Dark Eldar first came out, and partially on the Gothic
Church on TerraGenesis.
Tools and Materials
# Foam core
# Mount Board
# Leather punch
# Styrofoam
# Four Halloween skull rings
Method
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<td valign="top">The main building you can see here. It is made
from mostly foam core. The spikes on the platform are from made
out of mounting board. I used my leather hole punch and made
holes, then cut the spikes out with scissors (you can see a
diagram of this in the Gothic Church
project). The spikes at the base are made the same way, but with
cereal box cardboard. I cut the door out of mounting board and
glued it onto one of the walls.</td>
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Then I had some Plastruct plastic strips. I cut those to size and
glued them to the door with super-glue. Then I took the same plastic
strips and used my leather punch to cut out rivets. I made a bunch
from a medium sized punch and a bunch from the smallest punch. I glued
the big ones on first then, I glued the small ones in the center of
the big ones. And oh yeah, the cross thing in the middle was from a
"He-Man" chest plate I had laying around from my childhood!
I cut a piece of screen and put it down on the platform. Then I
framed the screen with plastic strips and made rivets just like on the
doors and framed the platform using the same process as above. I got
some plastic skull rings from Michaels around Halloween and glued
those on the side, originally to hide the join, but it ended up
turning out looking really good.
Finally, I needed some holes for my guys to shoot out of. I should
have cut them out first, but I didn't expect it to go so well on the
first shot. Anyway, I took an eraser and coloured the end of the
eraser, then used it as a stamp on three of the walls. Then I cut
along the lines with an exacto knife.
Well, the construction's done... let's move on. (Geesh!)
Basing
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<td>When I was done with the basic construction I decided I needed
to make the tower on a raised platform to allow the stairs come
up to meet it. So, I cut out 3 layers of foam core, and one
layer of mounting board and used it as a riser. I took a clip
board and cut off the clip part to use as the base. Then I glued
the riser down with hot glue. After that was ready, I glued the
tower to the riser. And then I glued the stairs in place.</td>
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Now came the hard part. I had to make the tower look like it was on
top of some sort of rock rise. I took my hot wire cutter and cut some
long rectangles of styrofoam. Then, leaving one 90 degree angle, I
made a rock face on one side. The rocky base is actually made up of 9
different foam pieces. I glued them to the base around the bunker.
When this was dry there were huge cracks between the pieces of
styrofoam. I knew I was going to cover the whole thing with filler, so
this was no big deal.
So that's what I did. I filled in the cracks with filler and
stippled the entire bunker/rock structure with filler. When it had
dried I sanded down the bunker because I wanted to get a concrete look
to the whole piece.
I then covered the base with PVA glue and sand. Then sealed the
sand with watered down PVA.
I was just about to start painting, when I realised it needed
something just a bit more. I consulted one of my friends, Eric, and he
recommended some ammo/gun crates. So I made them out of mounting
board. They're 2cm wide, 4cm long and 1cm high. When I cut it all out
I glued it together with super-glue. When dry I glued match sticks to
the tops of the boxes and waited for them to dry. Then cut off the
excess... then I got to painting.
Painting and finishing
I started with priming... gotta prime everything. Then I painted
the rock base in a very dark grey craft paint. Highlighted in lighter
greys and finally white. The tower was painted a medium grey, then
drybrushed in lighter grey and a lot of white. The base ended up
looking too much like the tower, so I drybrushed over the white with
the lighter grey.
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<td>I wanted the door to look really nice, like this was an active
outpost, and the place was well taken care of. So, I painted the
whole thing black and drybrushed it all in boltgun metal. Then I
drybrushed the highlights with Mithril Silver. It came out
GREAT! Especially the cross on the door.</td>
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I painted the base green and drybrushed yellow for a really nice
plush grass color that I use on all my stuff. I had glued some kitty
litter down when I glued the sand to the base, so I painted it up just
like the base to give a rocky land kind of feel. All of my terrain has
bits of this around. And finally I added some Woodland Scenics
"Field Grass" as thrushes.
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<td>Here you can see the detail of the top of the tower. Note the
screen, plastic strips and rivets that I told you about earlier.</td>
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