This competition ran in November-December 2006 and was run by Neal Crankshaw. We also owe a word of thanks to Eazy-O for writing up this summary from the information posted on the forum.
You may build whatever you like but you must comply with these restrictions:
Your final entry must be on a base that fits inside a square 15cm x 15cm (6" x 6"). Your base does not have to be square - it can be any shape but that shape must fit inside the dimensions. There is no maximum height to the model. The only restriction is to the base "footprint".
You must use a toilet paper roll or a Pringles tube in your entry. Toilet paper roll in this case also refers to the longer version that is used in kitchen towel roll. You can use both and you can use more than one but you must have at least one somewhere. You don't have to have a complete tube. You can cut into it, you can section it, you can do what you want with it.
I wanted to get rid of some junk and this competition was the perfect excuse. I really liked the abstract theme and the material/size restrictions, since I never plan anything I make. That was the case with this one too, I didn't know exactly what I was making until it was shaped.
What I had in mind was a big chimney coming out of a bombed concrete block, tubes and tech stuff protruding here and there, pretty simple!
I made wide use of ash, using it as filler, texture, and creating a dust effect (painting part).
Turned out great, and in fact, I'm planning to make some more similar pieces in order to use them in a city themed board.
This entry represents a batch silo (used for mixing specific batches of different materials as the need arises). It is the sort of thing you would find in a light industrial region of a city. When thinking of how to use a toilet paper tube, "silo" was my first thought and "three silos" followed soon after.
The silos themselves are kitchen towel tubes covered with brown craft paper to disguise them a bit. The art deco detailing on the silos and the circular restraining barriers at the top are from cereal box cardboard. The vertical poles on the very top are cut from ear bud stalks. The piping is all made from drinking straws.
The supporting structure is made entirely from plastic card. I made the H and I beams by gluing thin strips of plastic card together with liquid cement. The ladders are all made from security fencing mesh (or something like that). The yellow hand rail on the supporting structure is made from wire.
The piece is part of my ongoing project to build scenery pieces for an Esgaroth on the Long Lake setting. Given the constraints of the competition, I thought that a windmill would be a good choice.
The core of the model is a pringles tube, mounted on a CD. To create the sloping sides I cut a piece of cork to fit. I then plastered (spackled) the surface. The base is made using a foamcore box and then sided with balsa wood. The sloping roof joining the tower to the base was constructed using a cardboard frame and then covered with individually cut out wooden tiles. I've tried to shade it giving the impression that it's an old well used mill and the roof has started to sag a little.
I didn't use foamcore for the cap (bit at the top), I just used balsa using a pretty standard frame and wall technique. Again it has been capped with individually cut out wooden tiles.
The sails are made from balsa, the drive shaft is a piece of dowelling (harder wood) and yes the sails do turn. There were some fiddly bits and I did a lot of pinning to hold them in place. I've left the sails looking a little rough 'n ready rather than the perfectly finished crafted pieces that they would have actually been. The sails are made from tissue paper and lightly soaked in a water/ PVA mix to strengthen them. They dried taught over the frame which I really like the look of. I then drybrushed them using Foundry colours Rawhide, Raw Linen and White.
I'm really proud of this piece, as I made it completely out of simple materials, easily found in the rubbish, in fact, everything came from the trash. I thought of using the toilet paper roll as a tube, but couldn't figure out exactly how, then I found the medium cardboard rolls, some straws, and eureka! I immediately thought of a pipe organ.
A scrap of foamcore was used for the base. To make the cracks I pressed the tip of my thin pliers and let them spring open. All the corner cracks are made in this way. The longer narrow tubes are straws. To keep them together I glued a strip of cardboard behind them and when dry, glued it in position on the base.
The medium 'brass' tubes are paper rolls from embroidery cotton, I made a notch in the middle of them and glued them on the "stone" piece where the organ keyboard was going to be. The stool is a piece of balsa wood.
The stone piece is just a piece of polystyrene, and the keys are a strip of foamcore. The window frame is also cardboard, and the stained glass window is made from a Pringles lid.
I gave everything a first white creamy coat and then used leftovers mixed with plastic and wood sawdust to texture walls and stone. The walls had various layers of black, brown and orange washes, and the floor had a grey and white drybrush. Tubes were painted brass, washed brown, and drybrushed yellow. The big fat tubes were painted black and heavily drybrushed oily steel. An orange wash was given to these two. A little green was added to enhance weathering, and the stained glass window got broken and scattered.
This is a ventilation stack that allows air exchange between the surface and the subterranean factory/hive.
I was looking for a quick-to-complete project and had seen gutter downspouts used on a Space Hulk board. This was my inspiration. Given my limited time to dedicate to terrain building of late, I used what I had on hand for gubbins to dress up the basic structure.
The hardest part of developing the model dealt with making the toilet paper tube look like something other than a toilet paper tube. You can find out more about this piece by following this link.
The 15cm Base Competition gave me a chance to build an objective for use in wargames and I decided to make a radio tower based on 3 CDs and a toilet paper roll.
I used a standard CD for the base and another for the antenna disc. The tower itself was a toilet paper roll mounted on a base made from a plastic handle from my bits box topped with a platform made from a small CD.
The mounting for the antenna was built from an electrical plug, a piece of plasticard and a screw. The receiver was made from a plastic pipette from an old laser printer topped with a screw. The disc was rimmed by microchips mounted on plastic stirring pins heated and bent 90 degrees. The platform supports were cut from foamcore.
The tower was coated with grey paint and wheat flour. The platform - after being covered with a plastic net - was painted metal and washed in black and brown ink. The mounting was painted metal and washed in black paint.
The disc was painted light grey on the underside and left bare on the upperside. The chips and supports for the disc were painted bronze.
The base of the whole thing was painted sand brown and finished with nylon grass and assorted vegetation (a plastic aquarium plant, a natural stone and various scatter from the model railway business) to match my jungle terrain.
The undercity of Protean Prime relies on many of these Thermal Vent Stacks to regulate the temperature of both the undercity and the surface. In recent years the leavings of the ork Waaagh of Guttoof have begun to become more eminent. Small bands of feral orks have been exterminated; but encounters are being reported with more frequency. The Imperial Guard have been taking measures, including regular sweeps of the undercity vent shafts; mainly due to reports from the Arbites of 'Kommandos' (Imp.ref. Xen6509q64 398M40) in the tunnels.
The Thermal Vent Stack was created using the main ingredients of the competition: a toilet paper roll and a Pringles tube. They are mounted on bamboo skewers to a 6"x6" base. The fence is bamboo skewers and aluminium craft mesh. I painted it using GW paints, and detailed it with some printed signs.
These pieces represent a couple of ruined support and supply pillars in a Necromundan Underhive. Two of them have also been converted into lookout towers by the local gangs.
Construction was pretty simple with broken up hardboard forming the base and cardboard tube filled with paper forming the pillar itself. I also used some PVA glue and sawdust mix for the ruined damaged sections. The rest is bits of cardboard (platform, parapet), some foamcore and string (lower floor), drinking straws and some cables (piping). The ladders are regular bent pins.
I undercoated everything black and painted the pillars grey and yellow with tempera paint. The rest got a light spray of silver and heavy weathering was applied via a number of watered down paint washes.
All in all, I like how it came out, though it could use some more detailing. It has already seen some gaming use and performs great. Trust me, you do not want to face a couple of snipers up there.