This competition ran in August-September 2006. It was run by neakcrankshaw and has been summarised here by Andy Slater.
I think bridges are great tabletop pieces: they make good objectives, they provide good cover and the modeling scope is pretty large. So, the topic for the Aug/Sep competition is... bridges. Anything spanning anything else will do, including various interpretations of the word bridge.
Unfortunately the single image that we have room for here does not really do justice to the amount of detail in this piece. In addition to the superb texture of the cracked tarmac, the sides of the bridge are covered in graffiti.
The sides of the bridge were made from foamcore. Thin card covered with a thin sheet of polystyrene foam was used for the road surface. Foamcore was used for the pedestrian walkway with small sections cut from a plastic tray (packaging from a pizza) being used to create the paved texture. Note the use of noticeboard pins for the balusters in the balustrade.
The road surface was distressed with a small screwdriver and sand was used in various places to create additional texture prior to painting.
A lot of planning went into this piece with a number of drawings being produced in Google Sketchup in order to iron out the details. Earlier designs had the pipes at the side of the walkway however this blocked lines of sight to an unsatisfactory degree.
The supporting structures are made from plaster. A master was made using a Dlmos style mould which was cleaned up, modified, and used to make a silicone mould from which the final pieces were cast.
The walkways were made from foamcore, cardstock, duct tape (real duct tape, as in aluminum tape), fibreglass mesh (like window screen), with rat wire (wire mesh with quarter inch grid) for the railings. The pipes themselves are in fact plastic however they have been painted to look metallic.
This piece stands on a hardboard base and uses two techniques to construct the bridge sections:
The central section is made from uncooked spaghetti stuck onto a strip of cereal packet cardboard and suspended between the end sections.
The end sections, supported on stakes, are made from pieces of plywood with saw marks in it to divide it up into planks. The stakes are made from softwood which was split into roughly quarter inch pieces using a woodworking chisel. These were then rounded off a little by hammering them through holes drilled into a piece of sheet steel!
The entire piece stands on a base of hardboard and blue styrofoam was used for the main rocky structures. This was carved with a hot wire cutter and textured with aquarium gravel and coarse sand. Hirst Arts blocks were used for some of the steps at ground level however the steps leading up to the first section of the wooden platforms are made from layers of foamcore sheet stacked one on top of another.
The wooden walkways were planned out using strips of cardboard which were then used as templates to make the actual walkways from bamboo skewers and balsa wood.
In fact the bridge to nowhere leads to a sacrificial teathering post on the large platform at the left of the picture.
The deck of the bridge is made from illustration board (thick card) and this was also used to make the larger I-beams; by cutting it into quarter inch strips and gluing them together. The smaller I-beams, used for the supporting struts, are plastic I-beams from a model shop.
The ramps at either side of the bridge are cut from polystyrene foam and mounted on MDF bases. These were textured using spackle with gravel and small stones pushed into it.
The entire model was base coated in grey before painting and drybrushing, and completed with bushes made from pieces of lichen.
The bridge can be removed for storage and to represent it having been destroyed while gaming. It is shown spanning a section of Kishkumen's segmented river.