This competition ran in July-August. It was run by Ariss and has been summarised here by Andy Slater.
After lots of thinking, sleepless nights and haunting nightmares (well, kind of!), I came up with the topic of: factories. I should make clear that I mean factories in a broader sense, industry in all its glory, from the dwarfen beer breweries and the elven armor smiths, to the alien bio processing behemoths spawning tentacled soldiers and the imperial oil refineries. Anything that is used to mass produce something should do although I should clarify that a pile of rubble wouldn't make it as a "ruined factory". Nor would anything that doesn't provide with some clear evidence of its function (eg a burried alien spawning pool that looks like a simple hill from above).
Spanky was really up against it to complete this project as he was preparing to moving house at the end of the month while also caring a 6 year old, 16 month old twins, and his heavily pregnant wife!
The concept is that this is a mixing / measuring / distribution station for some really bad chemical stuff.
The main structure was a baby food jar carousel (broken) with a plastic bottle used for the tank on the top. Plastic pipes and copper plumbing fittings were then added along with pieces of plastic mesh and other bits of junk. A toy crane (plastic) formed the basis of the 'ladder' to the left.
It was sprayed grey, then green, then rust (lightly), followed by several ink washes of various browns and oranges with some lighter green drybrushes and three drybrush coats of rust shades.
The final step was the addition of printed signs, warnings, etc.
This piece was built for use in Longshanks' ongoing Laketown project and, working on the premise that the boat makers in a town built on the lake would be pretty important and wealthy people, this is a high status building with plenty of decoration.
It was constructed around a foamboard shell, covered with balsa. A plasticard template was created to assist in cutting out the window shapes. Halves of balsa dowel were used to create the columns and a number of beams were also added to the inside walls to prevent the foamboard from warping (due to all the balsa being applied to the outside). Crimping shears (wavy scissors) were used to cut strips of tiles for the roof from thin balsa.
The finished piece is 'painted' although this is not obvious as Longshanks wanted to retain the natural wooden appearance. Thus the balsa was 'stained' with thin washes of paint as opposed to being 'painted'.
Following the art deco theme of the mausoleum with which he won our Funeral Monument Competition, Neal went on to build this superbly detailed furniture factory.
The construction of this piece has been written up for our archives (please click here to see it) but you should also be sure not to miss seeing what Neal did to it after the competition was over.
First we gathered all the junk and stuff we could find. Bits and bobs from old computers, video parts we scraped, bolts, buttons, metal scraps, tubes and other stuff from building sites, mechanical parts off old toys, etc, etc. Oh! Of course, plenty of polystyrene and foamcore!
The main building was constructed from a piece of polystyrene packing material with a doorway contructed from the guts of an old Iomega ZIP drive. The inside was hollowed out so that it could be lit from within. The main part of the furnace chimney to the right is the barrel from a toy gun, namely a Colt M4 A1.
This has been by far the most difficult piece of scenery we've ever done. LuMi had a sprained ankle, and had his leg plastered and couldn't walk. This made us go very slow. When we started to paint the mountains, we ran out of white paint, brown and black tints, brushes, spackle and glue. As if this wasn't enough, the lamp of our workshop broke down, so we had to move all the stuff to LuMi's living room, where the light isn't as good.
Most of the factory buildings were made from plastic packaging i.e. blister packs from things like toy cars and ink cartridges.
Although it is not obvious from the photo, many of the buildings are illuminated from within using LEDs from a string of miniature Christmas lights. Where the buildings are made from what was originally clear plastic, the windows were made by covering them with rectangles of masking tape prior to painting, and then peeling it off afterwards. In other cases, where opaque plastic was used, window slits were cut using a rotary cutter on a Dremel tool.
The front and rear walls of the factory are sections cut from the plastic case of an old phone system hub. px166baja observed the interesting shapes when it was being thrown out and added it to his bits box.
The wall sections were then mounted on an MDF base and end walls were cut from hardboard. The loading bay door is made from corrugated cardboard.
The roof, made from more of the phone hub case, rests on rails such that it can be removed to allow access to the inside, which is kitted out with all kinds of mechanical looking odds and ends to represent the factory machinery.