This competition ran in March-April 2007 and was run by px166bajaj. We also owe a word of thanks to Eazy-O for compiling this summary from the information posted on the forum.
The theme for this competition is "Containment". Models should be of artificial structures built to permanently contain stuff, people or animals. In other words, it's never used for anything else. Some examples would include a garage (not a service bay), a warehouse, an engine shed, stables, jail, animal corral, a dungeon or cell, a sludge pit or tank. Basically a thing or building which is built, constructed or converted for the specific purpose of storing another thing.
My entry is a storage facility to supply vehicles with fuel, ammo, spare parts and the like. I wanted a large building with some roof access and the supplies inside to be rearrangeable. The base is a metal plate that came from the inside of a large laser printer. The walls are made of foamcore textured with sand. Pop cans were used as the storage tanks and a soup can added some detail to the back. The rest is either made from random bits, granny grating, straws for pipes and the rest is mostly card. All of the "supplies" inside are collections of various bits that are mounted on bases so they can be moved. The main loading bay door and the side door can be removed to be open or replaced to be closed. The back wall and half of the roof can be removed to allow access to the interior while still leaving the portion of the roof that holds miniatures.
For further details on the construction of this piece can be found by following this link, while larger pictures, additional angles and close up images of this piece can be found in the Staion Alpha 397 gallery album.
My DVD player was securely wrapped up in bubble wrap between 2 cardboard ends. The latter looked like a bleak prison, assuming I built it in N-Scale. I found some cheap battery powered lights at a hobby store for $2 to use as the dimmer facility lights and some keychain flashlights for the guard tower spotlights. I am not quite happy with how huge the guard towers are, but they have to be to get spotlights in there. The fence is dental floss picks, wire and squirrel fencing. The latter was also used on the towers. The battery pack is hidden beneath one of the soap boxes on the roof.
Basic construction consists of a tube and a styrofoam ball cut in half and then trimmed to fit like a plug in each end. Seams were filled with Squadron Green putty and sanded smooth. White glue is used to simulate weld lines. These add to the realism and give some detail to an otherwise plane surface. A berm to surround each bullet was constructed with pink Styrofoam. Basing was spackle with white glue and sand or grass flock depending on the area being covered. For the smaller one I cut a hole in the top and stuck a bottle cap through for a valve cover, and added lifting rings made with copper wire. Support legs were made from thin cardboard and glued to the bottom of the bullet. The larger one had platforms made from a soffit vent (mesh). The smaller platform has posts and pilings supporting it in place. The top works has a railing made from 1/8" dowelling and small wire. The ladder connecting the platforms is made from thin card and copper wire. Painted all over, added Tau lettering for "unleaded", then added rust streaks from the top works, dry-brushed highlights, then mellowed everything out with a light overspray of heavily thinned light tan for dust and weathering.
The storage silo was made from a shampoo bottle, cardboard glued to the outside and then dressmaking pins stuck in to make the rivets. The top was a gas regulator from our old oven. The base was made with icy-pole sticks and the mesh was also from the old oven. The hose was made from wire and some nylon string, and attached to the silo using cable zip ties. Sprayed the whole thing with undercoat and then painted it up to look rusty.
Needing some terrain for my Mordheim collection I decided to make something that could be an objective for a game. This started out as a simple building full of gold, but it just wasn't doing it for me. Then I added a boat and suddenly it was interesting enough. Some new techniques I used include gold piles courtesy of Rastl as well as some weathering techniques. The sail which lies over the cabin was created using paper, paint and a butane torch. The walls are made using my usual method of spackle over cardboard. I added some barnacles to the ship. These were made using white paint mixed with silicone caulking (mastic).
The walls are wood and the tower is a combination of a thick cardboard tube and a cd spindle. The floor was made from cheap linoleum floor tile. The hatch is popsicle stick wood, as are the bookshelves. The contained stuff includes lots of beads, action figure accessories, bits of chain and small plastic birds. The two guardian statues are there to protect whatever I decide to put on the pedestal. They were made of WWII plastic army men. Their modern weapons were cut off and replaced with a custom crossbow and sword. The pillar is the remains of the CD spindle covered with glue-coated tissue paper. The crystal just looked too cool and had to go there, but it's not glued down. I want to be able to put whatever I want on there, depending on the game.
I built 3 pieces, a stable, a well with trough, and a corral. These are built almost entirely out of balsa, coffee stirrers, and craft (popsicle) sticks with a bit of heavy card. Painting was a combination of India ink and conventional painting techniques (drybrushing and the like) with cheap acrylic paints. The roof of the stable and that of the well are made of small rectangles of card from a cereal box. The smithy tools are from Mega Miniatures. The plank wall is made of very thin sheets of balsa glued to thick card or matboard. You have to be careful to not get too much glue on or it will warp. Once it is dry, use something sharp (a finishing nail in a pin vice or the back of a hobby knife) to scribe the lines that will become the spaces between planks. Once you have the wood cut, use something blunt (a ballpoint pen or your finger nail) to widen and round the gap.
The probe assembly is about 2" long, and includes sewing pins, part of a laser toner cartridge, and a weirdly shaped peg from a VCR. The round bits attached to the sides are mounted on styrene, and are capacitors off a circuit board. The track bits are from IDE and other computer cables, the plugs of which I tore apart for these parts. The spiral rod is from a portable CD player. I mounted the track assembly on half a cable plug. The slab is a GW Warmaster base - 4cm x 2cm, with a strip of styrene at the bottom to hold the volunteer's feet. The metal straps are cut from key-clips and laboriously bent and cut into shape.
The force cages were fairly simple - two Chessex dice cubes with control consoles attached. Control consoles were constructed out of styrene and I drilled holes in them and stuck clipped pins in the holes to use as levers.
The tank was made from three layers of 1.5mm styrene. The shark was sculpted in with putty, and then the underwater portion painted onto the floor of the tank. The water is actually PVA glue, which dries quite nicely like water, and then painted to look like water.
I wanted to make a Module with plenty of storage for medical supplies, beds, surgery tables, and of course, a big 'bacta tank'. Raw materials included styrofoam packaging, tubing, cd radio clock casing, small plastic containers and other bits and bobs. The outside of the module (styrofoam packaging) was looking plain, so I added some stencils and painted it with some leftover tan paint. The interior second floor is made from a cd radio casing. The interior was painted pretty much the same way as the exterior. Windows were made from cardstock and most of the furniture from random plastic containers, two chambered pill cases, plastic beads... The exterior supports were made from plastic tubing in order to support the module. I did up doors for the outside of the airlock tunnels. I used mason jar lids for the rings, while the walls and doors are from my wife's card-stock.
I made the corrugated metal from sculpey instead of using cardboard. The Sculpey was run through a pasta machine to make it a uniform thickness, then put between two layers of very fine cardboard (taken from a Lego box) and run through again. Each sheet of Sculpey is textured on both sides this way. Once cooked and hardened they were painted with silver and rust-colored acrylic paint. The painted sides were glued onto a structure built from hardwood. The roof is removable to allow access to the inside. Like all garages, it contains hundreds of cardboard boxes all stacked up. These were folded from paper, filled with hot glue, then glued together in stacks and painted. The stack by the two soldiers is glued to the floor, as are the stacks lining the walls. Two stacks are loose so they can be positioned in a variety of ways. The garage doors were made from one-sided corrugated cardboard framed by two pieces of foamcore. They can be set inside or removed. I thought about having them actually slide up but then they'd be horizontal over the garage, blocking access to figures inside.
This Water Buffalo was made for Necromunda and I wanted it to be multilevel, and have enough cover for the gangers. A water buffalo is just what we called a tank filled with water in the Army. It is a three story structure with a funnel that catches moisture on top. A hose runs from there into a filtering machine on the second level, which then goes into the rear of the tank. There is a nozzle at the front and a 55 gallon drum to collect the water. The base is styrofoam, the skeleton structure made from sprues, pipes are straws & ladders are train tracks. The water tank and the funnel are from shaving cream and deodorant containers, respectively. Barrels were made from PVC tubing and flooring from corrugated plasticard. Standard basing and painting procedures were used to finish the piece.
The central feature was built using card and half of the 'pod' from a Kinder Surprise (a chocolate egg with a toy in a little plastic container in the middle), and covered with the end of a 2l Pepsi bottle, detailed with strips of card and the lid from the bottle, and filled with some webby packing material to make it look suitably cold. The control interface and monitoring console mostly came from old electrical junk (the console itself is a mounting bracket out of an old computer), again decorated with card and some cut up cable ties. The wire mesh is was left over from another project. It looks good, but is far too easy to cut yourself on it when working with it.
This corral for alien beasts was made for 15mm scale figures using a plywood base. The fence surrounding the holding area was made from disposable plastic forks cut in half and glued down around the edge. The gate was made using a part from a computer printer, and some handles from disposable razors. The barn was half a cardboard tube, covered in rice to simulate leaves, and walled at the front and back with spaghetti. The alien trees were made from mastic covered wire with polystyrene craft shop balls attached to the tops.