A thing a week 2020, week 22

And now for something completely different.  The campaign I started this spring involves airliftships, the online 2D assets of which are well-represented here.  Some day we won't be relegated to online play only and I was pretty sure that building nice props would be fairly involved.  Turns out, I was right!

These are the first two I built and they involved a lot of experimentation before settling on a general construction scheme.  I build similar curves in Lego which is a lot less forgiving of a medium and I ended up using many similar techniques.  I started with a piece of Readi-board with a template pasted to it.  Once cut out, I texture with a pen or wire brush and then use scrap pieces to rough out a shape.  For these two I built the keel first and matched the planking to it.  For other builds I built the planking first and attached the keel to that.

Readi-board is not well known for its strength so craft sticks were glued to the bottom of the deck to strengthen it.  These are for play, after all.  After that, it's a matter of adding planking to form the hull.  The basic shape is filled with scrap and whittled away to give the right angles.  For the first one, I started at the bottom and worked up then cut the edges clean at the top.  For the second one I started with the top row.  I like the look of the first more but it took a lot more effort as each plank needed to be shaped to even remotely line up correctly. 

Like all of my foam crafts, these got a coating of Mod Podge + black craft paint to seal and strengthen.  This was followed by a golden brown base coat with the aibrush and a couple layers of homemade black wash.  The hulls were then drybrushed with final details applied with normal brushes.  I used mini paints on these rather than craft paints.  I don't like throwing stuff out and I'm trying to productively get through my Army Painter droppers before I binge buy a bunch more.

You've probably noted that there are no masts or other fiddly hang-on details on purpose--these are game pieces first.  I settled for painting on the locations of masts and stairs because I don't want that stuff to get in the way of getting figs on there.  This is the same reason I don't put walls in my buildings.  I may explore modular ways to attach these that can be removed during play but it isn't a strict need and I don't think I'll get to it anytime soon.  I've got more of these in the works and unsurprisingly they're becoming more intricate.  These qualify as "buildings" for my 2020 challenge. 

2020 finished buildingsstructure counter:  2/5