Monday, October 12, 2020

Spaceship Crash Site

 After obsessively watching Luke Towan's diorama videos on Youtube for the past few years, I decided to finally try my hand at some scenery. The inspiration for this vignette came from this sketch by concept artist Guy Warley:


I originally planned to have the figures be backpackers or maybe having a picnic, unaware they were sitting upon the site of an ancient extraterrestrial ruin. Then I could call it "The Picnic at the Ruins of ARK Polaris", or some such. I also thought it would be funny to have one of the figures have a metal detector, but I've been unable, as yet, to find a HO scale detectorist figure. 

The ship hull was printed in polystyrene. I made the ship a bit more organic than the one in the drawing, as I thought it would look cool if the engines were nestled in the recesses. After some minor body work with sandpaper and Tamiya putty:



The engines themselves were designed in Fusion 360 and printed. I also added some throwaway kit details between the engines, but it's unlikely they'll be visible in the final piece. 









Here's a shot to get a feel for the size. 


Here are things mocked up. I bulked the ship out with some styrene insulation. I think the overall base needs to be a little bigger, but overall I'm pleased with how its turning out. I'd like to add some more mechanical detail to the hull, perhaps some panels.




That's all for now. Thanks for looking
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2 comments:

  1. mungOctober 22, 2020 at 5:01 AM

    Looks pretty neat so far. What printer do you use? And what is polystyrene like to print with?

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  2. peterOctober 22, 2020 at 6:56 AM

    Thanks. I use a cheap as chips printer that was built from a kit, the Tevo Tarantula. I replaced some of the laser cut acrylic parts with machined aluminum ones (I've got machine shop access at work, so I'm free to muck about at lunch & after hours). The printer kit itself was only $190US shipped from China. I would imagine there better options now.
    Printing polystyrene is great. The parts are strong and lightweight. It sands very nicely and glues easily with the usual solvents. I tend to print larger forms in polystyrene that will be detailed up later with kit bits. The spool of polystyrene I bought a few years ago for $20US is still going strong.
    I've also successfully vacuum-formed over printed polystyrene forms. Its great for quickly making structural pieces, like if you had to glue 2 sheets at a weird angle you could print some a bracket that has that angle and solvent bond directly to it.
    I really can't print detailed stuff with polystyrene. I use a cheap resin printer for that (Elegoo Mars). That's what I used for the rocket engines.

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