Iron Chef: Scenery 4: Land Speeder Landing Platform

The terrain makers over at Librarium Online run an interesting challenge. Iron Chef: Scenery. Just like the popular TV show, the goal is to create a piece of terrain using a secret ingredient, which is then judged and voted on by your peers. The secret ingredient: Something from the kitchen.

I wasn't planning on making an entry for this session, due to the short submission timeframe. However, my kids were drinking some Gatorade today and I got an idea from the bottle.

Stategy: Maximize the use of multiple kitchen items where possible ...

The Finished Piece

Materials Used

Kitchen items

• 1 Gatorade bottle
• 1 Lid from the can of wasabi peas
• 1 Lid from a kid's plastic cup (you can get these from any one of your chain restaurants)
• 1 Wine bottle foil (not shown) from a bottle of wine (also in the kitchen). May also use the cork
• 1 small sheet of aluminum foil
• 2 small juice box straws
• 1 large bendy straw (from same kid's plastic cup)

Non-Kitchen items

• 1 old CD (at least I hope no one needs it)
• 2 lengths of styrene I-beam
• 2 lengths of styrene tubing
• Some extra 3/8" stryene strip
• 3 short lengths of extra sprue
• A couple of extra end pieces from some blinds that were recently installed
• Spackling paste
• Hobby tape

Step-by-Step

Step 1 - Preparation

Cut the top off the bottle of Gatorade with a razor saw and then glue the bottom of the bottle to the CD. I used Liquid Nails, but you can use anything that works for you. Use a 25mm x 50mm cavalry base to trace out the slot on the larger lid. Cut this out with a hobby knife, but make sure you don't throw it away. This will become the elevator platform. Line up the smaller lid on top of the larger lid and trace out the cut for the smaller piece. Cut this out with a hobby knife too. Now measure out and cut two length of I-beam as well as two lengths of tubing. The tube lengths will really depend on where you want the lift to be.

Step 2 - Assembly (with a Deffcopter for scale)

I used my rivet punch and made a hole for the large red straw, which was glued in with Liquid Nails. I then used 3 strips of the wine foil to wrap the two juice box straws (yellow) into a bundle of pipes on the other side. This was glued in with superglue.

To make the lift platform, I glued the cut out lid to a fitted piece of the blinds remnant to make the lift platform and then used two pieces of extra sprue to connect the platform to the 2 I-beams. I assembled this as a unit before I attached it to the Gatorade bottle with some more superglue. Once the lift platform was secure, I glued the two pieces of styrene tubing were underneath the platform for additional strength and to represent the hydraulic lift.

For the platform itself, I glued the two lids together with some wood slats in between for stability and rigidity. I filled the gap where the lift platform was cut out with some fitted wood strip and then filled it with spackling paste.

Once the pipes and lift platform were secure, I added the ring of tin foil around the base, glued it in place with Liquid Nails, and then used the blunt end of a chop stick to push it into place and shape it.

Step 3 - Painting and Basing

The top and bottom were given a good spraying of Rustoleum Camo Deep Forest Green. After than I added painted the rim of the landing platform black, the lift pieces VMC Gunmetal and the pipes Tin Bitz followed by a drybrushing of VMC Gunmetal. The entire piece was then washed with Liquitex Paynes Grey.

I used some VMC Dark Green to highlight the edges, mixed some Citadel Vomit Brown and Citadel Blazing Orange with water and glaze medium for the rust and then based with a mix of sand and static grass.

Step 4 - Details

Once the wash dried, I used some modeling tape to mask off the areas I wanted yellow and black striping. I used this same technique on the Team Fortress 2 inspired capture point. The non-masked areas were given a base coat of Citadel Dheneb Stone (Foundation) and then a coat of Golden Yellow. The edges were done in VMC Basalt Grey and Citadel Skull White.

Here's how it came out, with two guants for scale.

I added some detailing in the form of edge highlighting, some rust, as well as finishing off the base. The A-22 stencil was made by printing the letters (ICBM SS-20 font) in 96-point font, putting some tape on the back side of the paper, and then cutting it out with a very fine Xacto blade. I put it down on the surface and painted with white.

Someone suggested that I add a small control panel at the foot of the lift. I started out painting one, and the remembered that I had a bunch of graphic files from when I mapped for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. I found a texture file that someone had made for my map, Reactor. I resized the texture, printed it on a color printer, and then glued to a piece of 3/8" styrene strip.

I also wanted a small control panel at the top of the lift. It's the same texture as the lower panel, but I used a small piece of sprue to make the stand.

And there we are, done.

Post Mortem

I'm pretty happy with the way this piece turned out. I went from inspiration to nearly finished piece over the weekend, which was a nice change from the Iron Scenery 3 piece, and everything came together more or less as I envisioned it.

Notes

Last updated	9/25/08
Author	Michael Kan
Pre-requisites	None
Related Articles	None