Making 6mm Scifi buildings
This page covers some home made 6mm Scifi buildings I made. The buildings were all be made from household junk I've been hoarding for a while along with bits of packaging and plasticard. For the extra detailing, I used spare 40K bits, Grendel radar dishes, pieces of sprue, brass tubing, plasticard and parts from an old Star Wars AT-AT walker. You can read more about the parts used for the individual bases under the description of each gallery item.
For the colour of the buildings, I wanted a colour that would stand out on the table especially with a desert world theme, and I tried a few colours before settling on a spray can of Cream (off-white). This was a cheap enamel spray can from the DIY shop which I painted all the buildings with and then used a purple contrasting colour along with greenish coloured windows.
The layout is designed so the bases fit together to make a hex shaped settlement with one spare base or I can split it into 2-3 smaller settlements. The paths/roads are all triangle shaped plasticard pieces I had spare from making a bunch aircraft hex bases and they look quite futuristic. The bases are 3mm MDF which I cut up and with a hand saw (it was pretty tricky measuring these and cutting these so they fit together smoothly). There was a small space left in the center so I cut a small hex piece to fit in there to make a comms tower.
I had some problems during construction with pieces staying on that I had glued because of the different types of plastic I used. A lot of the plastic pieces used don't take glue or paint very well and where I remembered, the pieces were given a light sand first. I also using different materials it is worth washing them first in soapy water and spraying light coats of paint, otherwise the paint will bubble and lift. I also had an issue with the paint lifting after I varnished them so in hindsight I should not have varnished the bases.
However the interesting building shapes and cost of the project (virtually nothing) make it worthwhile, and the finished buildings look great. It was great to be able to design
and build something completely different and have virtually no constraints.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full sized image