[Minis] Fallout Terrain

[jordangreywolf]

A miniatures terrain contest was held for the new "Fallout: New Vegas" expansion for Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. Since that's my favorite installment in the Fallout franchise (the main game, that is; the DLC addons were kind of dumb in various ways), and I've been wishing for "New Vegas" minis for quite some time (but just assumed it would never happen due to copyright/trademark/legal issues), I felt like I ought to do something to celebrate ... so I tried putting together something to submit. I didn't expect I'd win anything, because there are a lot of folks on there who do lots of 3D prints and entire tables full of terrain with contest-quality painting, and my main claim-to-fame is re-purposing junky bits. (Yeah, I do have some 3D printed items, but those are courtesy of Goober_Chris and whatever he feels like doing at the time.)

Anyway ... I put together a BIG project that got no notice at all. Not too surprising, there. But on a lark, I threw together a small piece out of a bunch of junk, and won in the "Small Terrain Piece" category. Whoa.


(Screenshot from epilogue "slide show" from Fallout: New Vegas.)

For reference, in Fallout: New Vegas, there's a "tribal" faction called the "Great Khans." They have sort of an early 1960s biker gang vibe, only without any bikes. They mark their territory with some scary-looking effigies made from bones and junk. I had the idea of cobbling together something to get the look of this effigy, using assorted "bitz" from my collection. I couldn't hope for an exact match, but I figure these things aren't mass-produced, so maybe I could get away with a few tweaks based on what materials I actually have.


So, I tried building something. The main thing that set this off was that I had a grab-bag of spare "Ogre Kingdoms" battle standard pieces, including a big horned skull that I was thinking of using as a topper for some road signs, and then that got me to thinking about the Great Khans effigy, and it went on from there.

The basic "X" shape was formed from a couple of Warhammer Dwarf battle standard bases, a toothpick, a straightened-out paperclip, a plastic banner-pole bit, and then some thin picture-hanging wire I used to lash the bits together. The "head" is the aforementioned Ogre Kingdoms battle standard topper skull, with a craft "matchstick" piece for a vertical support, and some putty. The "wings" are toothpicks with threads of putty.

For the chest area, I used a Mars Attacks (Mantic Games) stop sign, and then a Warhammer round blank shield to make the "railroad crossing" sign. On the back is a spare wheel from a bag of broken WW2 model bits I got a couple of decades ago. (Wow, it's been a while.)

On the base, I used some spare broken skeleton bits, epoxy putty for texturing, a section of poly fabric mesh (for the "chain fence"), and a random piece of broken plastic for the "broken rail." The ONE WAY sign and the license plates dangling from the horns are printed paper elements.

By accident, I had a couple of chunks of cured putty -- that is, some two-part epoxy putty I'd rolled up to use, but then I got called away due to a minor crisis in the house, and when I got back, the putty had hardened. I made use of the cured globs by shaving them down a bit with a knife and turning them into "rocks" incorporated into the base.


(Rear view of the effigy/totem.)


(View from a bit more above, for better view of the base.)

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Now, here's the big piece I put together that didn't get anywhere (but I'm still glad I made it, because it's kind of silly).

One of the locations in Fallout: New Vegas I feel the most nostalgic about would be Novac. It's a motel southeast of the ruins of Vegas, near a highway intersection, that has been transformed into a survivor settlement by putting up chain-link fencing around the parking lot court, and setting up a sniper position in the mouth of a large concrete-and-steel tourist-trappy eye-grabber statue of a "dinosaur" -- "Dinky the T-Rex." (In the base of the body is a "gift shop.") Relatively early in the game, it's possible to get a room at the hotel to use as a base of operations, and even though much later in the game you can get access to the presidential suite in the "Lucky 38," the room at Novac is still my favorite spot. (For practical reasons, it's a lot easier to get to, since you don't have to go through several loading screens to get in or out. There are also some fun mods that spruce up the place a bit.)


I was prompted along this route when following Gwendel along to another thrift store. (Tangent: Gwendel has been on a big kick of visiting local thrift stores and used-CD and used-book stores to accumulate various books and CDs to add to her collection, or various items to use for little crafty things she's been working on, so I've been trying to use Google Maps to find new spots within reasonable driving distance to explore. We've been visiting a LOT of Goodwills as of late.)

Behold: a big plastic dinosaur! I recognized it as an "Adventure Force Megasaur" (a toy I've seen in Walmart). The right arm acts as a lever to open the jaw, make the eyes light up, and make a roar sound -- or, it would, if the batteries weren't dead.

My inspiration from the game:



The whole thing is made of hard plastic, so it was able to hold up to a spray-on primer coat fairly well. I started with mid-tone grey.


I experimented with something to represent the sniper position in the mouth. In-game, there's a door in the side of its body leading into a small gift shop (a trader post), and then stairs that go up the gullet to a "scenic vista" in the mouth -- where a couple of NPCs take turns in a makeshift sniper post to keep watch over the main approach to the town.

Since I couldn't practically position a "sniper" there, I decided to represent this position by using a spare Warhammer 40K heavy support weapon and plugging it into a small construction set base I stuck in the jaw (with some craft sticks for some flooring).



I drybrushed the dino toy white, then applied an "ivy green" color, and spattered it here and there with various browns and oranges to give an impression of rust and grime. The jaw piece was originally attached to a tongue part that was levered to the right claw inside the body, but I removed that mechanism (so the right claw is free-moving), and used some craft sticks and putty to reattach the jaw to make for a considerably wider mouth opening. (It's still impractical to try to squeeze a mini in there, but at least it looks like someone COULD snipe from there.)

The MOTEL sign is made from a combination of foam-board, foam-core, craft sticks, a couple of translucent rods from a broken "tangle toy," a bead (for the thermometer), and some letter-board letters (found at the thrift store).


I made a door in the side by gouging the plastic with a Dremel cutting head. The stairs and platform are built from a couple of 40mm square Warhammer bases, a wafer tray, some Hirst Arts "stair" pieces, and assorted other bits.


Most of the screw holes were on the right side. I gap-filled with putty, but it would be a challenge to try to get it to blend nicely with the surrounding texture. Instead, I opted to just paint some rusty spots there, like it represented some sort of exposed structural detail.


The sign, platform, and stairs are all separate pieces, rather than trying to affix this all to a single base. That makes it easier to store, but also opens up the possibility for customization. I can slightly rearrange the platform and stair pieces so I can have the stairs go up a different way. The mouth-gun is removable. I was thinking of perhaps fixing up some different signs/props for the dino to be holding/leaning against, so for a campaign I could use this for more than just one location. (Incidentally, there is more than one location in the real-world version of the area where you can go inside a giant concrete dinosaur. ;) ) E.g., have a giant hot-dog-shaped sign to advertise a fast food stop, a big stack of crushed cars for the "T-Wrecks" salvage yard, and so forth.

Comments

[tuftears]

Congratulations! ^.^ Both pieces are great.