Tuesday 24 January 2017

Starport Lockup - Micro Art Studio Barracks

Every so often I'll pick up something cheap because it's useful.  At some point last year, I bought one of Micro Art Studio's hardfoam barracks blocks second hand from ebay cheaply. The barracks set includes a pair of hardfoam buildings with resin doors, plus an MDF watchtower. What I bought was one of these:


Battlefield Hardfoam Barracks building from Micro Art Studio.

I figure it would represent a range of different things - a small industrial unit or warehouse; a bunker; a secure lockup; a garage...

'Pops' Dwight checks the manifest before the scheduled departure of the Lysa.

I'd not worked with a hardfoam model before. Mine had been compressed a little at some point - perhaps during moulding, or possibly storage. This meant that the face with the door section wasn't straight. I had to recut the slot for the door, and attempted to conceal the gaps with some plastic rod. Although it was pre-primed, the coverage wasn't very good, so I ended up undercoating with a brush - I wasn't sure how the hardfoam would react with a spray paint.

I gave the building a non-specific, multi-functional grey-with-rust paint job. The only details I bothered to paint on were the display above the door and a few random numbers on a couple of the sides to add some interest.




 
 


Hopefully the resulting building will prove useful on most gaming boards.

17 comments:

  1. It looks perfect on a table or just for scenic shots, a great addition for sure.

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    1. That's exactly what I need it for...filler, backgrounds, gaming around :)

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  2. That's awesome. I might need to pick up a few of those for some miner's barracks. ;)

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    1. That's the spirit! They'd be perfect. I'm considering picking up more myself :)

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  3. Looks great Axiom!

    I'm intrigued about the hardfoam though. How hard is it? And how'd they make it too? I thought that sort of foam wasn't that good at forming detail in the casting process. I must be wrong, I'll have to investigate it a bit more....could be quite useful for terrain building.

    Cheers :)

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    1. I can only tell you that it's pretty hard, but not particularly dense. It's almost like that expanding foam stuff. Perhaps that's how they mould it?

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  4. Cheap, useful, looks great... perfect combination mate!

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    1. Cheap, useful, looks great...you could be talking about me ;)

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  5. That's a nice piece, it totally fits in your ambientation and stuff, that's a win!

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    1. Thanks Suber. It's not a showcase piece, but it's very adaptable :)

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  6. I like this. It's blocky enough for just about any dingy sci-fi setting. Nice find sir.

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    1. Thanks Dai! Yes, absolutely - it should fit in anywhere :)

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  7. Nice little building. I'm working on scifi scenery too at the moment.

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    1. Thanks Scalene. I should check out your stuff for ideas ;)

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  8. Nice weathering ... a good terrain addition for sure.

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