the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project intermission

ok... so this stalled a wee bit... when I came to start undercoating, I completely fell out of love with the rock finish... it was all too rounded and worn, I wanted something a little more jagged - sheared rockfaces with tiny crevices and handholds... I came to realise I really wanted sharp edges and the whole thing stalled...

now I'd been giving it some thought lately, checking out various techniques online for wargaming and railroad set ups... bearing in mind I'll be building up on my existing structure, I needed a 'cladding' finish... bark bits are popular, but I couldn't see them working with what I had... recutting the foam wasn't winning me over... railroaders use the wet plaster in crinkled foil method (google is your friend), but would be too heavy and thick... however, I came up with a variation on that...

crinkled craft tissue paper... for the test piece I cut a thin strip, scrunched it up into a ball and then pulled it out into a strip again, without flattening it... slapped on some PVA and put on the strip, allowing the crinkles to stay and even creasing them some more... dry and a quick pj and I'm quite happy with that...

bearing in mind, there will also be the vertical definitions in the bluefoam that are absent here... should be good...

the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project part 4

right... basic build done... need to do the gravel/dirt transition at the top which I'm hoping will be successfully achieved with torn cork tile...

the eagle-eyed amongst you may notice the promontory is now longer than the earlier shots, it looked too stumpy and is now a full length of A4 with the end piece now seperate... still fits in two boxes though with space to spare so I need to come up with something a little extra...

still a few kinks in the joining edges which need fixing (really do need plans when I do this sort of thing) but basically that should be that... have run out of filler and sandpaper though...

also had a thought - quite random and may not do anything with it, but do some high security fences and it could do service as somekind of animal enclosure... raptors maybe?

the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project part 3

right... I have to say that the upper levels have stumped me a bit... the replication of the 25mm thick layers wasn't going to look right so I had to have a rethink and this is what I'm going with at the moment...

I think the larger slabs need a bit more definition, have been adding bits that jut out a bit to make it more rugged and less of a flat surface (looks good from looking up from the base), which have helped break up the large flat surface, but not sure how much of that I can get away with... there is some grooving and so on in there, but it's been partially killed by the flash... I also scored the 3rd 25mm layer into two layers for a bit more variety, but again, that's barely visible...

it certainly won't be any higher than that, as that's the depth of the paper box it will be stored in, allowing for the base and the rock/dirt/grass transitional layer on the top...

the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project part 2

just caught up with the two end pieces after a week away housesitting... first is the corner piece, with the passage that leads to the Skin Room cave, and alongside is the central cave piece and then the wide gallery... at the end is trailing edge that would take the rest of it 'off table' as it were... I've put some platforms on that end piece to allow for figure placement... I may or may not make the top accessible, haven't decided yet, will probably not to be honest...



I had the pieces stacked up earlier while I was working on the trailing end and the long gallery looked quite good high up the cliff face... I won't do it on these ones, but may do another piece with a high gallery just for some variety... it's also just big enough to fit the Dalek saucer in... very Thunderbirds...

the 'what every good Doctor Who story needs' project

it's a classic stalwart of British tv sci-fi... and I've always planned to build one...

the trusty quarry...

now, I had one main limiting factor with this - space... I ain't got much...

so the first consideration was storage - as I can easily get hold of boxes that used to contain reams of A4 paper, the quarry will be based around a footprint of a sheet of A4, it can (and will) be smaller than a sheet of A4, but everything should nestle in together nicely...

next of course came the look of it, and what choice... rock quarries, sand pits, gravel pits... and yet, oddly, I do have a favourite quarry and what a quarry it is... half of pre-War London is built from it, it was a WW2 naval installation and starred in Doctor Who twice and Blakes Seven once...

Winspit in Dorset...
http://www.doctorwholocations.net/locations/winspitquarry

great massive blocks of stone that doubled as Skaro, Atlantis and Mecron II

now I'm realistic enough to realise it's not going to be a rock for rock, crack for crack match up... especially with the in a box requirement, so I wouldn't bother with the Skin Room cave, concentrating on the North Front area and the massive outcrop that hides the Skin Room... this area should give me a nice corner terrain piece, which can double as an abandoned Skaro, a Silurian shelter on Earth and (with a bit of dressing) a Dwarf mine...

so, after much playing with paper cut outs I had a plan...

the plan was, of course, completely flawed...

aside from what you see there, there is an end piece which trails off to the table edge (similar to the entrance to the real quarry) and plans for 'in table' pieces so this rock wall doesn't just spring from no-where...

on reflection of it at that stage (you're looking at 2 A4 long pieces, one an L shape A4 wide) I realised that the distance between the long open cave and the smaller central cave was too short, similarly the distance from the corner to the central cave as also too small... even allowing for my fudging for gaming/storage, it looked wrong...

so foam was cut and swapped about and the central cave got a section of it's own, the L shape was lopped down.... the resulting 'wall' is now 2 foot long from corner to end of the long thin cave section... which is a happy coinkydink for future plans... I've made the central cave taller than in real life as well, so, well, tall things can exit safely...

the corner section is midglue so declined this photo opportunity...

I reckon, to reflect the cliff face, it needs at least another 3-4 layers of the 25mm thick foam, with some more 5mm layers added in for some variety...