Opening doors to new experiences

A quite evident issue about building the sci-fi mining town is that you need it to look like an actual place to live. Not necessarily to live decently (this is a Rogue Trader-WH40K kind of project after all!), but at least to have something more than mere square boxes and line of sight blockers. A part of it, of course, is to add some doors to the boxes, so they upgrade to houses :P

Remember, this pic says it all for me. This is what I am aiming for

Back in the day I got some of the Trash Bash sci-fi doors by RoeBeast, but I used all of them. I tried to look if I could get a few more, but I wasn't able. Besides, I was thinking I would need quite a lot! So what could I do?

The solution came in the form of card and foamboard...

The Ikea approach

Right, the only reasonable way was to make my own doors!

I wasn't sure of how to get the right design. In the end I think they look too much Tatooine-like, but I think subconscious references cannot be underestimated!

If this doesn't scream sci-fi in desert, I don't know what will do

I added rivets. You can never go wrong with an excess of rivets

I can hear you. 'So, your solution is to make dozens of doors, one by one'. Though that sounds like me indeed, I currently lack both time and motivation to do so. What I would need here is the way to cast these. I've been interested in learning resin casting for ages, but it always looked overwhelming for my puny skills. But a few weeks ago I discovered this acrylic resin for dummies, by Green Stuff World. The 'dummies' is mine, but it's an accurate description, trust me. Make a mould, mix the powder with water and ta-da, it's done. Witchcraft!

So there we go! I press moulded the doors:

Ooops! Unexpected setbacks

The oyumaru mould was good, but the original doors were ruined when I put them out of it. So well, apparently I have a single shot to discover if I'm doing this right...

This is all you need. Oh, and water, sure

Drum roll...

About half an hour later...

It works! IT WORKS! Mwahahahahaha!!

I'm happy with the result; the frame finally got the adobe like texture, the control pad looks reasonably good and the door itself will work. Of course this is but my first experiment, but I hope I'll get better with practice.

In fact I've done this third, simple door

And I'm about to experiment with control pads and an junction box

Well, but for the moment, after a lot of half hours... :P

I hope I have enough doors for a few buildings!!

Well, let's see how they fit in the town! I had to blend them in with some das putty and I had to fix some minor texture and filling issues:

Now this looks more like a thriving neighbourhood

I also remembered I had a few MDF doors by MadMechaGuy. I got them ages ago and totally forgot about them until the other day. I hope the mix works in the end.

Doors! Doors everywhere!

Ehm. Yes, right. There's a door leading to nowhere up there. Not that I just needed to fill that empty surface. Let me elaborate. I'm also making this:

A comm array? A void shield control pad? Who knows!

Still in progress, I want to add some details

So the thing is that I cut a tiny gap just under the frame of the door, allowing me to place the walkway this way:

It's a precautionary measure about storage to avoid unnecesary damages

It's not the only weird door I have...

Yeah, I should really call for a professional architect

I guess I'll have to properly texture and paint the wall before I add all the stuff I'm planning, but you get an idea

This is all I have right now. I'm quite happy with the discovery of the resin, it's super easy to handle and opens a whole world of possibilities. Of course the doors are not perfect, but they work fine at tabletop distance, so I cannot ask for more.

More stuff coming soon!