Mining town. First outer buildings

Descriptive, dull title, yet it really shows what this update will be about. I've been working on little structures, being adobe like buildings for the front part of the huge spaceport. My goal here is to somehow break the monolithic appearance of the big bulk by adding irregular structures with different volumes. In doing so, I also pretend to get familiar with this kind of buildings, as they will be populating the whole board.

It shouldn't be that difficult, as all I'm trying to do is different square boxes and little more. But let's stay a little on that 'more'. At some point I found myself staring at this finished duct tape and a plastic sphere from a toy from some kind of vending machine. I cut the ball and got this:

They fit in properly, at least for my purposes

I also cut the card of the duct tape in two and got this little tower:

Mushroom tower

I added a few foamboard pieces on the top to build the viewpoint.

Kind of Jabba-esque, but it works

I'll place the tower on this terrace:

Rough shape, still in progress

I thought of having a door, but when I cut the front part of the cardboard I had another idea:

I put this part slightly rearwards

So the entrance looks this way

Of course I didn't want it all to look just the same, mere dull blocks, so I tried this archway:

This is getting out of control quickly

This kind of arch is evocative to me, and I though it could look nice here. Of course cutting those out from the foamboard was a hell of a work for my limited skills, but for sure I'll improve with practice. Eventually.

Worse than desired, yet better than expected

This will be the wall for the inner part:

Keeping it simple

So this is more or less what I am getting:

It works so far

I planned a taller block over that terrace (so in the future it can be connected with a catwalk to the other side of the building; that will be another story to tell). But this time I tried this open stairs thing, so it wouldn't look so boring:

You get the point, I hope

I had to paint the stairs before!

So the catwalk will come from the other side and end on this rooftop. I planned a closed access to the building with some kind of hut on the rooftop. But I gave it a second thought. In doing so, you would have to imagine the whole thing; I mean, a mini going through the upper access and making its way down to the open stairs. Then I knew.

Nope. This is not what I'm building here. That is the opposite of what I'm doing on this board. That idea is unimaginative, this block offers a boring shape and it isn't worth building. So I'm doing this shit properly:

Much better now

I had to heavily improvise, but it worked in the end. I cut the whole upper part away and made the stairs visible. Now you can follow the whole path and it's still playable.

Now imagine a whole board like this

Of course you can only see the rough shape of it. I won't add new buildings here (the upper part is the very spaceport!), but my plan is to add lots of details. Vents, wires, doors and stuff. But you can at least get an idea of what's in my mind.

Now these buildings have to be glued to the main structure, the warping issues have to be dealt with and so on. I may have to paint at least some parts before I add the catwalks, but that is a problem for the future me. This is it for now; the project keeps going on!