Season of Scenery: Landing Pad 1

Obviously it isn't finished yet, and at this rate it might be done by 2045.

What's a mainstay of sci-fi? Spaceships. Where do spaceships land? That's the question that led me to attempt to build a landing pad. Well, that and seeing a tutorial for one on YouTube. I thought it would be a cool and straightforward build, and as the tutorial used an octagonal lid from a tub of Quality Street chocolates I went to Amazon to get some. Almost $30? Bloody hell. So I headed off to Dollar Tree and picked up a hexagonal storage box for $1. Nice.

Anyway, this was built over the past 10 or so days, meaning I've turned the kitchen table into a bombsite of plastic, wire, glue, scissors, knives and assorted crap for almost a fortnight. Sorry, Alicia.

Here's the basic ingredients I started with: the box lid, some 3mm foamboard and some granny grating I've owned for years. Not pictured: knife, glue, magnifying goggle things, coffee, vape, two boxes of bits and a lot more stuff I had to go get from the spare room. The 3D-printed spaceship is to make sure the pad is actually big enough.

The first thing I did was go to the spare room and get my white paint marker to draw around the lid. I will be doing several more trips to the spare room, so get used to it.

The grating was easy to cut with a pair of scissors, and after another trip to the spare room to get my hot glue gun it was stuck to the lid. So far, so good.

I realised the pad would need walls to stop futuristic people from falling off it, a la Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. I used chipboard, which is thick cardboard, scored so I could bend it around the corners. Notice how I managed to totally cut it too short and had to measure and cut another piece to cover the last bit. And yes, I had to make another trip to the spare room to get the chipboard and my Olfa knife.

I wanted something to cover the gap between the card and the edge of the box, and bendy straws sprang to mind. After a lot of swearing, binned straws and a couple of cuts in my fingers, I managed to make this proto-Millennium Falcon. 

She looks happy, probably because she's not trying to make a landing pad on her kitchen table with a cut finger and a distinct lack of a plan. Anyway, this is Roominate, a kids' toy that I learned about on the very excellent Eric's Hobby Workshop channel. I managed to find it on Amazon for $15.

This is why it's worth $15: all these lovely bits of plastic that can be used as walkways, platforms, barriers, and why is it only now that I realise I could have used one of the big pieces on the left for the landing pad?

I need some way for the characters to get on and off the pad that doesn't involve falling off the sides, so I glued one of the short Roominate pieces as a ramp. Oh, I forgot a picture: to protect the cardboard from and strengthen it a bit, I covered it with masking tape. Note how the spaceship and Betty fit on the pad, which at this stage was a huge relief.

After painting the walls with a mix of Mod Podge and black craft paint, I started sticking crap to them. A square of foamboard had the lid from a pill bottle glued to it and then an odd-looking vent(?) thing stuck to the end. I used more straws to cover some of the crappy edges of the masking tape, and used a couple of plastic wall plugs at the entrance.

A random plastic wotsit with a plastic gemstone glued on was stuck to the side of the ramp.

Not wanting to have to come up with random bits for every wall, I just used Roominate sections to cover them as it was easier and I'd got laundry to do. After a trip to Walmart to pick up a prescription I did my usual wander-around-the-craft-section and spotted these 3D plastic letters and numbers, so I picked up a sheet. 

The pad was going to need a base, so I dug out my sheet of half-inch foamboard, sliced out a section and bevelled the edges a bit. More hot glue stuck the pad down securely.

As I plan on spray-priming this, I had to slather more black paint/Mod Podge mix over the foamboard so it wouldn't melt. While the mix was still wet I dumped on a load of chinchilla dust to add some texture. Of course, with this being me, I didn't spot the massive areas of dead space to the sides of the ramp but I have an idea of what can go there.

Stay tuned for part 2!