Camera Woes and Consoles!

Hey folks

I've discovered why a bunch of my photos seemed weirdly blurry in the same spot. Must have cleaned the lens a dozen times thinking it was a smudge before I noticed the lens itself has broken! Something must have hit it from the front. I don't yet know if it's repairable, but it has caused a difficulty in photographing my models in the last while!

What I will upload now until I can put together the means to photograph more, is a set of consoles I decided to design for our local gaming group.

Often in tournaments we're playing with either flat bases, or random shrubs and chunks of crystal that roughly fit the size. Infinity is such a visual game it seems depressing to have to use such scraps as objectives, so I decided to make something durable and rough to be our objectives for tournaments, using a laser etcher and trying to keep it as simple as possible to make.

Here's the first test run. After confirming the shapes would work on a clear acrylic, I started printing them on a nice glossy black acrylic so I wouldn't even have to paint the console itself!

You can see the ease of construction here. There are 6 pieces, all made from 3mm acrylic: Base, deck, riser, two braces, and the screen itself. Everything is tabbed and inserted so there's no shear points, except the screen.

Speaking of the screen, the symbol is your typical "signal not found" icon from cell phones, as well as a burst of text suggesting why it's not yet connected.

Here was another test run, this time testing out screen colours. The popular vote was yellow-green, since it'll stand out so well on a table.

In theory, the consoles are useable at this point, even unpainted. But of course, I want them to look as distinctive as possible, and easy to use!

Next up was painting the keyboards and 'mousepads' (holo hand cursor spots) to make them stand out properly. Simple white vallejo acrylic does the trick.

Here's the shot I sent to my fellow gamers, asking which screens work better. Personally I think the blue is more realistic, but I do agree, the green is more obvious.

And then, an entire tournament's worth of consoles! Not enough for some of the more ridiculous missions, but certainly enough to get through 6 tables of most missions. Also, durable enough to survive an entire 3-round tournament of play with only two screens popping off!

More pics soon of other active projects, once I can find a viable camera workaround, or just decide to use my cell for a while...