Berlin, du bist so wunderbar...impressions of the GAU Nerdcamp 2012 - Part one

I am back,
tired, sick and absolutely not able to do anything then sitting around and relax...
but I am happy as hell :)
The past few days were awesome, one of the best times I can remember.
I loved Berlin, the people I met, the creative madness I was allowed to be part of.

I'd like to share some of the best moments with you, wip pictures of our gaming table, the team, that built the whole thing, stupid stuff, that happens, when 6 to 8 freaks are locked in the same room...

Rimmeeerrr!

My journey began with an painting evening.
My friend Siggi and I tried some new things and I gave a short introduction to oil colors...

We used an old Space Marine for some testing and I found a solution to our palette problem...

Wherever you get the urge to paint with oils, cigarette packages are perfect :)

I spent the next week with some guys I chat with about miniature related stuff and nonsense.

We all met in Berlin to build a gaming table for Badsmiles upcoming project GAU.

The whole project was done for wargaming in 54mm scale, everything was scratchbuilt.

That means, we used plasticard, old bitz and old electronics to build everything.

To build something new, you've got to destroy something old first.

Transparent paper was used to try out some versions of the floor,

then we drew lines using plates for the curves. Using a scribing tool, we scribed all the lines later. (Engraving the lines from the plasticard)

Example of a sribing tool

The floor took quiet a time to be drawn and scribed, but turned out very nice in the end.

The table has LED lights and a few areas built down into it...

One of my tasks was the design and scratching of the elevators and a bridge, to add some hight to our table.

The first design was drawn on a empty pizza box, unfortunately there is no picture of this sketching.

The table represents the inner regions of a space craft, so everything would be simple, modular and technical. We choose a clean and flat style for the design.

The bridge was taken from a plastic tank kit, the supporting structure was scratched from plasticard.

The elevators are sratched and spare parts of old water guns.

Another piece of terrain was the CIC (Combat information center).

Some might notice Mati and I were quite addicted to mass effect these days :)

We had a part of the hull of some space ship kit and a few bits, look what you can achieve with that...

There is no  big deal about scratching, just take some rubbish, try to let it look more than tech and you have something nice to paint...

It glows...how cool is that?

Some special effect will be added, when we got the right equipment...

We also made engine chambers which were built into the styrofoam of our table.

Again, we took tons of bitz and plasticard and changed them into something new.

Don't be afraid if everything doesn't look that like a machine...priming will bring all parts together.

It is a pitty one sees so little of them later.

Tomorrow part two.

I think I will make a few tutorials with things I learnt during these days, read you soon.