by Terry Cabak
Imagine Image Multimedia

The first thing that was done to construct the future cityscape was to acquire the basic building blocks of the landscape itself, meaning the structures that would be turned into buildings then using the computer, sketch out some ideas.

Prior to constructing the buildings, a determination was made as to the scale chosen for the  game design.  

After researching the various scales of die cast cars that would enable anyone to play this game by purchasing the vehicles at their local toy store, it was decided that Hot Wheels and Matchbox had a lock on the market but JADA was making “inroads” with their fantastic Battle machine cars.  

This meant a middle scale of sizes and buildings and figures had to be reached, but we knew that 28mm figures were all the rage and that HO scale and 1/72 was not sufficient as it didn’t offer street and urban fighters other than Chechyn Rebels in 1/72 and conversions of Airfix Civilians, as well as HO scale railroading figures of which there are innumerous variety.

The table was destined to be 5 x 5 feet which is the average game convention size, allowing for 3 feet on the end to store and show cars and figures to the players.

Most of this was precluded by research into the decorations that would also be available such as light poles, street signs, billboards etc., that would yield and attractive layout. 

Again, the many buildings on sale at local craft stores for the model railroading hobby were too good to ignore; many dollars that were used for figures were saved by shopping around or stopping in when passing by, and especially this was true of acquiring Foam Core in ¼ or 3/16 thickness for the city blocks, walls, and elevated highway.

Due to the likelihood that street signs would break from playing the game, the decision was made to make them “break-away,” that is, simply putting them onto the city streets and sidewalks with Sticky Tac adhesive putty.

And even these acquisitions were precluded by the fact that the rules themselves would state how far something would move in pulse of the turn, and this was determined to be business card space which the vehicles where then mounted on. 

All the wall and brick patterns and sidewalks, signs, paintings etc. were designed in Canvas for the PC; doors, windows, graffiti etc. while images for billboards were obtained from the internet. 

Once the boxes and found materials were collected, the art was printed onto normal paper both on a laser and color inkjet printer, adhesive was applied and the paper was then applied to the cardboard boxes that would become the buildings.

In order to shore up their strength, balsa dowel was used in corners and along the roof, and for the appearance of rooftop equipment, wood pieces and stuff from every modeler’s bits box were used; doors, elevator shaft, antenna, ventilation etc.

A color print testing phase resulted in having to make the appliqué art somewhat brighter than   what might normally be seen in real life because the art would be dulled down with protective acrylic spray coating from the craft store. 

Once these colors were determined everything was set to go and the artwork of an outside stairwell art from the Imagine Image Archive was used as well; printed directly onto the brick pattern of a wall.  After this a series blank texture pages were printed so I would have the flexibility of not having a window on a wall when I needed to strip the appliqué onto a box; I would then print a sheet of windows, doors etc. and apply them separately.

For the army recruiting building and restaurant which was the box of a Linksys router, this futurist building presented some great challenge for windows and doors but as you can see from the graphic this turned out well. Windows and doors were printed on a separate piece of paper and these were applied as needed. 

A lot of this production was precluded by the various types of adhesives available and for this it was determined that spray glue was prohibitive, and that the stickiness of using spray glue caused a lot of transfer onto the hands and this caused dirt to be transferred to the artwork. 

Again, the self adhesive tape of the Xyron label maker was perfect and of course we knew this, but the Xyron was only 5 inches wide and full sheets couldn’t be done; to save this, full sheet adhesive transfer paper was obtained from the craft store again.

As you would expect, a Glue Stick was also used in many cases and the one in stock was the purple colored glue so we could see exactly where it was being applied.  For small items being applied to smooth surfaces, the glue stick was essential.  For larger areas we simply used straight-up Elmer’s white and Titebond yellow glue because like wallpaper, the wet high tack was a requirement.

Where required however, spray glue was still utilized especially for the full size paper brick pattern pages, because the transfer paper was going to be expensive and the Xyron label cartridge ran out; these are somewhat hard to find at local stores.

Also note that because the various cardboard boxes contain folding covers like on the top of a cereal box, some of these had to be trimmed back or completely off and then applied to the foam core using a Glue Gun.  It's important to note that the style of glue gun must provide for the nipple to be a good distance away from the body such that small areas could be reached.

All of this cityscape was going to applied to a black-painted sheet of normal canvas, primed for artists, which is how we are doing all our battlefields from now on; that’s right- we’re actually painting the colors we want by hand; and painting all the roads and rivers as well.  

The 6-foot tall roll of canvas was rolled out onto the folding game tables, and then like a wall, painted black with normal latex wall paint from Home Depot.

The last hurdle was obtaining pin striping tape from Chartpak, just like we used to use back in the day before computers came along for doing advertisements and drawings.  The white line tape would be perfect for street lines, and yellow was also recently discovered too, so after all this we are finally ready in time for RockCon, Oct. 23-25 in Rockford Illinois.  

The game should be simple and uncomplicated, so kids should have a great time racing both in the arena and having adventures in this new cityscape.