Space Marine Drop Pod tutorial, Part 2 (Still Dark Eldar free!)

Just like in any complex construction, the foundation is key. Luckily the foundation of the Space Marine Drop Pod is fairly idiot-proof. The base is two pieces (with a few little vent fans that glue on the bottom), and the 5 doors are two pieces each. That's the good news.

The bad news is the doors, like every other contact point, must be shaved like a Wookiee going to work in food service.

The key points are the underside just above the "hinge" (i.e. the base of the actual door which will close against the floor of the pod). This seam, when the two door pieces are glued together, will not be square. You'll want to dry-fit the doors into the floor pieces and check to see how flush they close. Then scrape whatever excess plastic you find around all the seams, paying close attention to the hinge and the door base I mentioned previously.

Once you are sure you have all the doors able to close completely you can begin carefully gluing the floor to the base after laying the doors in their brackets (this part is pretty obvious so I won't go into more detail.)

Painter's Note: This is the perfect time to take care of painting the base of the pod (at least the inside bits.) As you can see I have also decided to handle the caution striping at this stage. It's a great deal easier to get your hands at the right angles to tape and paint before the walls are raised. Here is how I did the stripes:

I laid out a strip of blue painter's tape on my handy exacto cutting mat and marked it in 3/8 inch intervals. Then I used a ruler to cut the tape along those lines with my exacto knife. Finally I cut the tape in half longways leaving me with a strip of 3/8" tabs of tape to be peeled off and used as needed. I found a length of about 8 inches gave me more than enough tabs to do all 5 doors.

Once the tabs were cut (and the door edges were painted black), I proceeded to tape every 2 "dots" (the recesses that are molded along the door edge), leaving the first 3 dots from the pod black, then an open strip, then 2 dots covered with tape, then 2 dots exposed, etc until the end of the door was reached.

I then painted the exposed areas with foundation paint followed by a brighter yellow once dry. Once I had the yellow looking the way I wanted I carefully peeled off the tape and cleaned up a few slips. Tadaa! Done.

At this point the base of the pod is ready to go. We will use this portion to help build the uprights in part 3 of the tutorial.

Feel free to post any questions you may have. Until next time, FOR THE EMPEROR!