The Making Of… Fantastic Voyage

Having received several requests for more information on how the set for my Fantastic Voyage 7TV2 game was made, this is a short post to show how it was all put together. Although I wasn't planning to write this post, fortunately I did take a few pictures during the construction process as you can see below.

 

The set of Fantastic Voyage (well, my version of it)

For complete information about this game, please also take a look at the two related posts Fantastic Voyage - A Solo 7TV Game which describes a play-through of the game and Fantastic Voyage - The Episode which sets out rules for playing this as a 7TV2 episode.

 

What I needed for this game is set out in the second of the above posts. Briefly (apart from a copy of the 7TV2 Spy-Fi rules), these were:

 

- The crew: five miniaturised scientists from the Combined Miniature Deterrent Force;

- The Proteus mini-submarine;

- Terrain representing a microscopic view of a part of the inside of a defecting Soviet scientist's brain, comprising:

- Base cloth

- Impassable bits of body tissue terrain

- The brain wall

- Red blood cells

- Antibodies

 

The Crew

 

Nobody, it seems, anywhere, makes 28mm swimming scuba diver figures - which is a real shame because I would love to be able to play the final scene in Thunderball as a wargame. Please, if anyone knows where to get these figures, let me know!

The crew of Proteus, immediately after painting

But the Scuba Diver figures made by Crooked Dice are excellent and perfectly suitable for this game. Although their equipment isn't exactly the same as those in the film, mine are painted in colours approximating the uniforms of the crew of the Proteus in Fantastic Voyage.

 U-91035 Proteus

 

Now I know I could have got hold of a really excellent model of Proteus from one of several 1:50 scale kits that exist or get one specially 3-D printed, and that the sub would have then looked identical to the one in the film. But that's far too easy. No, seriously, for reasons of both cost (I'm not going to play this game enough to warrant significant expense) and time (as always I am in a hurry to play with my toys) I decided instead that it wouldn't be too difficult to make one out of card scraps and paper mache. 

I always seem to think this, and then do my best to prove myself wrong. It's harder than I thought. Hence, the results are just a bit rubbish - but then if I am trying to simulate what Fantastic Voyage  might have been if it had been made on a considerably smaller budget, I might be getting close.

Component parts of Proteus, cut from cardboard

The first step in making Proteus was measuring components to get it the right size. My original concept was that the submarine would have a removeable roof so that you can stand the crew figures inside. It turns out you don't need to do this for the game, so it really doesn't matter, but this defined the size of the sub - there was no attempt to measure it to scale.

Basic assembly of the body of Proteus

You'll notice that some of the ideas of how I thought Proteus was going to look changed as the model was built. This is what happens when you design the model while you make it. The engine pods above, for example, were initially made in card but removed later and replaced with (far more suitable) lengthwide-split biro lids. 

And all stuck together (roof removed)

I used UHU all purpose glue to stick the card together. It's pretty quick-setting (much more so than PVA) although can be a bit stringy (even though it says it isn't). 

Once stuck together, all of this was covered with paper mache (newspaper/PVA) applied once, then dried, then made good and applied again. This massively strengthens the model as well as making good most of the gaps. The whole model was then painted white.

The design process continues as the model is built

As you can see, there are some fairly major design changes to the roof between the photos above and below. The roof was cut back to allow for the much larger windows that Proteus has in the film. I build a frame for the windows out of MDF (not the best choice of material in hindsight). The top and bottom hatches were added using wooden discs and some spare bases, and the engines (made of biro-lids that were split lengthwise) added to the top and bottom of the 'wings'. You can also see I reshaped the tail fin completely using pieces of mounting board.

Proteus takes shape

When all that had dried, I made liberal use of Milliput to smooth off the front of the submarine, add slightly domed finishes to the hatches, fill in gaps and tidy edges. This also added weight to the whole model, which was useful. Once this was dried, the only elements missing were the glazing and the observation dome, and the front intakes and what I presume are outtakes at the base of the tail fin.

Tidied up with Milliput

The whole model was spray painted white. I then cut pieces of clear plastic (for some reason the best I had available of the size required was from the tray that some crumpets originally came in) for the front windows (attached with super glue) and the removeable plastic lid of a drinks bottle for the dome. Far from perfect (especially as it has holes in if you look carefully) but it will do. Front and rear vents (not shown in the picture) were made from corrugated cardboard cut to size and fitted in place with more Milliput. Hatches painted yellow, vents and some small squares on the sub upper surface painted black, and Proteus is ready for launch.

Finishing touches added

Base Cloth

Modern art

With regret, I failed to take any pictures of my attempt at modern expressionist art in the garden that was required to make the basecloth. It was quite fun.  The base cloth started as a length of sheet that had previously been used as floor protection when decorating. It wasn't very clean and already had paint spatters. I added to this by soaking it in used painting water and then spreading it out in the garden on a sunny day and throwing the lurid-coloured contents of several unwanted acrytlic paint pots at it. After it dried (strange laundry on the line that day) I painted some nerve-cell-like shapes all over it in black and coloured them appropriately. This would represent the brain.

The base cloth was cut to 3ft wide, but over-length, so that I could hang it over a vertical frame to represent the brain wall (described below) on which the game objectives would be placed.

Brain Wall

One of a pair of frames

Having found some lengths of wood I made two 18" wide open rectangular frames with this anmd attached them to MDF bases. Two sections so that it would fit in a box for storage. These would form the brain wall. The idea is that the base cloth overhangs this and a string of LED fairy lights sit inside it to give the idea of nerve activity (a bit like in the film). 

Both frames, with backs added

Backs, made from foamboard, were added to these frames. And that's pretty much it.

The fairly lights go inside the frame, with the base cloth overhanging. I've added further effect by draping some torn pieces of material (formerly a snow effect table cover bought from Poundland that I knew would be useful sometime) across it. These are also useful for attaching the blood clots to, and for something so simple it's pretty effective (see below).

Divers approach the brain wall, which is lit up with nerve activity

Body Part Terrrain

This terrain was made with absolutely no attempt to in any way accurately depict the inside of the human body.

I cut some leaf-like lengths of card and stuck them to MDF bases cut to size. About 15 of them altogether - I wasn't sure whether the game would work best on a 3x3 or 4x4 table at that time so was hedging my bets.

Original concept in progress

As, even after priming grey,  these looked to me a bit too much like aquarium plants, I modified them considerably by using up a load of polystyrene balls of various sizes and some florists wire, all attached with PVA. There might have been some paper mache in some of these as well. The blobby effect makes them look like nothing familiar and therefore perfectly suitable for this use, and they might perhaps also be useful as some weird sci-fi terrain setup in a future different game.

Drying the whole assembly

PVA is very handy stuff but anyone who has used it with cardboard will be all too aware that before it dries it soaks in and can make the card very floppy. This is not useful when your terrain mostly comprises long lengths of card that you want to stand up on end. The solution is shown in the image below. Cardboard boxes and clothes pegs to allow the terrian sections to hang upside down to dry.

One of many examples of the strange things wargamers get up to

Once dry, I textured the bases with sand/PVA mix, and then spray-painted them with red and grey. Spot-highlights were added in yellow, red, purple and lime green, and the whole dry-brushed light grey and white to highlight and better blend bases with the base cloth. 

Red Blood Cells

A box of blood

These are made from DAS air-drying clay. Just bear in mind they take about a week to dry, but apart from that they're great. Each is made from a small ball of clay about 1" wide, squashed flat-ish with a central indent in each side.

Lots of stands

Bases were made in the same way for red blood sells and antibodies (see below). First, I took a wooden disc (of appropriate size - about 40-50mm for red blood cells - and added weight to this by glueing a 2p piece (1p for antibodies) to it. The wooden disks were bought very cleaply in bulk from The Works, by the way. When dried, a length of wooden kebab stick (various lengths, so as not to be too uniform about the height of things floating about in the blood stream) was then stuck to this with a glue gun. Bases were textured with sand/PVA mix as for the terrain above.

Red blood cells

When dry, these were painted grey and highlighted with light grey and wite dry-brushing. The red blood cells were painted a very bright red.

Antibodies

A reasonable amount of thought went into how to represent something that was represented in the film as variously a lighting special effect and pieces of semi-transparent green rubber. I settled on cotton wool.

Not what it looks like

    
You can make quite effective smoke in the same way as this. I took some cotton wool balls and soaked them in some watered down black acrylic paint. These were then squeezed out in kitchen roll and left to dry. When dry, small bits of them were pulled and teased apart and stuck to the top of their bases. Bases were made in the same way as described for red blood cells above, but using smaller 15mm-ish wooden disks weighted with 1p pieces. These were smeared with dabs of bright green and bright yellow paint to result in something approximating the look of antibodies from the film.

These have absolutely no resemblance to real antibodies, by the way.

Antibodies (they'll do)

Blood Clots

I went one step further than necessary here by making some blood clots for use as objective tokens, that could be attached to the brain wall. These started life as blobs of glue from a glue gun, which were made good once set with more glue (UHU), and then trimmed to tidy up when they had dried. 

Blood clots in prep

These wre painted bright red (same as red blood cells), and finally gloss varnished.

Blood clots hanging on the brain wall

And that's it! Everything's ready to play!