Systema Table #2: Priming and First Layers.

Today we take a look at priming MDF. Priming MDF is one of the hardest things to do as the stuff tends to drink paint like the Sahara desert. You can see it disappear…

My personal preference is gesso. Gesso is a chalk-based primer, mainly used to prep canvas for painting. The big plus-side on gesso is that it dries quickly and the chalk doesn’t get drunk into the MDF. This way you plaster your MDF with a tin layer of chalk, where paint sticks to with ease.

I ordered my gesso in spray-cans, but you can get it in buckets and apply it with a brush or paint-roller. I went for spray as most of the table is already put together. I found it easier to spray the buildings and tiles.

The entire table took one can to cover.

Primed and ready, now what?
With the table ready to go, we need to look into what we’re working towards.
What kind of end result do you want to have? What is the style you’re working towards.

Let’s have a look at what city stuff I have and that I can use for this project
I have a couple of buildings from the Systema Futura City line. They’ll work great to fill the table up with some urban sprawl. The style of the buildings is not high-tech and superb sci-fi. This table will not become Coruscant. 😉
Looking around in the Infinity books, there are a couple of planets or cities that would work with such a style of building; Acontecimento, Paradiso, Yu Jing’s twin planets. Bourak perhaps, although I feel the buildings miss some Middle Eastern touch in their architecture. Maybe Ariadna, although they look a bit too high tech for the low-tech faction that has been battling to survive and is strung out on resources from the start. Besides, I don’t play Ariadna myself, so it doesn’t feel like the best decision.

Next to that, I own a couple of buildings from the Neon-City line of Customeeple. The Neon-city Yu Jing line. These buildings are small, but have lots of awesome and nicely designed details. I can work with those too.
I also have access to the passenger-train of Terrakami, although a train can dominate the table a lot since it’s so long. Elevating it makes the train very unstable, so not a good idea for a showcase table. But no doubt it will be featured in a couple of set-ups.

To finish it all off, I can take the Micro Arts Studio banners I own to spice the Futura city up a bit, and put some others on the streets too. I also own a Laughing Jack container snackbar with Chinese symbols, so perhaps I can work with that one too.

That kinda settles the deal. The Yu Jing elements work nicely with the bigger and towering Futura City line. The Laughing Jack container and the Micro Arts Studio designs work great together to create a big urban sprawl worthy of a Cyberpunk game like Infinity. Next to that, I play Imperial Service, Haqqislam, Corregidor or NeoTerra. Besides Imperial Service and Neoterra, none of those armies work well with a city table, and on top of that NeoTerra ís Coruscant, with chrome and glass buildings. This allows me to choose the Yu Jing idea again as the best fit.
 Oh, I even own a couple of Ruishis (Guardian Lions) that can pose on the table like imposing statues.

Colours
Now it becomes tricky. What kind of colours do you want in your city? Grey? White? Dark grey? Perhaps rusty and green? All black and shiny? White and red? So many options, I need to sit down and think about this for a while before buying paints, and starting to paint stuff up.

I’m a big cyberpunk fan, and love the fiction, movies and literature. I know many cyberpunk movies and books are set in a dark city at night, where the bright neon-colours get reflected in the rainy streets. It’s the Tech-Noir style, combining elements of cyberpunk with noir-cinema.

Infinity is leaning heavily on the cyberpunk style and I want this table to reflect that. Looking at various sources for Cyberpunk cities, two colours are prominent between the shades of neon; hues of blues and blacks. This adds to the nocturnal vibe I want this table to have, so I’ll focus on those.

First colours are sprayed on the table. I bought cheap acrylics, diluted them to a milky substance with water and used my airbrush to spray the paint on the table.