So...for the last....I don't know, 6 or 7 years, I have wanted to do a HUGE playset for my ALIENS universe. Back in early December I finally started on it, building it mostly out of foam core. For the last few years I built up a collection of assorted parts, 3D printed, some resin cast, others from suppliers like Maurader and Empire toys and a giant amount of greeblies.

So in early December I started...and slowly came to the thought that maybe I bit off more than I could chew. This thing is 20inx30in with two levels, one removable from the other, with all sorts of rooms. The sheer amount of detailing really started to hit me from floor grates covering almost every inch, to all the pipe-work and panels needed for the hallway walls....it all seems nuts.

But if I just, stop, what the hell do I do with all the parts I've accumulated???

So my question to all of you, is there some way I can salvage this? Maybe some way I can look at this that will make me feel I can do this?

Stopping now seems like such a waste.

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A few thoughts:

1) I recently watched the Disney+ documentary series about Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company originally created to make the State Wars movies. I bring this up because it's really good, but also, so much of it is about dudes who really love building "LASER BLAST" just building "LASER BLAST". And when they don't have time to build it right, they build it well enough.

2) There's no time-table on this stuff. An old saying goes, "art is never finished, only abandoned." If you've got room to stow it away for a bit, stow it and come back to it when you have more time/inspiration. If you don't have space, try to salvage the bits you've invested the most time on, scrap the rest, and... come back to it when you have more time/inspiration. But also...

3) Don't be afraid to drop something that isn't working. And "isn't working" can mean a lot things. Maybe it means that you're finding you aren't able to do what you thought you could. But it could also mean that you're just not getting as much out of the project as you'd hoped you would. Sometimes dropping the project is part of the project, and that's fine!

Scale it back. Having ambitious plans is great. But avoiding the project because it snowballed beyond your time/funds/space/enjoyment is worse. I tend to let simple projects snowball to where they become avalanches that can and do overwhelm me.

Now scaling back has a few directions. Maybe for you it means less rooms. Or making a few room that could be modular and configured differently to be different things from different angles. Or maybe just eliminating sections that while cool looking, don't add a lot of play value. I mean, at the end of the day, this will be used to display figures on a shelf or a table or what not. Maybe having Every room, isn't the best way to accomplish that. Dissecting square footage to make sure every inch has value is probably the easiest for me. But also use this as an opportunity to focus on the "hard" rooms. The areas you want and need, but will take more time and effort. Sometimes, just banging those ones out, pulling off the concepts that looked great on paper in reality, gets the blood flowing to keep pressing on. Sometimes.

I had an art class in college and one of the assignments was going to the library and drawing something from 100 feet away. Some people did plants or a book shelf. I did the entry way. The entire view from the table I was sitting at of the entire wall interior front wall. Books, plants, the doors, shadows from sun poking through the trees, a blur of students coming and going, the wood grain in the table, the clock on the wall, the entry rug with the school seal, hell, even the outlets. It was like I was trying to capture a photographic picture. It was crap. None of it was really well done. You could tell what it was but it lacked details. In trying to be as detailed as possible about Everything I was seeing, I somehow made it seem like it was out of focus by no putting focus on any single thing.

We want to make everything hyper-detailed, but that just makes it easier to get lost in the weeds. Sometimes you have to step back and see the forest for the trees. Focus your attention on the details where the eye is drawn or where it needs to be for the characters/figures.

I've never once worked on a project that didn't have left over parts. Not once. It is easier to plan than to build. So I plan a lot, A LOT. Part of that planning is making sure I have all the parts, décor, accessories, furnishings, or props for a diorama. More often than not, I have more crap than I could ever cram into the allotted space. Than I have to edit what is important to have and what can be cut to be used elsewhere later.

Lastly, and more to what kowalski is saying, if you aren't culling your Work In Progress list regularly to make sure you still have a desire to see those projects through, you (general you, not you, you specifically) are doing yourself a disservice. Don't ever feel like you have to complete a project just to scratch it off a list. Follow your muse.

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I relate in a way....For years, I wanted to build just a gigantic post apocalyptic settlement diorama. It was always a "when we have a house." And I'd buy or build dio pieces and parts and playsets over the years--like a LOT. I had some temp set ups (posted a kitchen table build a few years ago) and shelf pieces but they were always little snippets of what I had in mind--still conceptual fantasy, you know. Well.... now we have a house and that means I had a space to build...but also a finite space. It's not conceptual fantasy with infinite room for what I wanted to do--I have finite space...and it must be shared with all my other stuff. Right now the Joytoy Warhammer stuff is taking up a lot of my space but it can go on higher shelves...but I also have books and a tv and desk set up. So I had space for a build and I bought a very large train table to act as the base....and I really thought it would fit most if not all of what I had been amassing....it fit about 2/3rds....and it is PACKED.

So what do I do with the stuff that doesn't fit?.... I will never have MORE space.
I'm thinking of actually pairing it down--right now 50+ figures are set up roaming the town (which is about half my PA-style figures) and making it more of a "scene" so I can use some of my customs and builds that don't lend themselves to a "town." And just wanting to be more open to rotating figures through and moving thing around more.

I say since you built it with being modular in mind.... just focus on finishing one floor. Figure out what the short term goal is and the long term goal. Hobby time? Display? Building and trying out new skills?

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I think the three main options are:

1) Walk away. Decide if it's still interesting to you. Decide if the work you've done so far is what you want. If not, just let it go, either to come back and start again or move on to another project.

2) Pick a much smaller area of the project and focus on that specific part to completion. This will let you practice all the skills you'll need for the larger project, and let you make decisions along the way that will be applicable to the other areas (the paint I use for this room's floor will be the same in all other rooms, etc). Work on it until it's "done" (but have some idea of what DONE looks like so you know when you get there). Then pick another area/room, and do it again.

3) Work in layers/passes. Don't worry about deatils. Think about it more like building a real house/structure. Get your foundation set, get the main structure built. Then do general passes. Add lighting if you're going to, so you'll know what wires/etc you need to hide. Paint all the walls/floors. Add the main equipment/furniture. Then start doing various detail passes.

Share WIP pictures! Even a little bit of encouragement goes a long way for me, but I'm awful about taking pictures until something feels "done". If you're the type of person who gets inspiration from feedback, use it!

Good luck, from someone who notoriously bad at finishing projects.

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Thank you all for your messages! You have all given me lots to think about.

I think one of the main things holding me back is what I'll do with this once it's finished. It's so massive that I won't really be able to put it on display inside the house...at least not till one of our kids moves out and I can take their room back for my own uses. I had thought of maybe making a smaller building, perhaps more of an outpost, but I can't picture that in my mind looking a way that I would be happy with. I wanted this big building to be like the colony head-quarters you see in ALIENS. I've already built a few smaller buildings and add-ons like MJTanner, and I feel that by giving up on this larger building that all the other smaller things are pointless.

Maybe I just needed a break? Even though I hadn't really done all that much on the bigger building?

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Maybe make yourself a backdrop and the facade of your building. That way you get the outside shots with all your add ons.

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It's been sitting in my garage since we decorated the house for Christmas. Now that's all put away, I might get it back out and see how I'm feeling about it....and go from there.

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i messed up and started a space station build of my own - knowing i have many other large dio projects that i dont want to touch anymore or dont have the time to start on any part of it. i blame empire toy works for this ambitious idea i have.

the thing about all of our nonsense is something a lot of people havent learned yet is: we dont have or need a deadline.

this space station thing of mine is made out of cardboard (actually mostly walmart diaper boxes) in different orientations and is 3'6x4'3. different overlapping "floors" for now that are meant to be "streets" so the inside of these boxes in their orientations will have floors and such of their own. i have many steps before i can even touch the greeblie part, and it's kind of leaning so i have to have it lay in my garage for a while before i throw a coat of resin on it. but that means "pulling my dead mustang out of the garage for a few weeks" and "laying this on the floor for a few weeks in the garage."

another example - i've been working on o-ring disney xd cartoon versions of the guardians of the galaxy since 2017. i am down to gamorra, groot, and nebula (if i can get her head right) the thing that's holding me up, is my others are perfect. so, i want them to match. gamorra's skin tone is just a few shades different from drax and it's been hard to get my eyes to settle on it. groot, i'm getting to the point of painting him, it's just how (do i want to start with brown spray paint first or will every shade of my brown hobby paint work instead?).

and i just finished a millennium falcon custom that i started when i bought my house in 2015, where i smashed a vintage falcon and a 2008 otc falcon together for more interior room. it took me so long because i wanted to fill it with a crew. the longest time it was for my guardians, but i fell into watching a-team and really liked imperial remnants (and just finished making a few o-ring mandalorians) so i finally had the perfect everything all at once and finished the ship...for my imperial remnant a-team. it took 3 sets of the wiring system because i kept frying it on my rewire (my first set front lights never worked, and i had to move the wires around and wanted a louder speaker). my first choice of black pearl paint wasnt working either. all these mess ups took weeks of me not even wanting to be in the same room as it - when i picked it back up. it sat in my garage for atleast 3 years.

dont beat yourself up, and dont quit it. there's a time when you'll be ready to get to it.









if all else fails, chop it in half and keep both floors together rather than modular.

Oh, I've trashed completed projects. Some got damaged during moves and I just didn't have the space/time/desire to repair them. Some just aggravated me at how poorly constructed they were.

I say that to say this, always go through your WIPs. If the muse is gone, let it "LASER BLAST" go! I've dumped projects midstream because I lost interest. That's it. Wanted to do it once upon a time and then times changed. Life is short and if you're customizing for the fun of it to bring joy, why spend any more time dreading wanting to customize when you do have the time? Challenging is one thing. Daunting even. But when you look at something and just get a WTF am I doing here? It is time to abandon ship.

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Profound words, Pluv. Seriously.

It's so weird because I'm at this point that giving up would just....suck! All the parts, characters I've constructed specifically for this...I have to find a way to make this happen. I've worked on many different kids of projects from models to prop replicas to costumes, and I haven't always enjoyed the "journey". Sometimes working on some things just sucks.


But man-oh-man once you've pushed through and finished and you can sit back and see this...beautiful thing you've constructed....THAT'S a wonderful feeling.

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