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The Ark is complete! After 6 months of building, it is finished. I use the term finished somewhat loosely, since I feel that I will be adding little things onto it for years to come. Especially things like a med-bay table which I wasn't able to finish in time, as well as working on a way to bring together the background boards more seamlessly. This project was huge learning experience as I had never tackled anything even remotely close to this scale before. The total cost for this project is right at about $350.

Everybody gets older and grows up, but that doesn't mean you can't let the ten year old inside you come out to play every once in a while. And the ten year old me from 1986 is on cloud nine right now. I want to give a few shout outs to those who inspired me along the way:
My family (Couldn't have done it with out you guys! )
Mandingo Rex - For making these amazing Ark panels years ago for all of us to enjoy.
Dogcades - For giving me the ideas for lighting up the Teletraan-1.
Jason Jensen - If you haven't checked out his youtube page "Jason Jensen Trains", I can't recommend it enough, he does some unbelievable paint and model work on trains and sci-fi layouts, a learned a ton from watching his videos and applying his painting techniques.

Thank you to everyone else who gave feedback and ideas for me as I was in the process of building it!

I have 2 videos uploaded that can be found here and here:

https://youtu.be/XPUiBeWSI70
https://youtube.com/shorts/aENrJk3sG2E?feature=share

So without further ado, here it is. It is a behemoth, 8 feet long x 4 feet high x 4 feet deep. 3 display platforms that come together to form 1 giant diorama/playset. Moving parts include the Teletraan-1 viewscreen, computer module on the side piece, sliding blast door, a rotating turret under the outside tunnel entrance and a removable sky spy. LED lighting includes the Ark interior ceiling, and the tunnel and entrance walls with a traditional outlet plug.






Where's Trypticon when you need him???





Sky spy! As much as I wanted to make a tunnel in the ceiling for it to fly out of, it just wasn't feasible.


The Dinobot cave:


Well done Grapple, well done.

What started out as an idea on paper 7 months ago:

Became this:

That looks absolutely amazing! Excellent job!

That is an excellent feat of diorama-building. Well-done! I hope to be able to build a set like that one day

Thank you for the kind words. Hard to believe I started this project over a year ago now. I have ideas for a Decepticon base to go along with this, but it will take me awhile.