I’ve spent a lot of time researching methods of faking weathering, scale model forums have been good for that

I’m curious about this stuff but at $120 a gallon not curious enough to buy it;
http://brutalrust.com/

http://www.patina.com/patina.html
The sophisticated finishes stuff works pretty well and you can get from the craft store. I love that they have a full range of metals, brass, copper, steel… and a variety of patinas for bringing out different colors in the ‘paint’.

I used a variety of these on this Annexbot;

The basic idea is there is a paint which contains metal, and an ‘activating agent’ which is essentially a patina, to trigger the rust. Different metals have unique reactions, ferric metals tend towards orange while cupric metals towards green. Its a good idea to familiarize yourself with this process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina

I like to use atomized metal suspended with a bonding agent, then force it oxidize quickly.
I like to mix something like this:http://www.douglasandsturgess.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=DAS&Product_Code=FM-1044&Category_Code

As far as bonding agents, I’ve tried mixing it in paint, liquid acrylic medium, floor polish, all of these will work to some degree, but can tend to have a bit of a ‘plastic’ sheen to them. The other problem I’ve encountered is they can potentially seal the metal and prevent the patina from penetrating. One solution for this is to mix some of your patina with your paint mixture, but this can lead to a very even and unrealistic pattern. The thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want to seal the metal away from the chemicals and air, so keep the paint mix thin.

Most recently I’ve been using a mix of steel with plaster as my bonding agent. It can be a bit chalky, but the plaster holds water/oxidizers and prevents the seal as well as adding more texture.

The other possible bonding method is to spray an adhesive over the surface and apply the powder directly. Don’t go over board and grab the Super-77, you just need something subtle to hold the powder in place without messing up the rest of the surface, hair spray, or matte spray work well.

Now as far as ‘activators’, there are a few solutions. You can use water, a bit of salt will make it rust a bit faster, but that is not fast or dramatic enough for us, now is it? What we want is a stronger patina. These are essentially ‘oxidizers’ because they speed up the effects of air’s weathering on the surface of the metal.

The real stuff, used for treating bronze statues and the like, will work great;
http://www.artchemicals.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=patina

The ‘Sophisticated finishes’ stuff is basically re-branded patina chemicals, so it works really well both on faux metal as well as real metal plates;

But I’ve even had great results from simpler stuff, for example Hydrogen peroxide…

I knew I’d have to make one.

To hang such a door I’d need to make a fake section of a wall, which made sense and I figured I would need to anyway because I’d need to be able to change the shape of the room for the different sets.

The flats for these walls started with thin plywood with a frame.

The first flat needed to be at least 7×4 to fit the door

The next I did in sections, so I could mix and match the details and move/swap them around.

I carefully cut the shape of the door into it, and a piece of insulation foam to form the door itself.

Painted the flats with a grey base to match the walls.

Built the and detailed the door with some greebles, as well as a light/cage for an industrial feel.

The door from inside, you can see how I used a coat rack for the door latch and reinforced the hinge attachment with wood scraps. I also added some gutter screen ‘vents’ for more detailing and to break up the surface a bit.

A little bit of paint and weathering goes a long way towards selling the realism here.

I looked a lot at the genre and some of the amazing production design work done and gathered reference/inspiration, as well as submarines, space ships, inspiration “set” blog

I even went on a field trip to see one of the last WW2 battleships, the USS Iowa

I knew a few things I needed a few scenes; workshop, OP room, hallway, control room… and I had to find a way to work in a limited space, part by part, and using any thing I had on hand.

The first step was to start moving unrelated items away and create the walls I had, I knew I needed textured panels and a basecoat, so after a trip to the hardware store I added peg board panels and started covering everything with a dark grey. I figured this would work well for shining a light through to create a sense of depth.

Slowly it spread to the whole room…

As the KRAWLR is a scrap collector, It makes sense that the whole thing would contain bins of parts, so I gathered a rack of milk crates and enough robot parts to fill them, along with many of my sculpting supplies and materials

The peg board also gives me a good way of storing props

I found a bunch of sheets of plastic grid from a remodeling office building, which provided a good texture for the ceiling, after I hit it with a bit of paint for weathering.

And this hanging lamp was donated by my friend Webster Colcord who’s wife worked for a lighting company

I extended some supports to add ceiling panels across the room, and hung sump tubing.

I mounted a partly disassembled fan into some packing foam on the ceiling for a vent. The best part it, it still works!

I just got one and have it hooked up to my computer through iClone to quickly try moving my digital doubles. I’m not expecting to get great animation straight out of it, but considering this is my first test, with no cleanup, I think this has a lot of potential for helping block out motion and timing.