If you're familiar with Diaclones, here what I've done:
They are a bit rough, but I wasn't aiming for perfect, I was just having fun to see what I could do quickly with cheap materials.
I've started with foam board bought at Dollarama, and walked around to see what can be used and such.
For mine, the challenge was the metal panel as my figures have magnets in their feet.
So went the Walmart and Michaels to see what would work for me.
I designed and printed my computer panels, used silver and gold markers a lot, and my lighting are those tiny LED sets from Dollarama. And lots of hot glue.
So for a simple approach, I would suggest you start "cheap. Get a bunch of these boards, a cutting board (self-healing rubber mats are great!), an x-acto type knife and LOTS of blades (I ordered a 100 pack from china, as locally all I could find were 5 packs that costs almost the same), good markers, if you have a colour printer try and see at making or getting designs (I know some do the "cybertron orange panels" available in PDF format).
Consider both your "floor" and the background, if you're doing 3-d motifs, and go with what you like.
Multiple pages printing (poster mode) can give you a fairly cheap background (you could get those printed on full sized paper at your local printer).
(I'm working on building a lightbox type system for these as I'm not happy with the results I'm getting)
So those are my pointers... hope they help, but I'm curious to see other suggestions...
