Set : Witch's Cottage Ext...
Alrighty... On to the first of the sets. So far I have only started Fidget's Cottage Exterior. I am about a third of the way through the creation of this set. Lets take a look at some photos of the construction and how it is coming along...
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Sets : Fidget's Cottage (Exterior)
This was a real challenge for me. I haven't built a miniature set... well... ever, really. I tended to focus specifically on character animation/motion tests for the most part, so now I had to start thinking outside the box a bit.
I know, more or less, how it's done... But knowing and doing are two different things. Thankfully, it seems to be going well and I am happy with progress.
Okay, the first thing I did was to build the general structure out of Blue Styrofoam. I just got a load of 25mm A4 sheets of it, and hacked out the overall shapes, holding them together initially with masking tape, and then strengthening the joins between them with glue, and oval nails.
Despite the strong glue and nails, the structure felt a little wobbly, so it came time to build an internal strengthening structure out of Balsa wood. I read a lot about house building (alternative approaches, such as straw-bale-only and timber-framed-straw-bale houses) So I had a good idea of what was needed to give the structure strength... Batons with diagonal struts to hold them fast.
Here is a shot showing the blue foam and the balsa wood frame which gives it strength...
This "timber" frame also provided the support required for holding up the larger of the two "Witches Hat" peaks that extend out from the main roof structure of the cottage (see sketch further above)...
The next step was the main structure of the roof itself. For this I placed five strong twisted-aluminium "beams" from one side of the roof area to the other. Between these I threaded a "spider-web" of very thin wire. This bound the roof structure together and gave it added support and strength. Extra wire framing was added to make the internal stuctures of the "Witches Hat" roof peaks, with blue Styrofoam as their faces.
I then went along this "wire-web" and introduced a series of irregular kinks and bends. The reason for this is that my plan was to make the roof look ramshackle and worse-for-wear.
The next step was to add the papier maché to form the roof itself. For this Kjestine helped me, as I had never made papier maché before. We used the strip method. You take thin strips of newspaper and brush wallpaper paste onto each side and then ley them on your structure. We did this, ensuring to leave a notable overhang as you sometimes see on really old cottages. I then painted the top half of the papier-maché with black paint.
Here is a photo showing the wire mesh with the papier-maché on top...
I decided it would be best to do the render of the building next. For this I chose a simple "repair and filler" powder. You mix this with water to make a paste, and the result is a white plaster. The first thing I did was to take a piece of Styrofoam and apply the "plaster" mix. I scored the styrofoam roughly with a craft knife, to give the plaster as rough surface to grip onto, and then applied the plaster.
The results were very good. The plaster adhered well and looked pretty good...
...But I thought that putting on a white plaster finish might not fit the aesthetic, so I substituted the water in the mix for very thick black coffee! This provided a more natural earthy tone to the render. A more realistic base for the paint effects I'll be adding at a later date!
I applied the render and it took a lot longer to dry than expected. I think that might be down adding coffee into the mix rather than plain water. But it worked out great in the end... and now the model has a very nice coffee aroma! ;o)
...and here it is after all that (You can see it was still drying in this photo... It took several days to fully dry!)...
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I was really pleased with the results so far, and glad that it was starting to look like my concept sketch. But there was, of course, a special touch missing... The wood shingles!
...and I will cover those in another post!
posted by Paul (Vortex42) at
1:29 AM
5 Comments:
looks good!
Ill be stopping by regularly.
jriggity
Cheers Justin! It's great to know you'll be visiting!
Um, hi.
You rock. Everything you've posted so far looks fantastic and thoroughly professional. Bravo!
(I found you via my stat counter just now. It told me you visited me, thanks for that and thanks for the link in your sidebar!)
You are BOOKMARKED, your work is inspiring!
Many thanks Shelley! I'm really glad you like the work so far.
I've been reading your blog since early last week, when Nick Hilligos told me you were doing Shingles (I've been putting myself through that unique brand of torture recently)... Seeing someone else deriving so much enjoyment from it has, in fact, been a huge help! I made 600 of them about three weeks ago... I have been putting off making the next 400, but your enthusiasm is infective, so I'll be getting stuck into it very soon!
Oh wow! That's great to know, Paul.
Listen, you'll LOVE putting on the shingles, I can tell. It's such a powerful feeling. So story book. There's no substitute for the finished handcrafted, miniature texture either.
PS: After I had painted my batches with diluted acrylic paint, I remembered that rough wood, like the cedar I'm using, takes RIT fabric dye (available in many mixable colors) like a sponge. I plan to assemble the shingles and then paint on a brown dye, among other secret things, to age the roof.
PPS: Based on preliminary experience with the tinier mouse's cottage shingles, we can pretty much assume to need to make about three times as many shingles to cover the whole roof as it reasonably would seem. I suspect I'll have to make more of my larger shingles soon.
Much thanks to Master Mr. H for the referral!
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