GatoZen

Scale Modeling, Diorama and Illustration Process Tutorials and Journey.

scratch build

Miniature Dungeon Cell Door and Windows – Dark Souls Dungeon Part 5

· · Leave a Comment

Welcome to the fifth part of the Dark Souls Dungeon project tutorials. Today I will tell you about my experience in building the door and windows part of this diorama.

Dungeon Cell Door and Windows Video Tutorial

The Idea

As you know I took the project of representing the initial point in the game Dark Souls, which is a dungeon cell where the player begins the adventure. This time was the turn of building the door and windows of this cell.

The first thing that came to my mind was the type of materials I would use for this build, according to the scale I’m working they had to be something easy to work with but also adecuate for the final result.

Dark Souls Dungeon Cell Door and Windows

The Build

My materials of choice were mainly two: styrene plastic of 2 mm width and wooden toothpicks.

The styrene was used mainly for the structure of the door and windows frames. Since the 2 mm width seem adecuate for the scale I’m working the diorama (1:20) It gives the built of the door and windows the necessary thickness as a metal frame would have for real. The bars were done with wooden toothpicks (but now that I think about it, plastic toothpicks would have done a better job). All these elements were glued with super glue, so the assembly was quite fast, once all the pieces were correctly cut and created.

Once the principal objects were assembled I started with some weathering and scratching of them (this was a pretty much fun part!). For this I used a thin steel file with a pointy edge. The thing here is that it is very easy to overuse this resource and end up messing up the piece, so I had to go careful with this step.

Steel file to make some scratches and drilling

As for the painting I primer with black acrylic and applied gray and white highlights to create a gradient-like coloring before getting to the actual base color.

So when the base color was applied (gunmetal acrylic) thinned down with water, the actual grayscale gradient was still visible but with the metallic color over it.

Black primer with grayscale tonalities over it

Tha rust was a crucial part to add realism to this pieces. In this build I learned a new technique with 2 combinations of two colors. The first creating a brown-redish tone applied with a selfmade sponge and the second tone a orange-yellowish color applied with a brush with hard bristles. This combination (also done in selective places) worked very well with the metallic base tone, giving a nice realistic look to the door and windows.

Rust effects

Finally, and to enhance the scratches and holes drilled with the steel file, I drybrushed with silver acrylic, giving some shiny finish to some details.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun with this build and learned a new technique to represent rusted metal (before I had posted a tutorial about an iron gate, which involved some rusting effects also). The most difficult part for me was the styrene bending with hot air of a hair dryer, that I broke some pieces before I got the hang of it and did it right.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the final result and eager to start taking some shoots and video to the whole build.

One of the final shoots of the cell door and windows

Miniature Dungeon Ceiling Build – DarkSouls Dungeon Part 3

· · Leave a Comment

This is the third part of a series of tutorials -the first was about walls, and second about floor-. This particular build represented a very peculiar challenge since I didn´t know how to represent a vaulted ceiling built by stone bricks. And also that look seamless and integrated with the prior build of the brick walls, using the same kind of bricks.

The Idea

As you know I´m looking forward to represent as identical as I can the starting point of the DarkSouls game, it is a dungeon with a vaulted celing made from stone bricks, so, I decided to use a technique of brick by brick construction of wall and ceiling to make it more realistic. So I had to use the same kind of bricks and layout used in the wall build, so the wall and ceiling would look as one – just like in the game-.

The Build

The first problem I encountered with this build was to calculate the circular shape of the celiing. As I see in the game it looked like a half-circle structure, so I decided to give it a go in this shape, even though a strict vaulted ceiling might not necesarily have this specific shape, -just a semicircular or arc shape-

Another problem I had, was to decide what kind of material I could use, so it could be bend into this circular shape. I used a 2mm width cardboard very common in study architectural models and made the circular shape scribing straight lines with an x-acto cutter with equal distances from each line.

Scribing ceiling plate to bend it

Once the bending and glueing of the base structure was done I proceeded to start covering the interior face with xps foam bricks (previously made – I have a tutorial here, to create this kind of brick easily with great result).

Planning each lane is recommended

Patience, patience… this part was by far the most time consuming, since I had to plan each lane of bricks so they could be layout in a realistic fashion, and also alternate using thin, médium and thick bricks per lane, combining them, the way in the videogame was represented. I recommend using hot glue to adhere each brick, since it adheres instantaneously cutting drying times. But the downside of this, is that I had to had each lane of bricks previously separated and layed out, so they would fit and look nice once glued.

Patience… patience

Also, since there is an opening in the top of the ceiling I had to kinda calculate the lanes so they would fit properly with the opening and it would look natural and the bricks layed out acording to the opening.

The painting and weathering phase was exactly the same as I did with the wall build, because it has a continuity in the structure of wall and ceiling. The challenge was that both builds would fit seamly when putting them together, fortunately everything went as planned and they fit together just fine.

Painting, weathering and drybrushing

CONCLUSION

This was a very interesting build, since I haven´t done anything like this before. The closest I had, were some architectural models with interiors included, but those kind of models usually don´t have any textures or materials represented (just the plain walls) since they are used mostly to have an idea of the spaces created, not necesarily with material or decorative elements.

And in this case I was concerned about the right fitting of the bricks and the right coloring of both builds (I didn´t want different tones of color on each build.. it would have looked evident these were two pieces) so they would look as a single build.

Walls and ceiling must have the same color tone.

Also, I think the scale I used worked in my favor (1:20) because at this size, I had more room to adapt and correct some millimeters I missed in the fitting, than if I had used a smaller scale (1:50 or 1:75, to mention some).

Final Shot of ceiling assembled with walls

Realistic Wooden Shingles for Dollhouse or Scale Models

· · Leave a Comment

In this tutorial I describe my experience of doing a realistic shingle roof for an old dollhouse or scale model. This post includes a step by step video tutorial and my personal experience as I completed the build.

Step by Step video

The Idea

The original idea of doing a shingle roof, came from trying to represent a physical versión of Mr and Mrs Cutters house in Okami videogame. The house is an almost in ruins old cabin in the woods. The complete project consisted in building the whole house and its sorroundings as close to the videogame as posible, and modeling interior and exterior, including furniture.

The Build

First, I thought this would be an easy build… but no way. As I started the project I realized this had more details (if I wanted to make a decent build) than I though. Shortly I will be posting my experience and apreciation about the whole Cutters cabin build, right now I would only be focusing on the part of the roof, specifically the shingles.

The first thing that I had to decide was the material for the roof. Since it will represent an old cabin in ruins, I thought it was appropiate to use wood, since I could weather it more easily and have a realistic result. So, I picked up some popsicle wooden sticks (easy to find in any grocery store) for base material.

The good thing about wooden sticks is that they can be weathered easily (as you can see in the video tutorial) and obtain a very convincing result for a diorama. Depending on the finish you want to achieve, I find wood a very noble material for modeling, either if you want to make a seamless surface or a wornout and ruined finish.

As part of the weathering several layers of wash were needed in different tones, from a basic black wash to a more green and yellow tones, representing humidity in the surface of the shingles. Also some grass powder was applyed representing clusters of moss in some areas.

Also, the use of lychen in between the shingles gives a more realistic and dramatic effect depicting an old forgoten cabin. As if nature had started to reclaim it and part of the cabin had plants and vegetation starting to cover it.

Things I could have done better for this build, would be to use a hot glue pistol to glue the shingles (since it dries faster) other than the traditional white school glue, which was the one I used. Anyway I´m satisfied with final result with the roof of this cabin.

Recently Published