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.
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.
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