Not my work BUT WOW

Farin

New member
@Dan

you know ..evertime i look at the team-toulouse website,i think to myself : \"why must all these great articles be in french \"

well, my day at university was a bit crappy and i feel like i have to do something usefull for a change, so here\'s the translation:

wolfgang\'s vampire castle:


1. he starts with cutting rocks out of the styrodur blocks thast are 2cm thick. it will be the socket of the castle (styrodur is a blue material that is normally used as an insulating material for buildings .. i bought mine it in a local building center, the price is fair,about 20 bucks for 1 square meter, as far as i can remember )

2. for the start, he only adumbrates the sructure of the rock by roughly cutting stripes out of the surface of the foam

3. later he will finish the structure with finer cuts using a scalpell. this picture gives you an outlook at what it will look like

4.he cuts away one side of the rocksocket to have room for a tomb he will add later.

5. he´s admitting that he´s a bit a lazy so he simply cuts the stairway that will lead to the tomb from foam, again he uses the 2cm blocks of styrodur

6. now the interesting part: the walls. every piece of wall is made separately

7. first he makes sketches on ply wood. for doors and windows he uses a template

8. now he cuts out the windows and doors. just cut from the edge trough the wood, it doesn\'t matter since you won\'t see the gap latter

9. now use the ply wood as a template for 6mm thick Selitron (again, thats expanded plastic slab, just like the styrodur, also used for insulating)

10. cut the Selitron in shape. use \"sawing\" movements for round shapes, for straight lines you can just pull the scalpell through it

11. now the bricks. use a pen and a ruler to draw lines on the selitron

12. here´s the trick: use a ball-pen or a blunt pen to press the shape of the bricks into the selitron with moderate pressure. you don´t want to cut the stuff, just create recesses

13. the result looks like this. you should do the \"imprinting\" twice to be sure the recesses are deep enough to be noticed

14. -17. to make the windows prettier he glues fly screen and cardboard
crossbars to the wood and the wood to the plastic. then just glue the wall on its place

18 - 22. curved walls are tricky, here´s his solution: klead and bend the plastic at the same time. the kleading makes the material denser,which in turn keeps it from breaking.
notice that while you can see the fingerprints from the kleading at the backside, the frontside is still pretty and smooth. once again cut the windows out and imprint the bricks. since wood is hard to bend, the round parts are made stonger by adding thick cardboard. he also cut crossbars in it.the guing is easier if you use fine sand paper to make the plastic rougher

23 - 27. to keep the wall from bending back to it´s original shape it´s fixed to a jar, cane or something similar with tape. let the glue dry. then rerun the recents with a pen for the same reason as before


okay it´s one o´clock in the night and i have to stop for now. if you like it and let me know and i\'ll do the second part tomorrow

good night
 

DrEvilmonki

Active member
You are a bloody Legend.

Originally posted by Farin
@Dan

you know ..evertime i look at the team-toulouse website,i think to myself : \"why must all these great articles be in french \"

well, my day at university was a bit crappy and i feel like i have to do something usefull for a change, so here\'s the translation:

wolfgang\'s vampire castle:


1. he starts with cutting rocks out of the styrodur blocks thast are 2cm thick. it will be the socket of the castle (styrodur is a blue material that is normally used as an insulating material for buildings .. i bought mine it in a local building center, the price is fair,about 20 bucks for 1 square meter, as far as i can remember )

2. for the start, he only adumbrates the sructure of the rock by roughly cutting stripes out of the surface of the foam

3. later he will finish the structure with finer cuts using a scalpell. this picture gives you an outlook at what it will look like

4.he cuts away one side of the rocksocket to have room for a tomb he will add later.

5. he´s admitting that he´s a bit a lazy so he simply cuts the stairway that will lead to the tomb from foam, again he uses the 2cm blocks of styrodur

6. now the interesting part: the walls. every piece of wall is made separately

7. first he makes sketches on ply wood. for doors and windows he uses a template

8. now he cuts out the windows and doors. just cut from the edge trough the wood, it doesn\'t matter since you won\'t see the gap latter

9. now use the ply wood as a template for 6mm thick Selitron (again, thats expanded plastic slab, just like the styrodur, also used for insulating)

10. cut the Selitron in shape. use \"sawing\" movements for round shapes, for straight lines you can just pull the scalpell through it

11. now the bricks. use a pen and a ruler to draw lines on the selitron

12. here´s the trick use a ball-pen or a blunt pen to press the shape of the bricks into the selitron with moderate pressure. you don´t want to cut the stuff, just create recesses

13. the result looks like this. you should do the \"imprinting\" twice to be sure the recesses are deep enough to be noticed

14. -17. to make the windows prettier he glues fly screen and cardboard
crossbars to the wood and the wood to the plastic. then just glue the wall on its place

18 - 22. curved walls are tricky, here´s his solution:klead and bend the plastic at the same time. the kleading makes the material denser,which in turn keeps it from breaking.
notice that while you can see the fingerprints from the kleading at the backside, the frontside is still pretty and smooth. once again cut the windows out and imprint the bricks. since wood is hard to bend, the round parts are made stonger by adding thick cardboard. he also cut crossbars in it.the guing is easier if you use fine sand paper to make the plastic rougher

23 - 27. to keep our wall from bending back to it´s original shape it´s fixed to a jar, cane or something similar with tape andf let the glue dry. use the time to rerun the recents with a pen for the same reason as before


okay it´s one o´clock in the night and i have to stop for now. if you like it and let me know and i will do the second part tomorrow
 

hivetrygon

New member
That guy is very tallented, and the castle is fantastic. I\'m not into sculpting that type of thing, but my wife makes fantastic little homes from thin hard board. I\'ll have to show her this and crush her spirits a bit, might get me some pitty sex. lol :drunk:

Serious skills there, hats off to him.
 

Arma

New member
This is amazing... Terrain is generally underrated on CMON but it takes as much time and effort as some of the masterpieces you see on the top 10!

Wonderful :D
 

Hands of blue

New member
WOW indeed. Those must be one of the best terrain pieces i\'ve ever seen. I think they could be used as a miniature set in a fantasy movie.

@Farin
Thanks for the translation, it rocks. I would love to read the rest of it.
 

supervike

Super Moderator
Hey...on the original link that DrEvilweeni produced...

what type of material is the scultper using on the 9th picture? He has a template of wood, and what looks to be some sort of foam....

Is that balsa foam?
 

Roger Bunting

New member
It\'s called Selitron. Here\'s a link to an online store where you can get it. From what I can tell when I googled it, it\'s similar to the other extruded polystyrene but comes in thinner sheets. One description was it\'s similar to the foam packaging that you sometimes get with burgers ans such.
 

Farin

New member
you want it, you get it

and this time with less spelling mistakes.. i just realised how tired i must have been yesterday


okay so here`s part two

we´re on the 10. picture on the second page. the round wall segment is finished and glued to the rest of the modell.

11 - 15. Now the battlement for the round wall segment. he uses the same techniques he allready used for the big parts, starting with a strip of the 6mm Selitron that is 2,5 cm high. first he carves the bricks. then he cuts diagonally into the the upper and lower edge to creates bevels, bend it and finally he cuts the battlement out. this is the last step so the battlement doesn`t break so easily. finally it´s just glued to the wall.


16. The Gatewall: He doesnt explain much, just claims that this really impressive piece is made from several layers of Selitron that are glued one upon another. then he graped a scalpell and did a lot of work with the scalpell (i think he forget to mentioned that the first step was probably to draw some artificially lines before he started to cut )

17 +18. before making the third floor he stats basecoating, since later it would be hard to reach some spots. also the bottom of the third place is added, again these are pieces of ply wood.

third page, 1. picture: for the third floor he wants a new detail,a frame work.
the only thing that changes is that after the bricks are made he cuts gaps into the Styrodur and adds scantlings [hope this is the right word, found several translation fo it ]
the bended frame work on the next picture is made with 3mm Selitron, since it´s hard to bend wood.

3. this halfround piece is , once again made by three layers of Styrodur

4. the spire is just card board bend into shape

5. slowly the third floor grows....

6. now the roof. this looks really difficult since tthe castle is so rambling. But accoding to him you don´t need math , it´s just cutting: he takes a gross cardboard template and keeps cutting till it fits...

7. For the rest of the roofs he applies the same rule he used for the walls : if its even he uses ply wood for it , if it´s bended it´s made of cardboard

8. Okay; here comes his motto: IF IT DOESN´T FIT MAKE IT FIT !

now the roofs are done, time to add some details: chimneys, shingles, bays

first the shingles. since it would be dumb to make all this shingles separartely, he uses another trick. he takes stripes of card board
and cuts \"teeth\" into it, i. e. he takes a scissor and cuts half into the cardboard. youn can speed this up by stacking the card board.Then in order make the shingles look irregular, he cuts them to different lengths. Still, this will take alot of time and it´s a really boring work, so it´s best done while watching a movie. Picture 14 shows you his storage after a three hour movie.
now glue the shingle - stripes to terh roof so they overlap. If you have round roofs yust bend and \"twitch\" (his word not mine) it into shape.

page 4:
the little towers, bays and chimneys are all made the same: first meassure the angle of the roof, and mark it on a piece of cardboard. Use that template to cut a piece of the Styrodur into the right shape. Add bricks as before. the little windows are made in three steps:

1. cut the square shape of the windows into the styrodur . the cuts must be vertically. then make an angular cut from the middle to the edge of the window so you end up with a \"triangular trench\" .

2.Do this twice so your piece looks like the one on pic 7. press the bulge in the middle flat with the backside of the scalpell - Styrodur is flexible

3.add shutters with balsa wood

the spire for that tower is made with a triangular template - just take a look at the picturs they are self explaining, nothing to translate here.
once the spire is done, cover it with shingles to make it stabler

at the last pic on of this page you can see the spire of the castle´s keep. It´s not glued so it is removable.

page 5:

here you can see two finished buildings. notice that the walls are not in a right angle.This was often the case since the castles were build according to the shape of the rock, therefor the buildings always looked rambling.
And on the next picture we see the bottom and that he cutted alot till all the walls fit...

On pic 6 the castle is painted - time to do the yard before he closes the wall around it

look at pic 7. closer. Isn\'t there something missing? Unfortunately, he didn´t have a plan and therefor forget that he needs a stairway that leads from the yard to the castle. time to improvise. he cuts a piece out of the socket and uses is as a template for the stairs. Then he cuts to new, clean blocks from the Styrodur and starts cutting in the stairs. No meassuring here, just visual judgement. First a vertical cut, than acut from the side. Repeat this till you have a stairway (according to this guy, it´s only a matter of a few minutes).
Now he puts the stairway in it´s place. of cause there are gaps, so he takes pieces of Styrodur tocover them. Toothpicks are handy to keep them in place and allow him to continue without having to wait for teh glue to dry. He just sticks them in and cuts the endings that stick out away with a scissor.


Page 6 :

time to add colour (which colour doesn´t matter as long as it´s dark enough for drybrushing) and texture. I guess most of you know this:make a mix of paint,glue and bird sand. the ratio of colour and glue is 1:1 give both into the jar and fill it up with sand.The result looks really disgusting - the colour and consistency of mud. If your mix is like this you done it right. Apply it bountyfull. The stuff is great for filling holes and gaps. Then add more sand. It helps giving it a nice texture and helps binding the mix to speed up the drying. Be carefull not to aply sand to the stairway so the stairs remain visible. The textured colour takes a long time to dry so a blow- dryer can be usefull.
Once everything is dry drybrush it and ad details

The Gatewall: it´s painted and some wooden details are added. Tey´re made of veneers and scantling. the Scantlings can be cut with a scissor. Veneers are a bit tougher so you will need a saw. A pincer helps to hold it.

okay only the tower is missing....
you could build it using a card board roll -anyway he has a different approach.

page 7: You need a round template. make one from cardboard (or use an old cd or a warhammer template...). Cut circles from 2 cm thick Styrodur. Do this using \"tangent\"
cuts. No need to be exact, you just need a rough circular shape. Repeat this till you have ten rough circles. Arrow slits are done by cutting square edged gaps into one circle.
Glue the circles one upon another, use toothpicks to fix teh circles so you don´t have to wait for the glue to dry. use flat cuts to straighten the tower . To get rid of the traces of the cutting use fine sand paper.The tower won´t be geometrically perfect, but thats not important. Add bricks. the roof is done using exactly like the other ones the only difference is that this time he actually does some planing. with the shindels by using a template. Most important : make the stripes broad enough so they will overlap later

the castle is finished by now and glued to a 60x60 cm plate.

okay now the way that lead s to the castle. i skip a little here since all of this was covered before: template, cutting, using Styrodur leftovers to fill big gaps and the textured paint - glue mix to fill the small ones and to create a realistic surface.

More Interesting: The Tomb at the backside.
This one will have a gothic arch.

Sorry for the cliffhanger but i have some work to do, tomorrow part three
 

Arma

New member
Thank you for the translation, Farin! :D

I wonder how many hours this actually took... it\'s so impressive I feel like I want to make something similar! (but I don\'t I could even get close :bouncy:)
 

DrEvilmonki

Active member
Hell I will be happy to use it for a cobblestone base. The scale of the castle is amazing, the scale of the whole town is insanity causing. :eek:
 

Farin

New member
welcome back to part three, folks

this time i will concentrate on the measurements and the techniques that are new since most of it was covered before. All thats missing is the gothic tomb, and the first step will bea bunch of lancet archs for the roof

page 9, pic 13. make two templates from really thick cardboard. the measurements are : upper edge 1 cm , lower edge 6 cm height is 4.7 cm. fold each template in the middle and cut a curvature into the longitudinal edge as shown on pic 14.

now make blocks from the 2 cm Styrodur. sketch a little square 1 cm x 1 cm on the top side. Here comes the part that needs practice: on every side of the block make an angular cut from the edge of the little square
to the bottom. repeat this on every side. then take your templates, bend them a bit and hold them to the block. Let the template lead the scalpell and make a curved cut. the whole secret seems to be that you must make slow, sawing moves with the scalpel.hold the blade flat and carefully peal thin layers from the block till it look like the one on pic 5 on page 10.

repeat this till you have enough of these curved archs for the whole roof. don´t forget that the arch on the corner needs only two curved edges.

the last part are the columns. the measurements are: 6 cm heigtht, footprint 1 cm x 1cm . stick a whole toothpick trough the coloumn to make it more solid. then use the pointy end of the toothpick to stick one coloumn to each angle and add glue.

the mandatory coffin for the vampire lord is simple. just take a look at the pics, no state secrets here

That´s it !!

It´s been a bit of work translating it, and if something is not clear or i used the wrong therm, just tell me.
i hope it´s helpfull and that some of you will try and make their own buildings.

´til next time

Farin
 

Hands of blue

New member
thanks Farin. I´m itching to try something similar and the translation will be very handy. I just need to find the time and materials before I start so It may take a while. Of course I will start with some little smaller project.
 

Farin

New member
well, of cause you should start with something smaller:D

i think that round watch tower would actually be a good project to start with - it´s not to big and i could use an old cd as a base.., maybe next month when i got more time
 

Hands of blue

New member
Just a quick note about Selitron. When googling Selitron almost all sites were in German. But I learned that the same stuff is more commonly called Depron in other countries.

And the best thing is that I found a Rc car store that sells it about five minutes drive from my house. 1.25x0.8m sheet of 6mm Depron only costs 8€ so it´s not even expensive.
 

Arma

New member
Farin: Many, many thanks for the translation.

HoB: Thanks for that too, I love in Japan so I\'ve no clue what they call it here but they DO have an abundance of Tamiya (and therefore RC!) stores in the city I live in.

I\'ll go check it out.
 
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