Ok as I mentioned in the Amulet of Amathra thread I am working on building Shellendrak Manor using foam core. I know this one will be a bit involved. Plus I am trying to get this done by a convention May 16-18th. Oh how I love a challenge . Hopefully posting my progress will give me a kick in the butt to move faster.

Luckily I have already begun working on this. Back in December I started creating the needed photoshop files for the build. In my plans I decided to use the interior rooms as they are sized in the pdf. So the interior rooms are 6" x 6", 3" x 6", etc. My intention was so I would have less photoshop work. Of course building this with foam core means I have to take into account the thickness of the foam core for the outside walls.

So I began with the base of the manor. This includes the surrounding lawn area as well. In the end it will be 28.5" x 28.5". This will match up with my resized Mayhem tiles. But the manor itself will be on it's own base and the lawn pieces will be separate. It will make it easier for transporting to conventions.

So here is the final base tile including the lawn:



The grey areas are where the foam core walls will be.

From there I printed out the 7 pages that make up the 1st manor floor. On multiple page print outs I connect them all together using low tack painters tape. That way I can spray mount the 1st floor at one time and they will all line up. I will also point out that all of my base tiles are gator board and not foam core. Gator board is more rigid and less likely to warp. Though it is harder to get and more expensive.

Here is a shot of the 1st floor taped together and mounted to the gator board. After it is spray tacked down I gently remove the painters tape.



More to follow...

-Audrey

Next up I started working on the walls. I already have the files done for the main entrance part, the left wall and back wall of the manor. The left and back wall presented a challenge with the single doors. More on that later.

Here are all of those pieces spray mounted to foam core. Note I used the same painters tape trick for the outside walls as they are 3 printed pages connected.



And here they are after being individually cut out. The left wall is on top, back wall is in the middle and pieces of the front entrance on the bottom.



Sorry about the cruddy photos. I was taking these in a poorly light room so the quality is lacking.

I cut out the windows, glued in the transparencies, and attached the interior walls to the back side. Sorry no photos of the interior walls yet.



Also I cut out the doorways.



Here is where the single doors presented a slight problem. In the above photo you can see where the door has glass above it. To make the transparency work I need to sandwich it between two pieces. But if the pieces are too thin I can't attached the pin that the door pivots on so you can open and close it. But I came up with something that should work. The door frame pieces are going to be mounted on thick card board. This should let me sandwich the transparency plus give my enough thickness to cut the channel needed for the door pin. This will make sense once you read further, I hope.

Here is a print out showing the elements I use to make the door frame with the window work.



This is them cut out.



I make the doors by sandwiching brass rod on the pivot point between card board. The brass rod is what fits in the channel I spoke about above.



Well that is all I have done so far. I need to get the main doors finished and start to work on the front bay windows.

I will be posting more later...

-Audrey

I'm impressed with the extra work you put into the doors. I've only ever used the cardstock as a hinge.

What did you do to lengthen the exterior walls to accommodate the thickness of the foamcore?

I love the way you do the windows. Generally, I think the model interiors are too dark to justify the expense and effort of transparencies. But with the foamcore, even though they don't show the interior well, they make the buildings look not only substantial but very well constructed.

Have you ever considered covering the edges of the foamcore windows and doors?

The other night I got some time to work on the doors

Here is the main entrance that shows the exposed foam.



And yes, for the doorways I cover up the exposed foam. You can see how the strip is cut to be the exact width and it fits into the door frame.



Next I measured out where the holes will be needed for the brass rod that the door pivots in. There are holes in the top and bottom. I use a pin drill to poke the holes needed. You can see the hole in the floor there. The door on the left already has been done.



I do a dry run and make sure the door opens and closes correctly. When gluing down the wall section with the door I just insert the door pins into their holes. There shouldn't be any glue near the holes to get in the way. Double doors are a bit of pain as you have to make sure they line up correctly.





Next I put in the back single door the same way. Though I did have to cut a channel for the upper door pin to fit into. Everything came together nicely and now the mansion has a working back door.





That's all I had time to do for now. More soon...

Your builds make me want to cry!

That is looking SO good!

Very cool.

Thanks for the tips.

Wow, the back door looks gorgeous! Thank you for the continued updates, it's a great process to watch.

Im wait for new pictures...soon.I l ike it!

Audrey, your mods are incredible! Such clean builds, too.

Very inspiring!

Very nice indeed, and great work on the doors.

Looking forward to seeing more, more, more!!!

After seeing this I really think I may have to do a new manor with foamcore walls.

What did you do to lengthen the exterior walls?

Are you sure you are ready for this? I am not responsible for the insanity you are about to read. Your mind may be permanently warped from this.

...or not

I will testify that my mind is no longer the same.

Ok this is how I went about modifying the outside walls. First I made the layout at the top of this thread. This helped me visualize what needs to be done. Plus I can physically measure the distances on the layout. This helped greatly.

3 rooms make up the house depth which is 18". I had to add additional length for the added foam core walls. In the end this was 3 walls of additional length. So the side walls are 18.6" wide. The front wall was not counted because of the bay windows and how it will be attached.

In order to make the walls look symmetrical I divided length of the wall into 3 (18.6 ÷ 3) to get 6.2" w.

With that size in mind I went about creating a master wall file in photoshop that is 6.2"w and 3"h. Now I will point out that I am a graphics designer by profession. I know photoshop rather well and tend to take things to the more involved side of things. I am sure you probably have noticed that by now. So I cut out all the elements used in the various exterior walls and put them on separate layers. In the end the master wall file has the blank wall, the one with ivy (no windows), both left and right windows, the top border and the lower border, plus the single door I made. With all of these pieces I can create pretty much any wall variant in SM and even ones that are not. Below is a screen shot of the master wall file. You can see my layers palette to the side that shows you all the pieces on their own layer. The bottom example shows were I just turned on a bunch of random layers.



That is about it sans the gritty details like cutting out each piece, adding drop shadows so the windows look right, etc. If you have any questions feel free to ask away.

-Audrey

Ok. Now be what you wanted to say with it... Nonetheless a great work .. complicated ... but a great work. Congratulations!

This whole thing is two parts insanity and five parts WOW!!

Colour me stunned!!

Yeah, thats more involved then I want to do. Especially as I'm not a graphics designer and I only work with what I've taught myself on GIMP.

I think when I try doing a foamcore build I'll try to come up with a corner post to give me the extra length I'll need.

Yes...I agree with all of them..I hate you !... did I just say that ... no, no ... I envy you... I have build my sheldekar for tonights (the night...naninoni, nona...sorry lack of sleep) and don't look half as good as yours - but mine was suposed to be and old abandoned masion so maybe mine has more character in it ...

Great work...

So at the end of this Mod will there be an option to by a foamcore version of the Manor? I mean if you are doing the work once/for self then why not package it up and have it flogged as a MegaBash - we would love you all the more....


Please.





Lord Abaddon of Wormwood

You need to talk to Denny about that one. I can provide the files. I am just not sure if he would want to offer it or not. The only draw back is that you could only build the foam core manor one way with maybe a few mods. It would not be as versatile unless you could edit it yourself.

-Audrey

Are you an architect or a drafter? You seem to have the basic modeling skills for architectural demos.

Nope, I just have a knack for details and fiddly things I guess. I do love solving puzzles. Which converting paper model to foam core certainly does present puzzles at times.

-Audrey

Well I didn't really get any work done on the manor this weekend. Too many other things to do. But tonight i did manage to get one of the bay windows built. I didn't take any progress shots while I was making the bay window. I wanted to see if it came together correctly first or not. Note the 3 pieces of the bay window are glued to each other but not the other walls or in place to the base board yet. This is a test fit.



The actual printed floor plan is what made building the bay window a lot easier. I used a digital caliper to measure the length of the outside bay window walls. From those measurements I made the files needed. The hardest thing about this section is the angled cuts. But they are just done with an x-acto and metal ruler. This shot may give you an idea of how the bay window is assembled. The bay window corner piece still needs to have an angle cut to meet up with the side wall.



I will try to take in progress photos on the second bay window. More to follow soon...

-Audrey

Did you alter the bay wall texture to get it to align properly?

OK count me as another of the insane because after seeing Audrey's work on her site I rushed out and purchased black foamcore and have started rebuilding ATZ set.

I quickly discovered that I wanted to do some of wall extensions and such.

Unfortunately, I only have GIMP but would love some "how to" help as I am insane enough to do this (just ask the wife). And I'm not a Graphic Designer. My current problem is anything I import or paste from a WWG PDF won't print; I get a blank sheet. I tried something simple just reproducing the windows for my apartment building to maximize the use of a transparancy, but no luck; I have several blank sheets to show for my frustration.

I am not sure what is happening there. Since I have not used GIMP before I don't know if it is a problem with the program or something with the program communicating with your printer. Perhaps some other GIMP users could offer some help? Have you been able to print other documents from GIMP without a problem? I saw on the GIMP website that they have a User Group Forum They may be able to help solve your problem with printing.

-Audrey

I use GIMP and I've had similar problems. When I have issue with something on the screen not printing its usually a layer issue. Either I copied something into the page but didn't anchor it or the page has more than 1 layer and not all the layers are printing.

Check the layer window to see if there are multiple layers in the page.

If you are using multiple layers, I would save a 2nd copy of the file. Then in the copy I would merge all the layers down into 1, and then try printing.

The only other suggestion I have is to export the file as a jpeg or png and try printing without using GIMP.

Thanks both of you for your response. I've been able to print everythingelse just fine. This is the first time I've had a problem.

I was able to save the file as jpeg and print it with another application but I would hope I'm not stuck doing that.

I will check out the forums to see if they can suggest somthing. I'll let you know if I meet with success.

Not sure if you guys know or not but you can get a hold of "Gimpshop", which is "Gimp" but dressed up like Photoshop for those of us that are familiar with it. The more I look at Gimp the more I think it may actually be better that Photoshop. We use P-shop at work a lot and quite a few people have learned and stuck with Gimpshop...

http://www.gimpshop.com/download.shtml

Well the problem I'm having appears to be related to the latest version of GIMP. Since I installed it yesterday, nothing I print comes out right. This has been verified by what I found at the GIMP User Group Forum (thanks Audrey).

I have a workaround for the time being using Open Office, but I will be giving GIMPshop a try.

Thanks all for your help.

I did have an issue with printing when using a newer version of GIMP. I don't recall what the problem was exactly though. So I went back to a previous version of GIMP. I have the version 2.2.14 setup file if you want a copy.

If you don't mind, I would like to have a copy. I guess I deleted my copy some time ago.