Building Shellendrak Manor
This blog page is more of a journal about building Shellendrak Manor with foam core than a “How To” article. I will periodically be posting pictures and ramblings about what I am working on. At some point it will come to an end when the Manor is finally finished. Hopefully you will find some useful information in here.
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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.
Back in December I started creating the needed photoshop files for the build but only recently started to work on it this April. In my plans I decided to use the interior rooms as they are sized in the original 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.
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…
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The other night I got some time to work on the doorsHere 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…
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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 รท 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
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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 say these bay windows were probably the most difficult thing to get right so far. More to follow soon…
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Well I figured it is long past due for an update. Sadly I do not have much to show. The good news is that the first floor of the manor is almost finished. It is just a matter of gluing in some interior walls with their doors. Pretty easy stuff compared to things like the bay windows and the grand entry staircase. I also have the 2nd floor glued down and awaiting to be cut out. I do have some photos I have been taking but I just have not had time to get them off of my camera and post them. Though I do have some bits of to share. I thought I would share the layout images leading up to the final floor plans.
Here is the same image I posted in the layout thread. This shows my preliminary layout which was just boxes and to shows the rooms. The next step was to add the floor tiles to get a feeling of how things would look. From there I took the floor tile layout into photoshop to use as a guide and I created the finalized floor image that I used for the manor. Looking at the images below you can see how I changed the layout slightly. These changes were a result or new ideas coming to mind, not liking how something looks, etc.
The first floor final image is at the very top of this page and below is the second floor final image. As you can see I added rugs to the 2nd floor for some variation. Also the upper right hand room of the 2nd floor will have a staircase leading down to the room below. I am just not sure exactly where I want the staircase to be. I also have plans for there to be stairs in the 2nd floor hallway leading to the attic or possibly a 3rd floor (added later).
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I realize it has been a while since my last update. I kind of burned out on building the manor. But the passing on time fixed that. So now I am back to working and finishing up the manor. The second level is pretty much finished (pictures later). Now I have started the beginning work on the roof/attic.
I did not want the roof to just be a top for the manor that then got put aside once players entered the manor. So after a bit of planning I came up with an idea on how to make the roof also an attic so players will have 3 levels to explore. Since this is an attic I designed it to have larger rooms than the rest of the house. Also the black area is where the sloping roof will be. That will be explained later on. But for now you can see what the attic floor will look like.
In the attic I wanted to make a creepy room. Nothing like having to explore a room that looks like something very very horrible happened in it. So I began with one of the regular manor floors and after some editing you can see a detail of what the floor now looks like below.
More will be coming…
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