I made up this Firefly/Serenity esque dewelling for my Serenity RPG campaign. It was inspired by "The Heart of Gold" whorehouse from the Firefly episode. It's a simple building with cheap thermal shielding suitable as a house for a small far somewhere in the Verse.
The first thing I did was build the structure out of plain old corigated cardboard.
Then I cut some strips of aluminum foil and cut those into rectangles. I used the width of the ruler I was using to cut the strips. This helped because it held the entire length of the foil down as I cut it and the foil tears easily so any extra support is a good thing.
The I started adding the foild rectangles on one of the corners. I started on the botton and overlaped each piece. I glued each piece down with plain elmers white glue brushing it only on the edges of the dull side of the foil. This allowed the middle of the foil to pucker a bit which game be the effect I was looking for. I just pasted the rectangles over the doors and windows as I was going.
Then I cut out the openings by cutting an x shape from corner to corner then folding the points back into the frame.
It took quite a little while to get the foil on. I used the rectangles for most of the structure than random bits of foil to fill in at the top. This added to the hardscramble look of the structure.
To make the windows I cut some light cardboard then painted it blue and brushed a thin coat of white over it. I then added the ledding by just drawing a grid with a regular pencil. I glued these into place behind the windows with some craft glue and I glued unpainted pieces into the door frames.
I then added a light cardboard roof and roofed it with some one sided corigated paper I had in my materials pile.
I then painted the roof black and drybrushed it with two shades of silver. I also build a really basic door out of light cardboard that looks like a hatch from a spaceship.
The building was pretty much done at this point. I only had to weather it. The roof got a heavy rust colored wash then I added a bit of black to that and washed the rest of the building. After the wash on the building dried I whiped it off with a paper towl using downward strokes to remove all but the weathering in the cracks and depressions. I also weathered the windows and doors with the same wash. It took several progressive coats on the windows and I added more at the bottom of each window because II figured that would get more weathered. I also drybrushed the door a bit to bring out the detail again.
There you have it. A nice little farmhouse for a family just startin out in the Verse.
March 06, 2007, 11:21:54 PM