Box Castle III

Time for the drawing. This was, of course, the most time-consuming part of the process.

First pass is the simple linework, made with an isograph and black ink. For bigger pieces, I opted to only do stonework towards the bottom of the structure (where the shadows would be), at the parapet edge, or where I wanted a specific architectural detail (i.e. an arch or a window or something) so that I wouldn't be scratching brickwork patterns until my death

Here's what the completed stonework looks like:

Second pass is with a white gel pen to pick out highlights. This adds a surprising amount of dimensionality to the 2-d surface.

Final pass is back with the isograph to add shading to any recessed area, as well as some random stray marks to represent cracks or edges:

While it was extremely time-intensive, I was really happy with the result. The layering of the many colors and textures of inks underneath the linework gives a lovely sense of dimensionality and an awesome comic-booky kind of vibe.

To give you an idea of the time involved, here is one of the wall sections that I took pictures of at 15-minute intervals as I worked on it.

Here's what I got done in the first 15:

After 30:

45:

60:

So yeah, LOTS of time. That was just one face of one wall section, and it took over an hour. Luckily it was also very meditative.

DOORS

Because I wanted the castle to be modular and highly rearrangeable, I decided to draw doors as small separate pieces that could just be blue-tacked into temporary positions on the structure (the blue-tack can be stored in one of the wall-section compartments.) I made a variety:

Also STAIRCASES:

Here's what one of the finished half-wall sections looks like with all surfaces illustrated:

What texture! What dimensionality!

I realize I may be the only person that thinks this is worthwhile when modelling techniques allow you 1) greater realism in 2) MUCH less time, but I stand by it. For one thing, modelling and painting this with a traditional terrain approach would have made it too fragile to pack into itself--a very frictive process with tight tolerances. For another, I for one am kind of over aiming for realism in my fantasy games. I think instead committing to style and attitude can be as impactful on the mood of a game as realism, just along a different axis.

Likewise, papercraft buildings would not have the same kind of sturdiness, and there are very few that are hand-drawn anymore. Most are some kind of digital texture that, when printed, looks far too regular and distracting and generic. It is kind of the opposite of style. (Though no shade intended to those who go for that kind of thing; there is no denying the practicality of that approach).

By contrast, when I plunk this down on the table, I can be pretty confident no one will have seen anything quite like it before.

 

Not to mention the looks on peoples faces when I start pulling what seem like endless little towers and walls and things out of the keep box is well worth the insane amount of work.

These are some pics of the whole castle set up before it's debut in the finale of the Chicago Skirmish Wargames KOW campaign.

 I hope you like it! I know these posts are pretty light on construction details--it's hard to really get into it when I'm essentially recapping the project long after I was actually working on it. But I'm happy to talk in more detail if there's interest. Just carefully nest your questions within each other and then slot them in to the comments box below.

Box Castle II

Painting the base colors proceeded using liquitex inks. First I did some wetwash gradients with a few colors as a kind of swatch to see what combination I would like the best. The winning swatch was this one:

That is, Dioxazine Violet for the lower parts transitioning into Quinacridone Magenta for the mid-values, and then Azo Yellow on the tops, to suggest a distant setting sun striking the raised areas.

I made a slightly dilute wash of each of these colors in a small jar apiece, then used my trusty mouth atomizer to make the gradient:

Greyscale buildings:

I worked yellow to purple and then back again until I was satisfied.

The roof shingles went on as simple brush lines of Sienna. I'll elaborate on them more at the drawing stage but for now just the suggestion of layers is sufficient.

Finally, I mixed a couple vibrant greens and yellow-greens to apply to one side of the lid, and to the bottoms of the storage boxes to suggest grassy or mossy surfaces. I also crudely painted a few small rectangles of chipboard as doors.

With all this dry, I could not help but put everything together to see what I could make with it.

 This was, I think, spring of 2021? Possibly 2022...who knows? Anyway, what followed over the course of years between then and now was the intermittent and highly time-intensive process of hand-illustrating the stonework and other surface textures in pen and ink. More on that next post.

Box Castle I

Before I was even completely finished illustrating my horribly documented BOXVILLE TOWERS terrain project, I already had the beginnings in my head of the idea for a fantasy version.

Because I live in an apartment and usually have to drive somewhere else to game, I've long been focused on portability and modularity in my terrain. I've also always wanted a castle.

"Hmmm..." methinks. "What is a castle keep but a big box, mostly? And what if all the pieces of a castle terrain set could be made to fit into that box? And what if I illustrated the surface instead of modelling it, so I wouldn't have to worry so much about it getting damaged?"

That was the concept for this design, which I started almost three years ago now. The next few posts will show some of the details of its construction.

The build uses this 30-ply chipboard, which is very heavy duty indeed. Almost certainly overkill. Cutting all the pieces for this thing definitely took a toll on my knife arm.

Above you can see the pieces for the modular walls. They are designed to slot into each other like vhs tapes, with enough room inside to store peripherals.

The full set includes: 4 full-length wall segments; 4 half-length wall segments; 1 large castle wing/freestanding tower house; 1 large roofed tower; 1 large battlement tower; 1 small battlement tower; 1 small tower topper; 1 tiny tower topper; 2 outbuildings that can double as hourdes; 1 gatehouse; 2 stairs; 1 roof section for the top of the keep; and the lid of the box which can either be used as a raised court or as a footprint for the interior of the keep.

You can see an early assembly of most of these pieces here:

And here's how they fit into the keep box:

Once I had all the pieces together, I slapped white acrylic on everything as a base for the illustration of the surface textures. Then I started laying in shadows using fountain pen ink and water.

By floating this specific ink in pools of water (similar to wet-on-wet watercolor painting) you get beautiful granulated textures.

Using a spray-bottle gives you even more interesting textures.

Letting pieces dry on an angle let's you manipulate the shadows to the bases of the structures.

They dry like this:

I can, and have, hypnotized myself gazing at these textures.

Here's the whole set, as well as some terrain storage boxes I made as tests, in white with shadows:

 Next post, I'll show how I added colors!