Victorian city continues ....
/
I've almost completed construction on the Victorian City commission. My client was very happy with the first three buildings. The next three are a bank, factory, and store. I've tried some different techniques out with these buildings.
The Bank uses some cake columns I found at the craft store. I figure a secure location like that would only have one entrance. I've been working on casting my own lamp posts. I think they have a better weight and feel than some of the other ones I've seen. Getting your mold right is a difficult process and I've tried several versions, none of which are as easy to use. Luckily I found this tutorial from the company that makes the silicone for the molds. This makes the process much easier.
The Warehouse/Factory uses corrugated cardboard for the rolling door.
As with all my buildings I use a Cricuit machine to cut out the letters so that they are dimensional. There's a program that allows you to cut SVG files which means anything you can draw in illustrator can be cut out. The smokestacks are plastic tubes from cheap little cigars. They have a better diameter than drinking straws and have more interesting end pieces. Thinking that this is a building that has fallen into disrepair, I gave the impression of plaster falling away from brick. Whenever I go to downtown Detroit I try to take pictures of the buildings to get ideas for textures. I scored the bricks into the building and covered it with wood filler to get the right look.
And finally there is the General Store. This is pretty standard construction, I added a awning to the front and will paint that up in red and white stripes. Giving a bit of color to the block. It really helped to create a template in Illustrator for the buildings. That way the windows line up and it's easy to swap the walls around. Here are the templates I created.
