Castle Corridor

This whole term has been focused on our group project, to create a corridor. My team got 1060 AD castle.

Here is our research image board it is A1 (front and back pictures below)

Unfortunately there wasn't many camera's around in 1060 AD so we went for the the closest we could find.

1:8 scale Model box by Amy Akerman and Rebecca Dunnage. 

concept art by Oli Watts.

Right first things first, the corridor is made up of 4' by 8' panels, the image below is for the base, this was covered in a plywood top and nailed on, later we added 4" wheels (two with breaks and two without).

This is the first vertical standing panel we did, this was a door panel for the far end, it was later switched to the back right side panel.

First panel up, and as the first it has nothing to support it so the brace (see bottom right of image below) provides a temporary support while we get the other panels ready.

And here we have the beautiful Lorraine, she also has a temporary occupation as a support. We had trouble with our windows, the pre-made panels that we used were about 2 inches different in height, so we had make the tops level and have the windows a little bit off.

The windows, the sides are made from 3mm plywood and the top and bottom are MDF, they're supported by triangular wooden chocks with hot glue and nailed down.

The arrow slit is made from MDF, I made the circles with a drill piece in the workshop and cut the straight  lines with hand held jigsaw. This material is thin and almost cracked under the pressure of the jigsaw, next time i'll use a tougher wood or carve it out of poystyrene. In the end we backed it with poly to give it depth. 

 I was not involved in the making of the stairs, it was up to other members, unfortunately the measurements were read wrong (switched height and width) so they were bigger and thinner than we had said in our model.

In the end I think I prefer them like this, though they far to high, I rather like the narrowness, I imagine in a real working castle this would have been a servants staircase.

This is the central column for the inside of the staircase, I learnt how to accurately cut poly using the hot wire and a template. Seeing as this column is just under 8ft tall we needed a long wire and one person at either end. The system we used to make the cut as smooth as possible is the number system you see below. One to eight on both ends so the lag of the wire in the middle is lessened. To complete the corners the trick is to loop, go straight up and loop around, this stops the slower wire in the middle from cutting off the corner.

This is the skeleton for the wall around the stairs, we started with three curved pieces (top middle and bottom) these pieces are held together by the slats on both sides. each of these slats provides support and allows the hard board covering both sides

The stones for the walls we made just under 100 polystyrene stones, originally they were going to be rectangle, more traditional size. They average at 2cm thick and variety of shapes, all random. Each one was stuck on by expanding foam adhesive, this is the best way, because other adhesives can cause the poly to shrivel or melt.

The back door is made from four MDF slats, each beam is sanded and carved to imitate the texture and shapes of old strong wood.

The polystyrene when its carved using surformers or wire brushed, makes this bumpy effect which isn't very stone like, when sanded down with an 80j sandpaper it smooths the surface. Using a heat gun melts the top surface effectively sealing the shapes.

Who knew plastering was such fun, initially we put the plaster straight on, we were then introduced to Hessian, this allowed us to cover the large gaps that couldn't be painted easily. Everything except the floor, stairs and roof . Plastering strengthens the walls, by going over the polystyrene it stops any parts being broken or knocked off by gravity or people.

This is the roof panel, it slides in, on top of the stones and between the walls. I decided not to use the graining tool for painting the wood, there was some Artex graining but I thought a more simple  wood style brush strokes would imitate the large beams that make up the roof. Dry brushing over the Artex with a dark colour made the texture stand out.

When it came down to painting, waiting for the plaster to dry was the most frustrating part it took 4-5 days before we could start the paint. The scenic painter Jason came in and told us about the base coat, so our corridor spent a day as a custard castle. Unfortunately when he left, we didn't know what to do after the initial custard so we re-painted it all grey. If we were to do this again I would have asked Jason what we were supposed to do after custard and it may have looked different in the end. I wish we had researched a little more on how to paint stone effect, it’s not something I am good at as a painter.

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The next step of painting after the grey base coat is tonal and dry brushing. Darker tones in between each stone gives the shadow. The wood grain effect on the door is painted by hand, the hinges are painted a dark grey and then brushed with graphite powder and polished with a rag.

Research on candle holders, we chose the bottom right image. The holders are made from cut and sanded MDF painted black then polished with graphite. The candles are LED real wax, we melted them down to look like they were used.

The flag that covers the exit to the corridor is made of three separate pieces sewn together (due to sizes available). The flag is distressed by ripping and staining (coffee and Ink) one rip seemed to big so it was sewn up with leather strips.

For the Artexing, we chose a small wood graining tool (the thicker ones we used for the doors and beams would simply have broken under foot) and once the base was painted and twice during the final coat we glazed it with matt glaze. 

This is the final images from the finished piece.