The Castle

Two months ago I bought that sheet of pink foam. This week I finished making it into a castle.

I have very little experience terrain building. Bad shoebox buildings used in WH40K as a teen and some recent Frostgrave ruins. I do watch Wyloch, Black magic Craft, and others on Youtube. Even still, this was by far the biggest project I’d ever attempted.

Stuff learned from making the castle:

• Procrastination is only a problem if it stops you or keeps you from starting/finishing, otherwise it’s part of the process. The castle spent a few weeks as carboard boxes on the balcony. But it didn’t stay that way.
• More of the process is the mechanical making the bits than the creative act of piecing the bits together. Much more of the process than you’d expect, like 60-70%. The real joy comes 75% percent into the project when all the various bits come together because you’ve slapped a mono-chromatic base coat all over everything. Also, if you make more bits than you need than the next project might actually be easier.
• When you’ve nearly finished making the thing you will figure out the better way to make that thing, but like hell are you going to start over. Save that wisdom for the next project. In this case the two big take-aways are: 1) cardboard makes a better substructure for buildings than styrofoam, and 2) stuffing the cracks with dry toilet paper, then squirting the wad with 50/50 glue-water is a lot easier than trying to get a 50/50 soaked wad stuffed in the crack. (I feel like I must apologize for these sentences. I’m sorry. Wads. Squirt. Crack. We’re all mature adults here.)
• Yeah, it would’ve been cool if you made a thing like this with your dad when you were a kid, but having made it… well, you can understand why your dad didn’t make a thing like this with you. That 60% mechanical bit-making is not a kid friendly or exciting time.

That’s all for now. Maybe some of this is applicable to other creative projects. Time to box it up because it’s meant to be a kid’s birthday present.

I think it’s good enough to impress a 6-year old.

What do you think?