Pyramid Power - NO PEEKING players! You know who you are. :)

[BlueMeander]

Okay, so admittedly I have issues reading lots of text so I didn't exactly read everything you wrote, but I tried to skim the gist and appreciated your pictures. Honestly I'm still just pretty floored by the scale and scope of this project. I feel inspired to try some wiring and do more than just a terrain at some point in the future! Moving parts are boss.

[ableman33]

@BlueMeander - Thanks.

This is only my second attempt at using lights (my first was some battery powered LED holiday lights used in my Star Destroyer Project), and this is my first attempt at making anything move.

I try to do something in each project that I've never done before. Sure I fail a lot, but I learn a bunch too.

Part of why I'm a teacher is that I love learning new things all the time.  

[djmothra]

(06-18-2016, 08:06 AM)ableman33 Wrote: Part of why I'm a teacher is that I love learning new things all the time.  

I hear ya dude

I'm just hoping those wings can stay unbent withing the pyramid

[ableman33]

@ djmothra - The wings are decently flexible, and there should be enough headroom for them to fit.  Even so, I'm making all these statues modular so I can switch them out at need.


A quick painting test on my statues.

First off, I am noticing an issue with my gold spray primer and paint in one. Even after a day and a half, my test pieces are still sticky.

I noticed something similar with my flexible plastic octopus toy from my Mediterranean Pirate Island map. That octopus remained tacky forever. Likely some reaction between the pain and the soft plastic body.

I'm hoping that won't be the case with these figures. But if it is, I'll see if my darkening paint will help. If that doesn't do it, I'll try putting a top clear coat over everything.

Rather than jump right into testing my statues, scout trooper "volunteered" to be bronzed while he was taking a nap on duty.







I first attempted to hit the the test pieces with a wash of very diluted black paint, but the water just beaded up on the gold spray paint and rolled off.

So, instead I tried just painting the whole thing with black craft paint directly since it is much thicker, then wiping most of it off with a Q-tip.

I rather like the results.















I'll be more careful with removing stray fibers on the real things.


I've got lots of bits and pieces up in the air at the moment. 
Statues drying.
Paint on the edges of the base plate and support walls drying.
Patterns for the interior and exterior of the support walls printed.
And the detail pattern for my exterior heavy foil design printed and ready.

Now I just need time... 


Good luck everyone, and happy building!

[BlueMeander]

(06-18-2016, 08:06 AM)ableman33 Wrote: I try to do something in each project that I've never done before. Sure I fail a lot, but I learn a bunch too.

I do that too!! But I'm so new at terrain building that almost everything I do is for the first time! ha ha. This candy one is still very much a beginner's effort because I still have very little experience, compared you to you wonderful people here so I still need the practice. The projects you see on this website from my are literally the only ones I have ever done. XD Apart from some simple tiny things that repeat skills (like the tins I did), this is all fun new experiences/challenges. I did a goldfish pond (first stone carving), a wall (first time making my own folliage), beach (first time pouring resin with an exposed edge), an unfinished graveyard (first time sculpting a tree), unfinished tiny house (first time creating thatch), duck pond/landscape (first time making wood objects for landscape), the goat (first time sculpting a complicated shape), and my Sophie's hat shop (first time making a forced perspective). This candy one is my first time doing a complicated resin pour where I can get ponds filled, but that also slope downward- so trying to get the ponds to be full without continually draining out. Frankly, my inexperience is probably making it harder for me than if I knew more about how to do it, but hey, A for effort. And if I don't try a new thing every time, then I wont' learn more techniques and I really want to learn more.

Thanks, btw, for being a teacher. Teachers work hard and for not enough and they're the most important people in our society, according to me. It takes a special person to be a teacher.

[BlueMeander]

Oh, you updated.

Also, you did the pirate ship map?? I have seen that on this page and just put two and two together that that was you. It kind of upsets me at how epic that was. It's so big. OMG, so complicated. Quite overwhelming! haha. Just have to say though that I'm jealous of your space. As you have noticed, I don't have much working room. (I do have a garage area to work in, but it's an alcove built under a bedroom in the house where there is a raised bed/box area so it's as wide and long as a queen size bed and basically only exists there to provide access to the fuse box! At least I'm really close to the breakers if anyone in the house has a problem...?)

About your tacky gold guys... I'm not sure if a really shiny look is what you're going for, but you could probably seal in the tackiness with some gold leaf (do they make bronze leaf?) and then dry brush or watered-down-paint over the leaf to dull it down a bit. Then they might also look really more like statues because they'll have that true metal sheen.

[ableman33]

Thanks BlueMeander. (Fun new avatar by the way.)

These statues are only about an inch tall, so I don't know how well gold leaf would work. I think I'll be able to muddle through with what I've tried so far, but gold leaf is definitely on my list of things to try on something somewhere in the future.




Squeezed in a little bit of progress before I head out the door to a family function. I've added some paper textures to the outside of my support walls.

The idea here is to look like a dark band of rough stone, with some patterned carvings revealed once the roof is lifted. Each of the four triangles of the roof will be covered in heavy gold-looking craft foil decorated to indicate at least in a small way the four soul parts/elements of the statues.

This dark band is a subtle reference to the fifth soul part/element, sheut/void. It is also on bottom because in the puzzle room, you need to manipulate the four other parts to be able to descend into the realm of the spirit world (the rest of the dungeon) by passing through the dark hole connected to sheut.

The paper texture looks darker in real life, and a bit nicer.












Well, I'm off to visit family. Don't know if I'll be able to get any more work done today.

Good luck everyone, and happy building!

[ableman33]

Next step was to add some paper textures to the interior walls. These will be almost entirely covered up later, but I wanted the walls covered with paper brick pattern for wherever they might show. Also, the washi decorative tape I'll be using is designed to stick to paper, so why not give it the type of surface it wants.

While I was at it, I glued on a black ankh on the wall that the sliding platform moves toward. This represents sheut "shadow"/void, and completes the five parts of the Egyptian soul (and the five elements from the campaign).








To cover the edges of my exposed 1/8 inch plywood steps, I decided to get fancy. Instead of painting, I'm going to trim them with 1/8 inch copper foil.





The foil is conductive, and comes with conductive glue, so that you can make flat circuits by laying pieces on top of each other. I'm not using that functionality here, but it's nice to have it for the future.

I already own 1/4 inch copper tape, but that's twice as thick as I needed. So, I ordered some 1/8 inch tape from Amazon.

The tape itself is great, but the packaging was horrible. It came in a ziplock baggie inside a bubble-lined envelope. The spool of tape has no sides to restrain it, so any deviation can have it turn into a tangled mess. I was lucky, the tape was still usable, having only separated and slid over itself in a couple of places. I had to unspool nearly half its length, but I managed to rewind it with no tangles.

To keep that from happening again, I whipped up my own tape dispenser out of some nearby scraps. I used some 3/8 inch lexan plastic for one side rather than two pieces of wood so I could see if it ever started tangling again.






With my tape secure, I carefully lined all my exposed edges with copper tape.

Before I applied each piece, I went over it with a fine 220 grit foam sanding block. This took down the mirrored surface and made it more lustrous. The color won't exactly match my statues and gears, but I think they'll compliment each other nicely.












And finally, I went around the walls with some wonderful washi decorative tape. This stuff has images from the Egyptian book of the dead and goes a long time before repeating.

I actually plan to decorate many of the wall and pillar pieces of my main pyramid dungeon with strips of this tape. I was only able to find it from one seller, an Etsy retailer in Hong Kong, Collecting Life run by Kitty L. I bought out her entire stock, and then the little bit extra she found sitting around later.

I really like how this looks,














At this point, I can smell the finish line.

I need to finish up the statues and install them. Then decorate the outer roof (which may take a bit...).

After that, it's just seeing if any of my central sarcophagi arrive in time. The one I like most is supposed to get here Tuesday, the day the comp ends!


Good luck everyone.

[ableman33]

Talk about pushing it to the end, I found out that my favored sarcophagus hasn't even been shipped yet so there's no way it will be here by Tuesday, and I just received a message that my backup sarcophagus (not as nice) that was supposed to be here today is delayed until Monday.

Oh universe, you're such a tease.

Good luck all.

[ableman33]

Time to work on the exterior decorations of the roof.

Rather than use paint of paper to texture the roof, I decided to push myself and use heavy metal foil. VERY heavy foil as it turns out.

First I cut some pieces of craft foil (oh let's go ahead and call it what it is, thin sheet metal ) larger than the triangular sides of my pyramid roof. I then taped each of these to a piece of foal core. Before taping down the metal, I peeled away the paper layer from the side the metal would touch. This let me dent the metal into the foam while still giving the metal support (and giving me something to secure the super sharp, still-kind-of-wanting-to-roll-up foil to).






Next I went old school and taped down some sheets of carbon paper on top of the metal.






I created a pattern and made four copies of it, then taped one on top of each sheet of carbon paper.






I then added a copy of the four symbols that are linked to the puzzle inside, one on each triangle.






Tracing over the patterns with pencil transferred the graphite from the carbon paper to the metal.






The used carbon paper looks pretty neat when held up to the light.






After that, it was some slow painful work tracing the carbon lines with an embossing stylus using multiple passes with lots of pressure. (If I could have found lighter weight foil this would have been a breeze, but the only stuff I could find is heavy enough to make a lantern out of. ) But the effect is worth it.








I may try bulging out the two circles a bit if I have time and can find a non-labor intensive method that looks smooth. Then I'll go over the lines with a permanent marker and color the circles to match the colors of the respective elements for each symbol.

Now I just have to convince my fingers to let me do this three more times....

Good luck everyone!