[Papercraft] New Paint Jobs
All right, last night I finished "re-skinning" a couple of the models, printing, and assembling the new ones. I've been switching to lighter coverstock paper rather than cardstock. The cardstock is nice for things that need to stand on their own, but for the cars and the number of folds required for their shapes, I found that the coverstock seems to develop fewer "worry cracks" along the seams when I fold it (compared to the cardstock), and it's easier to work with when there are "fiddly" sections where the segments are fairly small.
WOTD/ZR Papercraft: Cardboard Boxes
Gwendel observed that there shouldn't be anything much easier than making a paper model of a cardboard box; you could just make the model assemble like the real thing. I decided to revise my cardboard box design to do just that (like, duh! ;) ) rather than having top and bottom be complete facets. Not only did it make it easier for me to make more efficient use of my space on the sheet, but the "flaps" gave me more flexibility in box assembly; I could assemble them like a normal shipping box, or do the arrangement of "tucking" the corners, one over the other, like a box that's already been opened, and someone didn't bother to use tape to seal it again.
Eventually, I'll try to make some more interesting props for "junk in the street," such as dumpsters, mailboxes, tents, tarps, Jersey barriers, etc., but I figured this would be a quick fix on something I'd already done.
WOTD/ZR Papercraft: "Bone White" Frankencar
I "re-skinned" T-Man's Frankencar, and while I was at it, added in the rear-mounted gun, and grills over the side windows. It's supposed to be "bone white" (as per the player's request), but when printed, it ended up being more of a pale tan/yellow.
WOTD/ZR Papercraft: Desert Camouflage Technical Truck & Trailer
Here's a re-skin of the technical truck and trailer. In Photoshop, I made a custom "desert camouflage" pattern by filling in a 1024x1024 block with a rough design, then expanding the canvas to 3072x3072, setting the option for items to "snap" to edges, and then duplicating the pattern to fill a 3x3 square. I then touched up the central square on its right and bottom edges to better line up with the next square over, and I was able to confirm that I had a tileable pattern - which I then used to create a new paint bucket pattern at two different pattern sizes (1024x1024, and shrunk down to 512x512).
Then, I could just bucket-fill my "paint" layer overlay for the truck and trailer models and - voila! Desert camouflage paint job.
In other news:
- Sam & Max: Gwendel and I finished "Sam & Max Hit the Road" Monday night. It went a lot more quickly than the newer Telltale Games "seasons," but then, I guess each episode was a bit of a mini-adventure in and of itself. Obviously, the production values and technologies for the newer version are a lot better, but the old LucasArts game still has its moments. Gwendel did pretty well as a "back-seat driver," many times noticing details in the background ("Why didn't you try that door in the back?" "What door? ... Ohhhhh!") that I'd missed, and also coming up with suggestions that I would have never thought of ... and which sometimes even worked! We had to resort to getting hints for a couple of places (especially the "Tunnel of Love," which had a frustrating timed element that meant I had to try over and over again and wrestle with the interface to try the right command on things as Sam & Max rolled by and then - oops, too late!), but by and large it was fairly intuitive compared to lots of these sorts of "adventures" I've gotten stuck on before.
- Stein's Gate: This anime series is actually looking interesting, though, as with just about any series involving time travel, it has more than a few logical mess-ups. However, I think they do a fairly good job of framing it by keeping the mechanics of "time travel" (so to speak) fairly mysterious; the fun is in the experimentation and the exploration. I'm concerned that it seemed to take pretty far into the series to get to this point, however, and there's no way all these threads can be resolved to my satisfaction by the end of a standard season (12-13 episodes or so, and we're already on 9 or 10).
- Yard Work: I'm getting a bit tired of all the scratches and blisters I keep accumulating despite my best efforts, but I'm finally starting to notice some progress on the yard. One area I'm particularly uncertain of how to tackle would be the "tree box" in the front yard. Basically, it's an area that was once upon a time sectioned off by some logs forming roughly a square shape, with three trees growing within the enclosure, plus a number of ferns. The logs, as with the fence, the old bench (since disposed of) and other bits of wood trimming in the yard, appear to be untreated wood. Or, rather, appeared. Over the course of our time here, they've deteriorated to the point that I can't even find them anymore; they've basically broken down into mulch. The next yard over has a similar structure, and it looks like someone's been prepping the house for sale, but it looks like their solution was to eradicate all plant life within the "box" except for the trees, rebuild the box, and right now just leave it as just those trees and nothing else growing in it. I suppose there might be some sense to that, though I do like the ferns I've got growing there right now.
- Wonderland No More: After basically being told to hold off on any further work related to Wonderland No More for a while, it looks like I've got the green line to move forward again. I'm first trying to refurbish a number of incomplete WNM projects, and I keep surprising myself at some of the datestamps on the most recent files. "Seriously, the last time I touched this was 2009?" It looks like the first thing will be to polish up some free Adventure Cards for Wonderland No More - basically an update on the free WNM cards I've put out previously, making sure that it matches the new look, with the new logo, and checking each one of the cards to make sure we apply any changes due to playtesting, and that they're up to date with the actual published Wonderland No More book.
- Beautiful Brains & Games: The nice folks at Beautiful Brains & Games sent me a "thank-you package," consisting of a number of Game Mastery game mats, a large Victorian mansion floor plan, and a few discs with customizable map tile elements for generating my own custom floor tiles. Sure, I can make my own map tiles, but sometimes it's nice to have the work done for me. ;) (Otherwise, it's hard to keep up with my own schedule.) Woot!