Author Topic: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City  (Read 6615 times)

Offline glorbes

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Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« on: January 09, 2014, 08:27:18 AM »
Cardboard City

After seeing Empire’s Rot Gut Station diorama, I was completely blown away and inspired.  I have no woodworking skills and little time, so I figured I’d try my hand at a poor man’s version of an action figure city/diorama.  My approach: modular cardboard streets.

 

These are made of scrap cardboard and glue with some masking tape.  The idea is that they can be reconfigured in a million different ways to create different backgrounds and environments.  They are great for play (my oldest has been playing with the non-stop for the past week and a half), and they are insanely fast and easy builds (it takes about an hour or two for each section, since all I’m doing is sawing cardboard with a steak knife and gluing it all together with carpenter glue). 








These are only a few angles I took…I’ll probably take ma few more, since I didn’t get one of the streets lined up in a row to get a long, straight street with great depth of field possibilities. 





I tried to make the design work with both 4” and 6” figures to give the play and diorama photo options more flexibility.  I wanted to create something that could work for multiple toy lines (like Empire’s playset)…it could be Cyberton, a spaceport city from Star Wars, or it could also work with various toy cars.  I chose to spray it with a mixture of darker colors and silver overspray, though there is one building that has a blue side and a pink side to add variety to the background for photos. 




Its quick, cheap, and dirty, but man is it a hit in the playroom.  The neat thing is that, by doing this, I can see how this type of thing can be improved or adapted, I could create some accessories to liven up the scenes, or I could knock out a few more buildings from cardboard because of how quick and easy they are to make.  Lots of fun…

Let me know what you think and thanks for looking.

Offline poke_wars

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2014, 02:02:04 PM »
i like the idea a lot, the way you made so much out of just cardboard is awesome now i gotta idea on one of my customs im working on ;D

Offline BlackThorne

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2014, 02:26:12 PM »
I like it!

Spookymufu

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2014, 02:34:38 PM »
this totally looks like something I would have made to play with my figures, awesome!

Offline Tamer

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2014, 03:39:55 AM »
this totally looks like something I would have made to play with my figures, awesome!

That is exactly what I thought when I saw this. So cool!

I have got to go share this.

Offline Sjefke

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2014, 03:09:50 PM »
OMG
This is so simple and effective.

Offline Luke Sprywalker

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2014, 03:41:07 PM »
Great stuff Glorbes! This is the type stuff I made when I first introduced my first son to Star Wars. Thanks for sharing!

Offline Laojax

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2014, 05:34:26 PM »
Very cool! I'd like to try some modular playsets like these! Got my gears turning!

Offline CHEWIE

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #8 on: January 12, 2014, 07:10:50 PM »
This is too cool.  Thanks for sharing.

 0/

Offline hemble

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #9 on: January 14, 2014, 04:55:08 AM »
Great works mate, I love seeing what people use to make their displays.

Ron

Offline JTrooper

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2014, 04:53:06 AM »
Man I really like this this is an awesome dio

Offline Wardog

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2014, 09:10:59 AM »
WOW...... :o

GREAT JOB
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Offline DocOutlands

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #12 on: February 06, 2014, 04:03:01 PM »
If you ever step into the world of foamcore or MDF or plywood...  :D  That's good stuff!  A *steak knife*??  You aren't even using a utility knife or box cutter???  Wow.

Offline r1bb1t

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #13 on: February 26, 2014, 06:10:21 PM »
Bruce, I've been a fan of your work for years. My goodness, this is incredible! It's so great to see you here.


MY HOTH DIO VIDEO WIP
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Offline Lance Quazar

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Re: Quick, Dirty and Cheap Cardboard City
« Reply #14 on: March 05, 2014, 07:04:50 PM »
This may have been "simple", but SO much creativity and vision went into this.  It looks marvelous and could fit in with SO many "quick and dirty" environments.  Works for Star Wars or even a kind of post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" style setting.

Awesome work.

If I had one criticism, I would just say this - if you could somehow cover up the cross-sections of the cardboard sheets where we can see the corrugation inside, the results would be absolutely seamless.

Still, amazing work!