Postcards from Miltonburg

Over on Karl's Facebook page I've been running a series of 'Postcards from Miltonburg'. I've included one or two on this blog from time to time to give some colour to recent posts. But it's not an easy thing to achieve living in a suburb of London, to generate a series of photos that would fit a theme of Ye Olde Worlde. You have to avoid modern housing and constructions, people clothed anachronistically for the period you want to represent, buses and cars thundering past, in fact anything that breaks the spell.

This really leaves me with very few options locally, just the local park, hopefully when there are not too many people about and a few holiday photos that reside in the collection that can be adopted and manipulated.

Parsloe's Park has become the edge of the woods around Miltonburg, photographed from very tight angles to avoid parts of the Becontree Estate in the distance popping up through the trees. Photos in the collection come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on how much I've had to crop. A visit to Cornwall gave me images of Bodmin Moor and Tintagel which have found their way into the collection along with The Bishop’s Palace in Lincoln.

That's all well and good, but not only is this world from the books Olde Worlde, it's also somewhere else in the universe, with a different sun, planets and moons in the sky and hence different light.

So now we need the additional tweaks - I need to adjust the brightness, contrast, colour depth and tone of the picture. A few years back that would have been quite a task. Getting the photos printed and then scanned and the amount of processing effort to get them adjusted based on what you had to work with in the first place would have been incredible. The photo editing tools were out there, but I find I could spend hours in front of the pc struggling with these tools not really knowing what was going on and not having the time to work through and comprehend some of the tutorials.

Now we have these mobile phones devices which do just about everything except make the morning coffee. (I’m not much of tea drinker.) They have apps, which are quite simple and quite powerful for image manipulation that would have taken some computers from my youth ages to achieve and process. There are quite a few of these apps out there but I’ve found PEStudio (Photo Effect Studio) does just about everything I need from cropping, re-colouring,  light manipulation plus the odd special effect thrown in for good measure. However I cannot find it the App Store any longer to tell you who made it, and there are no credits on the app that I can find. However I’m sure there are many others that can provide the same. And what’s more the image is transformed into a whole other world within a matter of minutes allowing me to post it direct to the page in question. So different from how things used to be.

Dungeon in Bishop’s Palace (Lincoln) becomes the Dungeon in Esmay

The Hurlers in the distance on Bodmin Moor (Cornwall) becomes Karl’s long walk home

Parsloes Park (Dagenham) with some cropping becomes secret way to Gerranthaul’s

View from Tintagel Castle (Cornwall) becomes a coastal climb for Karl & Spiker

Own model stone circle becomes gifted with special Solstice light

Karl's adventures are available in paperback and on the Kindle from Amazon.

Castle Ruins - Tunnel Entrance and Layout

Time has been against me again this week when it came to model work, but with a sunny Sunday afternoon here I managed to get a couple of hours in the garden to work on the castle ruin entrance tunnel.

You might recall when I first got hold of the large pieces of polystyrene I said to look at them from every direction before cutting them up.  During my examination I noticed a section that would make a great tunnel or passage way.

Using the  hot wire cutter I removed this section. This gives me two sides, with pillars, and a roof. You might notice that the original packing had taken some damage – this happened when I was trying to get the polystyrene home last November during a blizzard, gripping hard onto the large pieces trying to escape in the driving snow my grip broke some chunks off. Anyway it will all add to the final effect.

I’ve now managed to cover the inside of the tunnel (sides and roof) with filler and I’ve carved the stone work in. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to get the outside finished and then painted.

Working outside today I got the first chance in a while to lay out all the finished pieces made for the castle ruin set so far. Here are a few pictures of just one configuration of the pieces.

Dungeon Extras

Not had much time this week to work on the many projects I have on the go at the moment, just had time to add a few extra accessory pieces for the dungeon set.

Having left the inside archways clear of wall filler, so that initially I could add back in the original cut out arch shapes also disguised with wall filler to block them up as either solid walls or secret doors, I took advantage of the easy to cut exposed polystyrene.

I cut a channel up both sides of the arch way using a sharp craft knife, making the channel thick enough to slide a piece of card into the slot.

Having cut the card to size I then covered the card with strips of thin wood – back to using the coffee stirring sticks. Once the first layer was dry, I attached a few additional pieces along the top, and sides, and down the middle to give the effect of double doors. These were given a black under coat with acrylic paint and then painted up with a brown colour layer and a quick white dry brushing to add aging.

I repeated the channel cuts in one of the other archways and again cut a piece of card to fit. This time I stuck two thin strips of card down the middle of the base card then covered the card with a piece of foil paper.

I stuck this down, allowing the strips of card to bulge through to look like iron work. Along the top and bottom I glued additional pieces of silver foil, this time with a pitted effect already in the material to look like huge hinges.

Once this was dry, I painted the whole thing with black paint then dabbed it off using a piece of kitchen towel – this gave the whole mottled effect. 

* Can you guess where the two pieces of foil came from?

Finally I made a rock fall piece to fit into one of the archways. This was made from one old wine cork – the old cork kind not the new modern plastic corks.

I broke the cork into pieces and glued it together in a heap shape using a piece of card as the base.  Make sure that any flat sides are on the inside and that the rough broken parts are facing outward.

As you can see this still need to be finished off with a touch of paint to blend it in.

Full set of pieces for the dungeon archways

* The iron door covering came from the top seal of a Pringle’s tube – silver side out

The pitied foil was from the edge of a dissolvable aspirin strip.

Castle Ruins - The Dungeons

A trip down into the dungeons today.

These two pieces have four archways cut out of the polystyrene, the first piece came with an arch already in the original piece, and it was this which gave me the initial idea of cutting further arches.

Using the hot wire cutter I cut out the additional arches in single pieces, and retained these pieces whole. I then covered the polystyrene with wall filler and sculpted the stone effects as previously described. The only difference was inside the arches; here I left the polystyrene free from the wall filler.

Once finished I painted the inside to match.  The naked polystyrene took the acrylic paint just as well as the wall filler.

The extra cut out pieces were then covered front and back with wall filler and had the same stone effects shaped into them. Again the sides were left clear of wall filler and just painted.

This allows me to slide the cut-outs back in, this can then be used to either block up the arches as plain walls, or have them represent secret doorways, the pieces being angled to show as if wall panels have moved revealing secret passages beyond.

Leaving the polystyrene bare also allows for further adaption. Using cocktail sticks or tooth picks, painted a metallic colour I’ve created iron bar fixtures. I’ve glued the cut down sticks together using two thin strips of card.

Then the pointed ends can be poked up into the bare polystyrene archway to hold them in place, and removed again after the game.  This makes for barred gate ways and prison cells.

By turning the bar fixture pieces over and securing them up the other way the bar panels can then be used as metal spikes in the archways ready to come down and trap the adventurers.