Favela Shanty Town (Terrain)

 Many, many years ago I had an experience of a lifetime, visiting Rio and living in a Favela. It was an amazing experience, and I could likely fill a blog with just stories from that time alone. Alas, I'm an old bugger now, limiting my adventures to the tabletop 😁

Recently I've been playing Skullcore, a moderns-styled shooter from Enemy Spotted Studios. The game has sparked my creative powers and I've been making a whole lot of terrain so that I can host a series of games. One table I'd been contemplating for a long time is that of a shanty town (aka a Favela in Brazil). Finally, inspiration and opportunity collided, and here are the results!

Did you want to know how to create such (cheap arse) wonders? The following pictures will save me a thousand words...

Preparation - Cardboard and lots of it.

 

Assembly - a sharp knife, ruler, scissors, credit card, and hot glue gun

Getting corrugated cardboard is quite straightforward. Most cardboard boxes have a corrugated layer sandwiched between two flat pieces - simply peel off one layer and you've got some cardboard. I also bought a sheet of corrugated cardboard for just a few buck from my neighborhood art shop, Deans Art.

Using some more cardboard I created some basic boxes as frames on which to stick the corrugated card. The frames were pretty basic, and I used an old credit card to standardise the walls' heights and widths and a cut down credit card so that I could fast-track the creation of standard-sized doors.  Using my hot glue gun, I was able to glue each frame without fuss. I ended up making a dozen or so of varying sizes. The roofs weren't anything clever, simply a shape that was a little bigger than each buildings' footprint.

I cut some other pieces of card for the doors. Rather than fussing about individually etc, I decided to make them all pretty much the same: a regular size so they slot into the doors I'd cut, with two bands using cardboard and a little rectangle peek-hole. A trick: to create rivets, simply push down into the cardboard with a ballpoint pen then glue it so that the rivets are facing outwards.

Then I got to work, simply cutting small sheets of corrugated card and gluing it in haphazardly to the cardboard frames. There was little method to the madness, I found that working at high speeds while drinking beer generated the best results.

 

  

 

Painting - making it pretty

Firstly, I made a jar of 1/2 PVA + 1/2 Water + Black Acrylic Paint. I liberally painted all the faces of my buildings, doors and roofs. Adding black acrylic paint serves two purposes: it helps you work out what has been painted and also acts as a wash, darkening all the crevices in the models.

 

That alone looked pretty good, however while drab colours look the part for depressing sci-fi settings, I wanted some colours. Easily solved. I grabbed my craft paints and set to work, using a kind of dry brush type action mostly and very little in the way of planning.

 

 

 

 

 

So what next? I'm not sure... I might try and make some further buildings and scatter terrain - I've been thinking that some type of scaffolding might be good too. I'll let you know what comes of it.