Grim’s Dungeons of Doom: Another brick in the wall (Creating the wall structures)

Part 4: Constructing the dungeon walls.

Back again with the next part of the tutorial of Grim’s Dungeons of Doom, this time dealing with quick and easy, not to mention great looking modular 3d dungeon walls.

I want to start by adding a little about how I came to the decision to construct the walls the way I have for this build. I felt the need to have them made from something substantial. Sure I could have gone for anything from paper models (such as world works, or even free from germy) to DM Scottys 2.5d method, hirst arts or spending a fortune on tons of resin stuff, there are loads of ways to achieve the main structures.

While those are cool and valid, I wanted to come up with a really easy system for churning them out if I needed to make shit loads with minimal time and effort. So, with an idea in my head, I took a trip to my local DIY shop to get some raw materials. Wood.

I thought back to the simple toys of yesteryear, simple wooden shapes and blocks that allowed children to create a myriad of complex shapes from basic cut blockwork. I guessed that if idea was sound, it would be extremely easy to create all the wall sections I would ever need.

So, on with the build. What I got was some normal pine battons with the dimensions of 35mm x 10mm x 10mm, which ended up costing me about £1.50 each (they were around 5 foot long, so it’s pretty cheap) There are lots of other thicknesses and sizes of this kind of wood you could use, but this is what I settled on, you could use whatever you’d like) Next, you’ll need to get a ruler and pencil and decide how to size your wall sections. I used rough measure for mine so it’d size up visually on my board, so therefore the pattern of the wallpaper dictated my intial measure, although it’s totally up to you. All I can say is that keep these sizes consistant when creating your other pieces, as this makes it easier to create well fitting dungeon schemes later. Also your going to need at least 6-10 of each size piece, just think about this as creating a set of dungeon lego! The more bits you have, the more variety you’ll have to make diverse designs.

Once you’ve marked up all your pieces, get them cut up neatly (make sure any angles are proper square so you’ll not have problems fitting the walls together on the board)

I’m not going to harp on about individual lengths and such, I really want to focus on the construction of the walls, which is the same principle regardless of size or shape.

Ok, get your little wooden wall section, it’s plain and not very inspiring at the moment, so your going to need some more detail to it with some more materials.

Get some cardstock (cereal box is ideal) and begin to cut some strips of various thickness, some wider, some smaller. Next, begin to cut them up into small squares and rectangles, this may take some time cos’ your going to need lots of them for the next bit!

Get some PVA glue an start to clad each side, building up a random block pattern on each face (apart from the bottom,leave that blank, so it fits flat on the board.)

Keep the pattern irregular, and keep a 1mm gap or so between each block. You can do it how you wish pattern wise, just make it look like bricks fitted together like a jigsaw. Continue fitting them until you cover the front and back, sides and top like thus.

Let the glue dry, the undercoat by black bombing it with spray, acrylic paint, or my preferred method, cheap matt interior paint that I got from my local £1 poundshop (As long as it gets undercoated black, whatever suits what you have.)

Once, your paint is dry, get some grey paint, and mix a bit of black with it to slowly build up the shades up to your required tone, drybrushing and eventually highlighting the edges for detail. Try and keep these tones the same overall for any structure pieces you add, this will keep a nice seamless fit and give uniformity to the dungeon. (Also, I think there probably a 50 shades joke somewhere here, but its not one of those type of dungeons i’m afraid!)

There’s no rocket science to this method, its quick and easy, as after these stages, your wall section will be finished. Repeat this process until all your wall sections are done.

That’s all there is to it, it’s very simple to replicate for yourself and is the process I’ve used for most of my walls. An alternative to this is to use textured wallpaper to clad the sections as in the previous article. It’s really up to you, although you might have to do a little experimentation to get the look your after. Also, try and keep in mind doing them in sets, so that you’ll end up with matching rooms.

You can also build terrain accents directly onto the sections like in some of my other walls. Although I’ll detail some types in separate articles, there are examples like the spidernest wall, library walls, skull walls and so on. The principle is the same, each section starts of as a piece of wood. The good thing about using wood is that it gives some solidity and weight to each one, and an added bonus is that they end up quite robust and able to with stand taking some heavy use and abuse.

So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed this part, there’s more in the works, next up will probably be a monster make or more terrain (maybe both?) Anyway, comments, likes, shares and such are always welcome. AlsoI’d love to see pics if anyone else takes up using this method, so please share the fruits of your labor if you give it a try yourself!!

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