Making Of the Shoebox Diorama Part 2: glue, paper, scissors
The next step of making the shoebox diorama was selecting, editing and printing the comics images I wanted to use. Luckily, the Thursday before the summer solstice was my first day back at my workplace, and this meant I could abuse the colour printer at work to print the images. I forgot to print a few of the images, so not all of them are full-colour (most notably the Klimt poster and Buffy’s scarf). I printed out most images in multiple sizes, because it was difficult to estimate the best size and I hadn’t had time to make exact measurements.
For the actual physical execution. I started with the most important piece, that of Buffy and Spike of the bed. I wanted to make the bed three dimensional, but there was no way I could do that with Buffy and Spike themselves. So this ended up as a bit of a strange mix of two and three dimensional (images 1 and 2). I did the same thing with the dresser: the dresser itself is three-dimensional, but the vase with flowers and the tissue box on top of it are two-dimensional. This can be clearly seen in image 1 below, which also shows the backside of the dresser (made of the same cardboard box as the bed).
Image 1: top view of the diorama in the making.
Image2: I simply drew the headboard on the wall
Image 3: close-up of the dresser
The vanity also has a similar mix of two and three dimensional. Making the chair three dimensional was not impossible, but would have been very fiddly and I didn’t have time for that. So I just made it two-dimensional and glued it to the table, that I had made of a piece of cardboard. Its legs weren’t quite as elegant as the lion legs of the actual vanity (see image 4) but sometimes you have to make concessions. Cutting out the bars of the back of the chair was still pretty fiddly though.
Image 4: reference image (left) and my version of the vanity(right)
Of all the furniture, the wardrobe was the easiest to make, because of its simple shape and the fact that I had an empty cardboard box that had until very recently held a can of mackerel in spicy tomato sauce and that was of just the right size. Here’s a peek at the back of the wardrobe:
Image 5: back of the wardrobe revealed
I didn’t have a good comics image of the TV cabinet, so I had to use my imagination there. I decided to make do with what I had at hand, which was an empty matchbox. I used one of the leftover images of the dresser to for the colour and to add a drawer at the bottom.
Image 6: matchbox TV cabinet
The final piece of furniture I had to make was the big Chinese paper lantern that Buffy had hanging from the ceiling in the corner right of the bed. For this I used a toilet roll, fashioned into shape using my trusty roll paper tape that has always come in very handy for craft projects. I glued coloured paper on it and drew the (made-up) Chinese characters on it by hand. I didn’t have time to attach the lantern to the lid of the shoebox as I had originally intended, so in the end I just wrapped its thread around a leftover piece of cardboard that I could easily balance on the top of the walls to hang the lantern (see image 7, right).
Image 7: Chinese lantern attached to “ceiling”
I love that Buffy and Spike had cats in the comics, so I added another cat besides the one already on the bed. Like Buffy and Spike I couldn’t make it 3D, so it stayed 2D like in a classic peepbox. It’s a loose piece, so it doesn’t have a fixed position in the bedroom, except that it has to stay on the carpet because its bottom plate is green.
Image 8: cat on the carpet
The final step was making the walls. The height of the shoebox was too low compared to its width and to the size of the furniture, so I decided to make separate detachable walls instead of just using the sides of the shoebox. This also made it easy to remove one of the walls (“the fourth wall” :-) to get a good look inside. To make this possible I cut out the sides of the shoebox so it would be easy to look inside. No traditional peepholes here!
Image 9: shoebox without walls
In image 10 you see all of the walls side-by-side. Apart from the bed, I glued all the furniture to the walls for convenience. Only one of the two doors can be opened, because I didn’t have time to cut out the other one before the posting deadline.
Image 10: the bedroom walls
So, that’s the story of the making of. Let’s end with another picture of the war zone left on my table.
Image 11: the battlefield post-battle!
For the actual physical execution. I started with the most important piece, that of Buffy and Spike of the bed. I wanted to make the bed three dimensional, but there was no way I could do that with Buffy and Spike themselves. So this ended up as a bit of a strange mix of two and three dimensional (images 1 and 2). I did the same thing with the dresser: the dresser itself is three-dimensional, but the vase with flowers and the tissue box on top of it are two-dimensional. This can be clearly seen in image 1 below, which also shows the backside of the dresser (made of the same cardboard box as the bed).
Image 1: top view of the diorama in the making.
Image2: I simply drew the headboard on the wall
Image 3: close-up of the dresser
The vanity also has a similar mix of two and three dimensional. Making the chair three dimensional was not impossible, but would have been very fiddly and I didn’t have time for that. So I just made it two-dimensional and glued it to the table, that I had made of a piece of cardboard. Its legs weren’t quite as elegant as the lion legs of the actual vanity (see image 4) but sometimes you have to make concessions. Cutting out the bars of the back of the chair was still pretty fiddly though.
Image 4: reference image (left) and my version of the vanity(right)
Of all the furniture, the wardrobe was the easiest to make, because of its simple shape and the fact that I had an empty cardboard box that had until very recently held a can of mackerel in spicy tomato sauce and that was of just the right size. Here’s a peek at the back of the wardrobe:
Image 5: back of the wardrobe revealed
I didn’t have a good comics image of the TV cabinet, so I had to use my imagination there. I decided to make do with what I had at hand, which was an empty matchbox. I used one of the leftover images of the dresser to for the colour and to add a drawer at the bottom.
Image 6: matchbox TV cabinet
The final piece of furniture I had to make was the big Chinese paper lantern that Buffy had hanging from the ceiling in the corner right of the bed. For this I used a toilet roll, fashioned into shape using my trusty roll paper tape that has always come in very handy for craft projects. I glued coloured paper on it and drew the (made-up) Chinese characters on it by hand. I didn’t have time to attach the lantern to the lid of the shoebox as I had originally intended, so in the end I just wrapped its thread around a leftover piece of cardboard that I could easily balance on the top of the walls to hang the lantern (see image 7, right).
Image 7: Chinese lantern attached to “ceiling”
I love that Buffy and Spike had cats in the comics, so I added another cat besides the one already on the bed. Like Buffy and Spike I couldn’t make it 3D, so it stayed 2D like in a classic peepbox. It’s a loose piece, so it doesn’t have a fixed position in the bedroom, except that it has to stay on the carpet because its bottom plate is green.
Image 8: cat on the carpet
The final step was making the walls. The height of the shoebox was too low compared to its width and to the size of the furniture, so I decided to make separate detachable walls instead of just using the sides of the shoebox. This also made it easy to remove one of the walls (“the fourth wall” :-) to get a good look inside. To make this possible I cut out the sides of the shoebox so it would be easy to look inside. No traditional peepholes here!
Image 9: shoebox without walls
In image 10 you see all of the walls side-by-side. Apart from the bed, I glued all the furniture to the walls for convenience. Only one of the two doors can be opened, because I didn’t have time to cut out the other one before the posting deadline.
Image 10: the bedroom walls
So, that’s the story of the making of. Let’s end with another picture of the war zone left on my table.
Image 11: the battlefield post-battle!