{"id":14642,"date":"2019-06-30T09:04:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T16:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=14642"},"modified":"2019-06-30T09:08:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T16:08:39","slug":"freelance-police-office-bricks-and-a-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/?p=14642","title":{"rendered":"Freelance Police office – bricks and a view"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next step in the Freelance Police roombox is to prepare the walls that will get covered up by the false walls. I used a fan-made program named Telltale Explorer<\/a> to extract the texture that displays outside the office windows in Telltale’s games. <\/p>\n

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I started by printing it in black and white, to see how it fit. It’s not wide enough to span the whole back wall, so I had to repeat the image. It’s also not tall enough, so I clipped a sky section out of another texture to go at the top.<\/p>\n

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When the windows are in place, it all blends together.<\/p>\n

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I printed out the graphic on photo paper, sprayed it with UV-resistant matte sealer<\/a>, and left it to dry for 24 hours. The paper is glossy, but the spray is matte so that took the gloss away.<\/p>\n

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Next I painted the areas behind the doors and the rat hole. Outside the office door, I used a shade of gray similar to the office window in Telltale’s version of the game. Initially I painted the closet area black, but after looking at the closet in the game I realized it should be the same color as the wall.<\/p>\n

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I also realized the brick red I used for the base looks nothing like the brick paper I bought for the back of the roombox, which is more orangey. So I repainted the base and the closet wall area with a Behr paint sample called Harvest Brown, which I’m also planning to use for the walls (pictures are farther down in the post).<\/p>\n

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Next I stained the windows and closet door.<\/p>\n

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These windows come with mullion pieces that need to be cut down to size.<\/p>\n

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The trick for these is to cut them slightly larger than necessary, and then lightly sand with an emery board until they fit snugly. I did use a dot of glue on each end (a very tiny amount so it wouldn’t get on the acrylic), but I think the pressure is doing more work than the glue.<\/p>\n

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When the sealer was dry, I cut out the graphics to go behind the windows. I could have cut these smaller since the center part of the image isn’t visible, but keeping them the full width of the section meant I didn’t have to carefully line them up with where the window will be.<\/p>\n

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I glued in the graphics with wallpaper mucilage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Normally I print out miniature graphics at 300 dpi if possible, so the picture is sharp. (More info about that is in this Miniature Collector article<\/a> I wrote back in the mid-aughts!) In this case I had to print it at 72 dpi — anything higher would have made the graphic too small. <\/p>\n

Since most of it will be obscured behind the windows and it’s supposed to be off in the distance, it’s okay that the picture’s a little fuzzy.<\/p>\n

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Here’s the roombox with a view out the window and the newly painted base.<\/p>\n

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It would have been nice to see the hallway<\/a> outside the door, but that doesn’t exist in Telltale’s games, so there’s no texture to put there. On the other hand, I’m going to add the Sam & Max logo to the window, and having the solid color behind it will make it easier to see.<\/p>\n

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And here’s the closet. I thought about making this a bump-out so there would be space in the closet to store things, but didn’t want to lose the floor space. I’m still thinking about what to do with this. I might add a graphic to it to make it look deeper than it is, along the lines of the fake bathroom in the Blackbird Bar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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(One nitpicky\/obsessive thing I want to mention about the closet: it’s supposed to be hinged on the right. This door came pre-hinged on the left. I could have swapped sides to be more authentic, but then the door would block the view into the closet, so I left it hinged on the left.)<\/p>\n

Moving to the outside of the roombox: the exterior of Sam & Max’s office building is brick. I used Magic Brick on the Blackbird Bar<\/a> — it was messy and I wasn’t too enamored with the result. Egg carton brick<\/a> is another option, but that requires cutting out and gluing down a million tiny bricks, which I’m not doing for the back of a roombox! <\/p>\n

I’m not really a fan of brick wallpaper because it looks too flat and fake, but for this, it’s the simplest and most cost-effective option. Here’s what I bought.<\/a> I started by spraying it with the UV-resistant sealer, then set it aside to dry for a couple of days.<\/p>\n

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The package came with three sheets. I cut the back piece first, leaving a little overlap over the corners.<\/p>\n

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I wrapped the paper over the top edge. This is going to get covered up eventually by trim.<\/p>\n

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Once the back piece was glued on, I added the two side pieces. <\/p>\n

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The sheets were just long enough to wrap around the front edge of the box.<\/p>\n

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This is one reason I don’t like using brick paper — the bricks don’t meet up perfectly at the seams. But, again, it’s the back!<\/p>\n

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Here’s how the roombox looks so far. The next step will be to stucco and paint the walls.<\/p>\n

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The next step in the Freelance Police roombox is to prepare the walls that will get covered up by the false walls. I used a fan-made program named Telltale Explorer to extract the texture that displays outside the office windows in Telltale’s games. I started by printing it in black and white, to see how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[90,26,91],"class_list":["post-14642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dollhouses","tag-freelance-police-office","tag-roomboxes","tag-sam-max","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14642"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14679,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14642\/revisions\/14679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emilymorganti.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}