Reference Model: The Mariner's Bell:

In issue 2 of Black Axe, Em & Celanawe were going to meet Conrad at a tavern. To design this brew-hall, I had to choose one of the buildings from the larger Port Sumac Model to fit my interior design into. The octagonal dwelling I chose was one that I found free online as a 'medieval hut'. I had also tacked on another free online cottage piece to the roof on the town model, so my interior design needed to use that exterior shape.

I took the same hut model and upscaled the printout. I reworked the graphics to be a two story space with a row of windows around the upper floor and stone walls on the lower one. To have a purpose for the hut I glued onto the roof, I made that the housing for a big bell that perhaps the town uses as a signal for predators, upcoming storms, or incoming mouse ships (deafening to the patrons of the tavern though!). I didn't build the bell into the model, but the idea came to me as I was gluing together that space.

I glued up the printed out design so that the graphics were on the inside. I left off a section of the wall to give me a view inside. The spiral staircase is a bunch of equally trimmed pieces of craftwood glued piece by piece onto a drinking straw. The balcony is sections of cardboard. While I had an idea of what the interior of this tavern would look like, it wasn't until I built a physical version of it that I got a real sense of the design as a complete location, before it was just floating elements (windows, staircase, balcony, etc.)

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