Suppose I should start with an apology. Things have been crazy busy for me the last couple months, been some family stuff going on, been sorting more stuff for uni, been doing some other work and then if you throw being under the weather for a couple of weeks into the mix too you end up with not a lot of free time for modelling. So yeah this model has been made over a long time, trying to fit it in when I can. It's finally there now and i must say i am pretty pleased with it. There are a few things that could be improved but we'll get to that in a bit.
The inspiration for the model came from Minecraft. Lot's of people having been saying the Arckit system is like physical minecraft building. Which does make sense, the nature of Arckit does lend its self to the straight and block style of minecraft.
I spent a bit of time on youtube looking through a few different minecraft house build video and then picked one that I liked and thought would be a good build to try. The video below is the one decided to work from. I liked the modern look of the building and it had some elements that I thought would be interesting to try and create with arckit.
I tried to keep the layout as close to that of the digital house. That meant a large entrance hall opening out into the main living space. Off the right hand side of the entrance hall is the bathroom. The double door opening on the left leads into the kitchen diner space, part of this space is opeened up by a diuble height ceiling. The final space on the ground floor comes off of the main living space and is an office space. The staircase to the second floor was in the corner of the main living space. As you can see below originally I had it as just one wide but I decided this was to small when compared with everything else, so i did end up changing it.
Again on the first floor i tried to keep the layout close to that of the video. The staircase came up onto a large landing and this makes up the first of the spaces on the first floor. My version of this space varies from the house in the video. I decided to put in a full glass wall and also create a small balcony. This first space then leading into the second living space, another large open space. This space has a large surronding balcony on two sides.
Off of this main living space are three further spaces. There is a smaller space, similar size to the bathroom on the groundfloor, and then two larger spaces that could be good sized bedrooms. You'll notice that some of the walls on both floors are full floor modules thick, this is to mirror the block nature of minecraft as it too creates thick walls. It was a nice effect and created strong divides between spaces but it did use up a lot of pieces.
As you'll see in the build video I actually ended up going back and changing out walls panels for glass wall panels in certain places. Some parts of the building were going to be covered with arckitexture sheets so you wouldnt see the panel, meaning it didnt matter if it was a glass panel as it would be covered anyway. Switching out walls like this saved me enough pieces to complete all the walls that wouldnt end up covered.
The exterior of the building I kept mostly the same. The placing of different textures is the same and the overall shape is the same. I did however add in several skylights, this was as I felt there wasnt much light coming into some of the spaces. Also truth be told it was partly due to the fact this was a big build and I was starting to run out of floor panels so I had to be a bit clever about how I arranged them.
I have to fess up to a bit of a cheat. If you have a good eye, in the pictures above you may be able to see that the top part is actually made of cardboard. If you can't tell from the pictures your be able to see me make it in the build video. I ended up cheating with card because I ran out of pieces. I did think about ordering the pieces I was missing, I even went as far as putting them in my cart on my account at the Arckit website. Along with a couple of other parts I want to get, a couple being some top ups of parts I don't have many of or have found I use regularly or have broken some of and want some replacements. Yes that's right i've broken some pieces. That mostly happens when i'm trying to be clever with the parts. Some of the breaks are purposeful breaks to let me do something different with the piece.
So yeah i was going to buy new parts and do i properly but this models already taken so long and i didn't want to delay it any longer so I just went ahead and did it in cardboard. It's only a little bit of it, it doesnt matter.
Now the bit some of you may have been waiting for. It's certainly the bit i've been waiting for. Thats right the completed build video. This is the longest build video to date, which makes sense as this has been the longest build. I did try speeding up the footage to get it closer to a time like the other videos but it just didnt work. It was really sped up and just didnt look right. On the plus side it means we get two songs unlike the previous videos that have all been just one. That may be more to do with the fact none of the songs on The Sound of The Jam album were long enough to fill the whole video but hey. Enjoy.