#paper props

Art for some forest prop paper miniatures. Along with some process break down of the sketch, line art, shading, and then initial color blocking.

So I recently made a prop for some VtM RP because I am a nerd with very weird skills. Here is the step by step for making a fake ancient text fragment: 1) Research. The first step is always research. In this case it was very lazy research because it is just for a game, but I still did research. I found out that the Carthaginians did in fact have paper, which is an important detail. I also found a wikipedia page describing some transliterated scraps of Carthaginian and a phonetic dictionary. Is this good academic research or methodology? NOPE. This is a case of I am not getting paid so I did crap research. 

2) Rough draft time! Write out the thing you want on plain old loose-leaf first. Then gently line your actual paper (I am using watercolor paper for reasons I will explain in a bit) and copy over your text with pencil. DO THIS LIGHTLY. Pencil will dig into paper and leave obvious marks if you are not careful. Then, go over your writing with an appropriate pen loaded with waterproof ink (alcohol based or India ink). I like to use brown when possible because it is easier to make it look old and faded.

3) Now come the easiest step: Tear the edges. If you want it to look slightly less damaged, trap the paper between a solid surface and a ruler to keep the tear line neat, but the torn edge look is critical for paper to not look machine-made. In this case, I was going to distress my piece further, so I did not bother with that.

4) Now we get to the critical step: Distressing. Most paper would of course start pretty close to white, even in ye olde timese, but no director has ever believed that. So brew yourself a cup of black tea. And set your oven for 350 F. We will not be letting shit air dry. While you wait for things to heat up, crumble your prop into a ball, fold it in half, and generally rough it up. Now put down some parchment paper on a baking tray, and place your prop on that. Splash a bit of your tea onto it. This is why we used watercolor paper, we don’t want our prop to disintegrate during this step. Next, tear open the tea bag and spread the leaves over your paper. You want moderately even coverage, but a bit of variety will be your friend. Maybe splash a little more tea on it, then pop the whole thing in the oven. Don’t worry, paper will not combust at 350 F. The book was named Farenheit 451 for a reason kids. Drink the remaining tea and wait for your prop to dry out. Once that happens, gently burn the edges with a lighter. By now, things should be looking pretty good:

Netflix’s Hilda Paper Prop - Sketch of troll

1 pg only, anyone want it?

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Printing Instructions:

Back to the Future Paper Props - Entire collection Sources: http://fusion-industries7.tripod.com/2015replicas/ http://www.treksinscifi.com/forum/index.php?topic=6898.0 - - - Random Follower Shoutout: