Hey Studs, welcome back to Studson Studio where today I’m building
Luigi’s Mansion from the Luigi’s Mansion. But before we start grabbing random trash
to craft with, we need something hard and board-like for the diorama base.
Mario? Ooh, like this piece of hardboard right here.
After making the corners less pointy, I’m using a rotary sander to fill
the air with dust particulate that’s perfectly formulated for lung damage.
But with the poltergust 3000, I can catch most of that dust before it fills the air.
The edges now slope to the table pretty nice, but I need to go hunting for some more thickness.
There’s the stuff. Oh yeah, got it!
Thank you, Luigi. This is one inch housing insulation foam
which will make a nice plateau for the mansion. I forgot the front needs a fence,
so begone. Off to the foam graveyard. I calculated the foundation to be
this many centimeters, then sliced out the hill for the mansion to perch on.
Oh sickening. In a pinch, you can use this as air dry clay. I’m laying out this
white log and rolling out a cobblestone texture for the mansion’s front fence.
And remember to release the leftovers.
The fence is topped off with strips of air dry clay, but it’s missing something sharp and spooky.
I bought a box of these arrow tipped food skewers,
which according to reviews, are only used for haunted house fences.
Next, we must descend into the darkness and grab this piece of foam core board
to start building the house structure. Basic shapes like rectangles just won’t do,
we need advanced trapezoids to match the looming mansion aesthetic.
Then use hot glue unless you got Boo. Then I cut the corners for column space,
listen to this. Again.
You’re welcome. For the mansion columns,
I’m using plastic beads because of all the details baked in, but these round
boys would be easier to use if one side was flat. It was tricky to hold these tiny beads in place,
but if you do it just right, you can gouge a couple of nice scratches on your desk.
The beads are strung along metal wire and secured in place with CA glue
before taking their final rest on the big polygon. And since everybody cheats, I’m stealing something
from Waluigi’s Mansion. Waluigi Time!
This dollar store door has too much good detail to pass up, so I’ll just swipe this for Luigi.
Oh yeah, and I dug a grave through the bottom so I could string in some spooky LED lighting later.
For the mansion siding, I’m weathering coffee stirring sticks with a sharp knife,
but because of the LED lights I just mentioned, I saved room for the two main central windows.
These holes need to be aggressively kicked out for the mansion’s glowing eyeballs.
Now time to fill out the windows.
These horse shoe charms gifted from the centipede horse will make pretty good window panes.
After breaking each horse shoe, I glued them back together again,
covering up each seam with a rhinestone gem. Kind of a cool bonus about these arrow picks.
I only paid for the sharp end, but they come with a rounded backside that will be useful
for constructing the rest of the window frame. And I’m super glad I glued everything on top
of parchment paper, because super glue never ever stick that material. Never.
But it wasn’t too hard to remove all these pesky paper hang nails.
Now let’s let all these Boos loose and use a small piece of cross stitch canvas as the window grills.
And then just to make sure gluing all this stuff together doesn’t look terrible, I gave
them a quick prime and they look 100% gray. And then it was time to start building up
the roof,, starting with a coffin that’s about the size of two Luigis.
Then I briefly appreciated the mansion’s top hat.
But the hat isn’t just for fashion, it’s mainly for structure so I can glue in these sloped
pieces of paperboard, giving the mansion its requisite concave spooky Victorian aesthetic.
Oh, thank you mommy Hellen for your nice selection of haunted jewelry.
The nice thing about old cheap jewelry is the plastic is quite brittle.
I’m using various pieces of ornate junk to make the dormer windows
that sit off the front of the roof. The messy blob of jewelry serves no
function other than gaudy visual noise, so it’s right at home on a Victorian mansion.
Using a thin strip of craft foam, I glued it to the edge of the roof as a trim,
mostly to hide the paperboard and various hot glue crimes, but it also adds a nice thickness.
And that’s looking pretty decent, I’d say I deserve gold in the mushroom cup.
The only part of these trophies I really need are these swirly handles.
The actual mansion has a lot of these swirly details, so these were perfect.
Then I spent an entire day cutting out a lifetime supply of paperboard shingles.
The bad news is it was only enough for this project, but the good news is…
The basic process is to lay out shingles one strip at a time,
starting from the bottom and working up. Now it’s not just a lumpy cereal box.
Using some scrap recycled plastic, I chopped out a bunch of tiles for the rooftop patio King Boo
battle arena at the end of the game. Whoa, look out!
Oh, this ghost is dry, it won’t need this anymore. I’m lining the top of the roof
with a clothespin trim because details are a decent match to the actual mansion roof.
And from that afore-mentioned Waluigi dreamhouse, I’m recycling the door, but adding
on a couple earring backs as door handles. Which means we can finally start gluing
all the details into place, including these windows and also these windows.
On the front of the mansion, the windows are set apart by two rows
of ornate mushy GameCube graphics, which I’m replicating with more
trophy handles… Ooh, mama mia!
And a handful of beads dangerously broken apart by pliers. This had about a 50% success rate.
But also a 50% success rate at turning beads into free weathering powders.
All this fancy mansion jewelry is glued down with CA glue and then I officially committed
to gluing the house to the base. There are a couple other things
to build though, such as the roof attachments. Ooh, what does this look like? You might say horse
shoe, but you’d be wrong. It’s a Horseshoe Deluxe. The horseshoe doorway is attached to this
foam trapezoid, which gets wood siding like the rest of the house.
And speaking of foam trapezoids, that’s exactly what the mansion’s two chimneys are.
The design principles are basically “Imagine Squares, But Wonky.”
Leading up to the front door is a foam staircase which will get covered in dirt later,
then after that is the mansion’s actual staircase. This is made from thick chipboard or cardstock.
Followed by more thematically appropriate beads and foam as the ornate stone handrail.
Time to prep the mansion for painting, starting with a bath of black paint and
Mod Podge to coat the foam and paper surfaces in a protective shell before spray painting.
Now we can move on to non-mansion-materials, such as trees. If you only have access to
boring sticks, it’s pretty easy to make it into a spooky stick.
This is a piece of wobbly driftwood that was already rich with a spooky spirit.
All it needs are roots and branches, which I’m adding using armature wire.
To beef out these skinny metal bones, I’m using hot glue,
then using the hot tip to blend in the glue to the wood and add bark striation.
After sculpting the glue roots, I did the same thing to the branches, but ended up accidentally
hiding any indication of natural wood under glue. But it’s okay, because now Hexxus is stuck inside.
And here’s the thick spooky woods made of four trees.
I realized my fences were actually a bit too long for the base, but that’s a lie. I
did it on purpose so that I could snap off the ends as crumbling fence details. But suddenly,
I was addicted to the crack and needed to add a couple more to the fence just for free weathering.
Between the two lengths of fence, I’m adding more beads as fence posts, and the magic of
beads means I can run tiny LEDs through them to act as torches, but stay tuned for that later.
For now, we’ll just glue the two posts in place. And now, it’s goop time, so get a napkin ready.
I’m using Sculptamold to bulk out the hill and add some natural ground
lumps. I’m using about two cremated hamsters worth of this mix, then getting it nice and wet until
it’s the consistency of expired artichoke dip. I spread the forbidden dip about a quarter inch
deep across the whole base, but since I wasn’t quite ready to attach the trees, I squished them
into their spot now because the goop remembers... The Sculptamold will take about 24 hours to dry,
so in the meantime, let’s go do some grave digging into the foam graveyard. I’m gonna
populate the front yard with a few freehand cut gravestones using a piece of foam board.
I made eight headstones for the mansion’s guests, engraving in some basic details,
but they’re missing a little something. Goop.
Did you think I’d go a whole video without stippling that goop? Well,
you’re right (wrong). It’s October and that means we stipple that ghoulp.
The mansion is still missing something. Mario!
That’s right: green Mario. But the scary part is,
I’m gonna use bootleg Luigi as a guide. The first step is to cover up these bones
with a thin layer of clay, then giving it a quick bake so Luigi’s flesh and
clothes have something to grip onto. I’m planning to mostly show off Luigi’s
backside in the diorama, so I’m not too worried about his face inevitably looking like a ghoul.
Big Pants. To help his overalls stick to his bod,
I’m using some tacky glue because it’s oven safe. Then I gave the Weeg some lumpy hair and a
hat with a brim that looks kind of like a fingernail clipping.
I blended in some oversized ears balls, gave him a long troll nose, then attached his two
scraggly strands of mustache, making him look half ghoul and half smashing.
I’ll take the L for not being a great sculptor, and then I’ll put it on Luigi’s hat.
And the final detail for this baby brother is his shoulder vacuum, the Poltergust 3000.
A little half donut for the handle. And for the flashlight, I used a small piece of a toothpick,
which will be connected to the fully baked boy by a piece of an elastic hair tie. I singed the tips,
super glued the tube into place, then hardened the entire band with more super glue to make
it easier to paint. And there it is, our little guy is ready to suck some ghosts.
I primed everything off camera, so let’s get down to painting.
I still have Luigi on the brain, so we’ll start with him, who we all know wears green overalls.
Blue overalls and green hat The final diorama will mostly
be showing off Luigi’s booty, so the back is where I spent most of my time,
finishing up with some lazy wet blending on the overalls and shirt to give some color variation.
For the trees and roof, I started with a dark green that doesn’t look like anything
because I decided to film the video with green lighting to render it invisible.
And for the house siding, it’s also dark green, but with some blue mixed
in to make a kind of spectral aqua. I was pretty messy around all the
windows and trim, so I kept a paper towel on hand to lazily wipe away my sloppiness.
I based the ground in brown, even though I’ll be adding dirt later.
The brown is just a catchall basecoat in case there are any blank spots in my dirt.
The next step is dry brushing with lighter shades of each basecoat. I’m using cheapo
makeup brushes to lightly brush on just the faintest whisper of the ghost of each color.
But for the doorway, windows, and columns,
I’m using a metallic silver dry brush so the details pop in the moonlight.
I finished up the chimneys with a turquoise brick highlight, then glued the roof pieces into place.
And now squirt out the glue because it’s time to get soiled. This is real live dirt from
the outside that you can scoop up for your very own in all of your crafting projects.
And remember to dump off the extra because that’s just free dirt for next time.
I’m sealing in the soil with isopropyl alcohol and watered-down glue.
And the best part is: when it’s dry, it looks like dirt.
And now we can start plugging in the accessories, such as filling in the tree holes with their
matching tree puzzle pieces, and then laying out the grave stones in the front yard.
This is looking pretty decent, but it could be much more green.
It’s time we pay respect to the Great Grass God. I’m using a static grass applicator to glue on
just a few sporadic patches of unkempt lawn. The groundskeeper perished many years ago,
so the yard is in a great state of disrepair, and the only way I know how to mimic a messy yard is
by using various sizes, colors, and textures of flocking products from a hobby store near you.
Then I sealed the souls away with watered down PVA glue.
The last flock is the goop flock. This is roughly a 1:1 mixture of fine green
flocking and PVA glue. Once this moss sauce dries, it will look less slimy
and more like a mossy grime growing in all the mansion’s nooks and crannies.
And this goop is nice and thick enough to make some suspended goop drips on the trees.
And the final dirty decrepit detail is some touches of green and brown washes using oil
paints and mineral spirits. I switched between colors without cleaning the brush or letting
the paint dry so that I could get some nice blends between the green and brown.
Now let’s make it marginally moodier using this string of LED fairy lights.
The first two bulbs are squeezed through the bead fence posts for the torch lighting,
but for the windows, I made a very sloppy light gel using yellow paint on clear plastic. One
of these will be placed behind the slit in the doorway and another piece for the two windows on
the second floor to add some warm soft lighting. Then I hot glued together a glob of lights in a
way that would get me fired as an electrician and secured them behind the yellow filters.
The two front LEDs are coated in hot glue flames.
And without further a-boo, let’s roll the boo-ty shots. Thanks for watching everyone,
and a special extra spooky thank you to all the newest supporters on Patreon, such as…