Good morrow nerds. I am Cheyenne and welcome to the LARP House. I know my hair is wet and stringy like, like I'm the
ghost of a woman drowned in the swamp. You know what?
I can be a swamp witch. Cool with it.
This episode I am going to show you how I fixed my super, super sad and depressing camping lantern
so that it now fits in almost any larp genre. I know it's not really the tutorial that anybody asked for, but it's the tutorial that you need.
Just kidding. Look, a lot of you actually did ask for it. I polled it on Twitter and Patreon.
So before we go on this journey together,
I want to tell you guys that we have t-shirts and stuff for sale now.
We have a temporary link where you can buy them
and it's just really kind of amazing and mind blowing, that you guys want to wear LARP House
merchandise and stuff on your bodies, so
um, the info is, is down, is down there.
I'm starting to sweat. Now that you know that, let's make a lantern!
What I have here is a sad, dark, plastic camping lantern from the outdoor section of a department store,
or just an outdoor store.
Get it where you can. I always buy these style of lanterns because they're the closest thing that I can usually find that's something relatively appropriate to Larp.
But I have had quite enough of these sad
plastic little floodlights that blind everybody in the night, and so I'm fixing it.
I'm gonna fix it and the first step in fixing it is to
sand the crap out of it.
So, here we go. I am using a very low grit sandpaper like an 80 grit sandpaper because you really want to rough up the surface
of this lantern because you want it to take primer and paint very well. You always want to sand
anything plastic like this before you paint it. You pretty much want to sand most things before you paint it.
That's another, that's another rant for another day. After you have thoroughly
exfoliated your lantern and taped up the clear part where the light shines through,
it's time to spray it with an acrylic plastic paint primer and
the key here, is to do it from fairly far away.
At least a foot away,
and do it in light sweeping motions and just don't lay it on too thick or we're all gonna have a bad
drippy time.
We don't want a bad drippy time.
Just make sure to get it from all angles as well.
After the primer is pretty much completely dry
please read the instructions on your spray can to figure out how long that actually takes. We're gonna start painting it.
It's gonna take a couple layers
especially because this is a light color. If you can get a darker colored primer for metallic,
that usually works a lot better. But I was limited to what I could find on Amazon at the time.
German Amazon.
Moving on. I am just using your real standard chip brush. Costs about a dollar for an inch wide one, usually.
Get your chip brushes at hardware stores
folks. Don't get them at craft stores because they overcharge, because things at craft stores are marketed to women.
(fake laughter)
What a fun time that is.
Anyway, I am just using brush strokes that go in all different directions to try and spread it out and even the color as much as possible.
Sort of like, fanning it out everywhere and get it in all of the fun nooks and crannies and then...
once you are satisfied and have gotten it and all of the weird little visible bits that you can, let it dry.
It's time... for coat number two.
Generally speaking on the second coat you
do not need to use nearly as much paint as you do on the first, so plan for that don't waste paint ya'll.
And again, just using that same fanning motion with using the brush strokes in all different directions to get as even a coverage as possible.
For the final coat after the first two of dried, I am using a straight up copper color.
I wanted to create the tone of a penny that's been in vinegar for a really long time because I'm going to weather it later
and I want to start off clean. Now could I have ordered a metallic spray paint in the exact color I wanted?
Yes I could have, but life costs money.
Yea.
So uh, use what ya got.
And now for one of my very favorite parts of any prop making endeavor.
Weathering, and I'm going to start with a dark wash. What's a dark wash you might ask? I'm gonna show you.
Here I am mixing up a really dirty, dingy
dark sort of, cool brown color and I'm watering it down.
The thing about acrylic paint is that you have to keep in mind that it dries a lot darker
then when it is wet. Especially if it's watered down as much as this.
And what I'm doing... this is a dark wash.
Putting the color in places where there are a lot of nooks and crannies and crevasses for it to fill and then patting off
the excess with a cloth so that the highlights remain untouched. This creates
the look of dirt having gotten into all of the little recesses in the design.
And after that, it's pretty much lather rinse repeat once you get the hang of it and just do it until you are satisfied.
What I like to do is after the initial really thin watery layer dries, is to sort of, stipple on a much thicker mixture.
Then wipe that off with a cloth gradually as well and that sort of creates a really nice
buildup and makes it look a little bit more natural.
For the top of the lantern I have skipped the step of doing the first initial really watery
layer and gone straight into the stippling of the thicker mixture and wiping it away.
I did this because
it ended up looking a whole lot like something had been rained on when it was dirty
and then the rain had dried. So much so, that it's kind of it gave me flashbacks to when I lived in
Florida and we dealt with tropical storms all the time. Everything that we left out got basically looking like this overnight, so...
I just duplicated that all over the thing
But honestly that is probably a whole lot more detail than is necessary. You do not have to get that conceptual about it.
Any level of effort that you put into making something more appropriate for your LARP is going to be appreciated.
It's going to trigger that suspension of disbelief and LARPers are really good at pretending.
So really, any effort is going to be greatly appreciated.
Once you are done with your weathering, you're gonna want to spray it with a clear coat.
I have done that off-screen. The type of clear coat that you use is pretty important
You really want things to be a scratch proof as possible for Larp.
I always use a clear coat that is meant for cars. In the states that meant rust-oleum, but brands are different in Germany.
So after I peel off all the protective tape, I'm attacking the next problem that I want to address on this lantern, the light.
It's a blue electric light that is super bright and garish for Larp.
It blinds people and it ultimately, sometimes does more harm than good. So I figured the easiest way to fix that
would be to layer some more masking tape around the light portion and create a sort of yellowy glow that way.
I am making sure, that besides the top and bottom edges, no
edges of the tape that I put on are straight. This makes it look more organic.
Maybe it emulates a fabric that you would wrap around a lantern or something like that.
I just thought it made it look easier on the eyes and more believable as being intentional.
Now to weather it and make it look a little bit more natural and aged.
I am using a dry brush technique, which just basically means you have very little pigment in a dry brush
and you sort of buff it on to your project.
I am staying darker towards the ends and leaving it lighter in the middle, creating a sort of, hopefully, glowy effect.
Once you're satisfied with that, we're done!
Finally we can work together to rid the LARP world of these plastic garish lantern monstrosities
Go forth, illuminate your fantasy, made-up worlds with a light that won't blind your fellow adventurers.
I believe in you!
Yay! Congratulations!
That is a thing you know now. Another thing you should know, is the featured LARPer of this episode, and
that is Hedge Fairy, on the YouTube. She does vlogs about LARP,
she talks about popular culture, and media inspiration, and she's just generally really cute. She also draws, and she just did a video of the drawing,
that she did of me when she met me and we went to Ikea together.
And I adopted my new familiar, a plastic tree named Neville.
So feel free to check her out. The link is here, you're here, I'm here.
And with that I'm done for this time. That's all I got for this episode nerds. Thank you so much for watching
We love you. We cherish you. If you have any questions, comments or emotional outbursts,
please feel free to message us using the email below.
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And as always nerds, Thank you so much for continuing to Like Us, Subscribe to Us and to Fight with Us.
I hope you like my mushroom crown because I'm going to wear it always now.
I made it myself so that people would stop mistaking me for MoMo O'Brien.
Mushrooms, Flowers. Mushrooms, Flowers.
Not that being mistaken for her isn't one of the most flattering things that could possibly happen to me! Just sayin'.