Hey, welcome back to Studson Studio.
This week we're going to build a bath house from Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away.
Akio Ogino: "This building's not old, it's fake"
Not only is it fake, but it's cheap.
To build it, I'm using some foam core board, corrugated paper, cross stitched canvas,
an empty tissue box, recycled cardboard, some balsa wood, some acrylic craft paint, and white glue
But to get started, the main tool of choice is knife
While i'm building the bath house this week, I've decided this actually won't be my only entry into the Ghibli universe
This is episode one in a multi-part Ghibli series, which i'll be uploading occasionally alongside
other game and movie topic videos...
with the final Ghibli episode, culminating into something that combines all the ghibli crafts into one diorama
Okay, let's start crafting.
First grab a tissue... ~*sneeze*~
and save the box.
As a convenient first step a tissue box makes a good base structure
without having to do much planning and measuring beforehand
it's more fun for me to make it up as i go along,
plus i get the satisfaction of knowing I started out with literal garbage
the tissue box is going to be the base floor of the bathhouse but i'm covering up the weak
cardboard with dollar store foam board which will add a little bit of strength but also provide a
good base for adding a plaster texture later
I'm intentionally making the walls a bit too big so I have some extra material to work with
To make the four walls as seamless as possible, I'm slicing each wall at an angle...
so that when they're taped together, they come together without any overlap
I have very little patience for glue drying, so I chose a nice slow drying white PVA glue for each edge...
then smothered the edges with painters tape.
Think of the tape as a band-aid to prevent your blood from spilling out
Then I realized the glue needs more air to breathe in order to dry
so i went with a minimalist tape approach instead
Not included in this edit are all the times I rip the tape off early...
only to have the glue wound keep splitting.
The bath house has a small bevel at its midsection so i'm filleting off just a bit of extra material here
For the front entrance, I'm slicing a few pieces of foam, then joining the edges in the same way as before
For the front window, I'm using this piece of cross stitch plastic,
which you'll see me do an infinite amount of times throughout this video for every single window
This cross stitch canvas is one of the magic materials of this video, I love it.
Actually it's a tie; gold medal for magic material also goes to corrugated paper.
By the way, the best way to cut this stuff is upside down...
that way you don't crush the little tube things between each sheet
The bath house has about a thousand rooves, so it's nice to have a material that looks kind of like roof tiles
To emulate the look of crumbling plaster walls, I'm using liquitex modeling paste
I'm spreading an extra thick layer on all the foam especially around any seams that might have gaps
And then don't forget to stipple that goop with a paper towel to get rid of all of your brush strokes
Depending on the scale of lumpy bumpage you're going for this might be good...
but I wanted to sand it down a little bit so it wasn't quite so bumpy
Make sure you wear a mask and do your sanding outside like a smart person
For all the box windows that extend out from the bathhouse, I'm super gluing down a few
strips of balsa wood to clippings of old food packaging
Your snack choice may vary.
Then using more plastic canvas for instant windows
I must confess that super glue was not a very good candidate for this type of plastic
It took quite a long time to set,
but luckily, gravity worked pretty well to keep everything in place while I built everything
For extra eye distraction...
I'm slicing up a bunch of one millimeter balsa wood strips and adding as much as i have patience for
I decided early on that it was more important that I could finish this in a reasonable time frame
even if it meant miyazaki would be disappointed in my attention to detail
Okay, I'm switching things up and using a large popsicle stick for this next part suddenly
This will become the floor of the balcony on the left side of the building where they fly the bathhouse flag
For these thicker balsa wood beams, I'm whittling away some slivers to add some choice lumpiness
Imperfections like these will add a lot of depth to the final model once it's all painted up
As you can see, I'm not showing any shots of measuring and cutting the materials for each piece
And that's because i hardly did any measuring throughout the whole build
Most everything is eyeballed from a bunch of image references i had pulled up while building
Then i would make a quick cut and shave things down as needed before gluing them together
I went into this with pretty much no plan on paper
Actually that's not really true
I spent a few seconds drawing this masterpiece before I gave up and decided i'd rather start building
You can screenshot and print that blueprint free of charge
Okay, back to craft...
I made a non-functioning sliding door, also known as a door themed wall
using more popsicle sticks and some toothpicks as beams
Then using a cap i traced out a couple supports for the underside
One thing I tried to be cognizant of while building is avoiding the number four
Since four is unlucky and sounds the same as the word death in Japanese (and Chinese),
I opted for superior neighboring numbers such as three and five when it came to numbers of beams or
columns in various places around the build
Or for example, the number of rows in the wood slats here
I'm not sure how much of a bad omen this would be for crafting,
but i also made sure that my elevator terminal on the inside of the building skips the fourth floor
For this roof, I tried overlapping a few layers of corrugated paper to make some faux shingles
And then for the underside, I cut balsa wood against the grain
so i could get it nice and flexible to fit the curve
This is looking pretty good...
But I think we need some nice gold and sparkly details for the doorway that fits right here
Oh, thank you
There's a lot of choice gold shiny bits in this tangle of old jewelry
Hey, speaking of gold shiny bits...
Shout out to my first patron, Eric Barone
If you're interested in becoming a patron as well and helping me make videos like this
head over to www.patreon.com/studsonstudio where you can get a shout out, project sneak peaks,
and more to come in exchange for a couple gold shiny bits, thank you!
No Face: "Take the gold! Take it!"
Chihiro: "Yes please thank you!"
This shiny bit used to be a tangled up necklace, but now it's the metal hinge on this door
I secured it with a little bit of super glue and then built
the rest of the details using some balsa strips and more of that plastic grating
The door knob is then a tiny little nail that I clipped to size
And i almost didn't need glue for this ~*Perfect Fit*~
And i can't tell you how satisfying it was to finally get to glue down these box windows to this plain cube...
Actually i can tell you... it was all right
Here i'm doing a little wrap-around roof around this corner
and then covering up that unsightly seam with a beam
Here i'm cutting out some tiny windows on an otherwise plain wall
and lastly let's cap off the bottom floors here before we're...
♫ Movin' on up! ♫
...to the deluxe top floors
As you can see, I'm really skimping on the wood supports
that should theoretically be going all the way across the entire level
I don't want to waste my precious balsa wood
So i'm only clipping out the exposed beams that stick out around the perimeter
Finding little ways to only use half the material i would normally use feels like i'm doubling my money
(*whispers*) It's free balsa wood
By the way don't throw out your scrap food container cardboard
This garbage makes an excellent crafting material
Then i swiped some coffee stirrers from the kitchen
Actually I lied, I only planted them in the kitchen for that shot
I actually only use the stirring sticks for crafting
and i drink my coffee black so stirring sticks have no use around coffee
i'm hot gluing some more of this cross-stitch canvas as walls and then covering up the nutrition
facts for those delicious blueberry treats with more cardboard
By the way, if you have some of these disposable chopsticks lying around
You can do the old roll and snap technique to create instant structure or columns for your crafting projects
For the gold room near the top of the bath house...
I quickly made this out of foam and cross stitch plastic then mod podged it to add
strength and make it easier to paint later
I'm whittling some more lumpy beams to put around the deck here
and then fighting gravity to keep them upright while the glue mostly dries
While i assemble this roof here i want to explain those random chunks of foam in the background
those are just some scraps of foam board i used to help raise the roof up a little bit
so I could get the awning at a slightly higher angle
I chopped the top off of these toothpicks for posts
and then battled gravity a little more to keep them straight
All right, and we're on to the final floor
The bathhouse roof distinctly curves up at the corners
which I can't do with this paper but I can sort of trick the eye with this piece of curved balsa wood
Then I'm using casually measured pieces of coffee stirring sticks to add a railing around the deck
And for the walls, off-camera i assembled these using hot glue balsa wood and some more plastic canvas
These get hot glued up around the edge and then more garbage cardboard to cover it up
And the last detail here...
...for the front side is a bunch of toothpick columns before we're throwing it to the back
Next I'll be making the walls and windows for Yubaba's penthouse
The window holes were cut just barely big enough so I could get them in place with a pressure fit
and the tiniest dab of glue
I used coffee stirrers for the trim on the wall
and then if you want to know how I made these short walls
rewind the video about 30 seconds and see how i made the front wall
If you don't want to fight gravity to get toothpicks to stand up,
do this big brain move and glue them together in one piece beforehand
To top it all off, let's make the roof
I used a scrap piece of cardboard to measure out the proper size...
then glued two pieces of corrugated paper back to back...
so I'd have extra detail on the underside of the roof as well
This part was a bit tricky actually trying to get the right sizes before gluing everything together
I'd recommend using some scrap cardboard to make a roof template first
I assembled the whole thing upside-down
and waited for each edge of the hot glue to dry before moving on to the next
...Jenga...
I added a little wedge of a toilet paper roll for some structure
and then used the scrap sheet of paper to measure out how big the next section of the roof needs to be
All of this corrugated paper is going to end up getting painted anyway,
but I switched colors to a different sheet here just because that's...
...that's the kind of fun guy I am...this is...
We're having some good times now...
For these curved beams I'm using these little bird beads I had
I think technically in the movie these are fish
so you can send me to crafting jail for my inaccuracies
For the spire that sticks out the top, I forgot to film this part but basically it's just a
plastic cap with a piece of cardboard wrapped around it
I lightly scored the cardboard with a craft blade in six segments
and then folded it around so it would retain its hexagon shape
and then i did the same devilry for the column that sticks out the top of that section
I made a pretty messy roof using various wedges of corrugated paper
I wasn't a fan of how bad it looked...
So i covered the whole thing up in some modeling paste, stippled that goop,
and it hides all the messy edges
Now it's just messy in a different way
Now let's go back to that tangled jewelry tumbleweed...
and search for a few free crafting details to add some ornateness to the model
This piece was an old earring
And then i filled it in with a couple of these leaf pendants I had in that sack
I also recently got this gigantic pack of rhinestones meant for nail art
They work as a nice little detail here
As you might recall from the movie, the back side of the bathhouse is a beautiful mess
but i have other plans for it so I'm just adding a ladder for now
I'm just about ready to paint, but...
The final step is to add some Mod Podge to all the paper roofs just to add some strength
And then off camera, I whipped up a couple walls to attach to the outside of the garden area
All right, let's paint
I'm priming the whole thing in the cheapest white primer i could find
This took several passes to fully cover up that neon corrugated paper
Don't forget the underside
Once it was all primed up and looking like one cohesive model
I decided I was gonna try doing a little pre-shading on this model
Basically i'm going to use this black paint...
...to add shading between the crevices and any area where the sun might otherwise have a tougher time reaching
This includes areas near the base of the model, undersides, and any place where the model geometry forms a crease
The idea here is that some of this contrast will still show through
once we add our other coats of paint
If you're familiar with 3d modeling this looks similar to turning up the ambient occlusion on a model
I also tried to use the same technique to add contrast to where there might be shingles,
but ultimately I end up covering up the model with too much green paint, oh well!
The base coat i'm using is a rusty red that i mixed up a couple months ago
It's red with a little bit of orange and brown mixed in
I'm spraying just enough paint so I can still retain some of that pre-shading from the previous step
It's kind of hard to be super precise with the airbrush
So I end up getting some overspray especially when I try to spray the columns
But that's sort of inevitable and I was planning on doing some hand brushing anyway
Actually I was going to hand brush the whole thing, but the airbrush was quicker to get a uniform coat across everything
So definitely you don't need an airbrush for this project
I like to keep some various scraps of cardboard lying around so I can use them as a guide to keep my edges looking clean
I definitely missed quite a few spots while painting this whole thing
I tried to keep a bird's-eye perspective of how this would look from an outsider's view,
But if you were a tiny Stuart Little standing on these decks,
you'd definitely see all the missing spots without paint on them
This deep green i had was a little bit too deep I think, but we're gonna
brighten it up with some lighter shades of green in the next steps
I'm using this neutral gray I have for the back side, but you could use any gray that you have
I have no strong feelings one way or the other
I mostly just want to paint the gold sections
It's gold!
Oof, that's way too much paint!
Your paint shouldn't flow after you've spread it on your surface
Goldmember: "I love goooold"
For this section, you'll need any off-white or even a creamy beige
This became a fun little game of carefully trying not to hit the red columns with the white brush or i lose
Oh, I lost...
For adding some brighter shades to the roof, I'm mixing together a green using one part olive green to one
part of this lovely holiday green and a touch of off-white
I used a chisel brush to gently detail just the raised edges of the roof
so that i could retain the darker green in the recesses
With the leftovers, I carefully brushed Yubaba's windows
For dry brushing all of the wood, I used a light khaki brown
I'll typically use a flat chisel brush for dry brushing but for small areas like this
I have this poor synthetic brush that I've really abused over the years
Ooh this next part's pretty fun
To add some age to the red plaster walls, I'm taking some of my rust red from earlier and adding small
amounts of pink at a time in multiple passes using a light dabbing motion with this chunk of a sponge
Less is more here so i tried to get most of the paint off the sponge before dabbing
For areas too small for sausage fingers, I used some tweezers holding a small speck of sponge
The mixed pink was also great for dry brushing all of the red throughout the whole model
And that'll do it for painting
From here, I moved on to adding a little bit of a wood floor on the interior of the entrance
using a pre-stained piece of balsa wood
And for the entrance curtain, grab a leftover piece of denim from the last pair of cutoffs you made
Lindsay: "What is this?" Tobias: "Oh! Go right to that!"
I'm hot gluing a tiny square to a piece of a toothpick that's cut
slightly too big so i can wedge it between the entrance
For the bathhouse sign, I slapped a yellow post-it note to a sheet of paper,
printed out the characters onto it, then used matte Mod Podge to seal it to a sheet of balsa wood,
chopped out that balsa wood, and added some age with a watered-down brown acrylic paint
I used a couple stick segments I found outside as logs and then glued it to the front using some white glue
I also found this stick on a previous beach excursion
It had a pretty nice wavy look, which I thought looked like a bonsai tree
I glued some of the smaller segments around the trunk as branches
and then brushed the whole thing in a light brown
To complete the branches, I'm gluing on some pieces of Woodland Scenics clump foliage
And then brushing on a watered-down pva glue to add this yellow fine turf as a highlight
Just sprinkling on a bit to the top is enough to add some contrast
Turned out my tree was a little bit too short for my base to clear the height of the fence
So I made a little platform using a couple pieces of foam board
Slathered that in some Mod Podge black paint,
White glue, and then sprinkled on some green flock for grass
Then i just jabbed it into the foam using some white glue
With all the dirty work over, it's time for a bath
Ah yes, lovely...
This is a homemade bath remedy that's about one part brown acrylic paint to 30 parts water
I was actually pretty happy with most the color on the model so i didn't want to go crazy with the wash
So I ended up only using it on the white areas to drop the brightness a little bit
For the flag, I printed it out and then used mod podge and a ping pong ball to try to
form the flag into a pleasant little curve that's catching the wind
For the flagpole, I had a couple beam sabers left over from some gundam model kits,
which I spray painted black
and then added some black thread and super glue to attach the flag
There's a couple iconic details missing though... I think we need a bridge and No Face
Okay, this is going to be a bridge speed build
For the supports, I cut two curved sections like this
And then cut a bunch of coffee stirring sticks into 1.5" inch lengths
I attached the two end posts first and waited for them to dry just a little bit
so the other slats weren't sliding all over the place
and even though i thought my measurements were perfect,
I still had to use a pair of scissors to cut off a little bit of the hanging excess
I decided to use hot glue because it would dry fastest
But i made sure just to use a baby's breath of hot glue, so i didn't have tons of it squirting out the sides
Actually i like a little variety,
So I ended up switching to white PVA glue and then super glue to keep it fresh and exciting
For the details at the top of the posts,
I dug back into my jewelry sack and pulled out these little end caps from the ends of a pair of earrings
And then for the paint job, we're going brown for wood, red for the rails
And then we're using a gunmetal gray for the little earring end caps
I dry brushed the rails and a little bit of pink
and then used a black acrylic wash for all the wood slats on the bridge
This is just to add a little bit of an aged look and to add some wear and tear
And for this hungry hippo, I'm using a scrap of an old t-shirt,
a clumped up piece of aluminum foil for the body, and some Mod Podge
Wear some gloves if you do this; I made a huge mistake doing this bare-handed
After it dried in a way that resembled draped fabric, I painted it black
This body has no face, but it needs a No Face face, so i printed out a No Face face onto a
piece of curved plastic then glued that face onto the body with no face
Making it voila! No Face
And with that final detail, enjoy the bathhouse beauty shots
Hey, thanks for watching another edition of Studson Studio
If you like this video, I'd really appreciate the usual slew of YouTube interaction
Maybe consider subscribing for more videos
Maybe a like and a comment
Or share this video with a Studio Ghibli fan in your life
As always, let me know what kind of things you'd like to see crafted in the future
I will perish before I find the time to build every suggestion, but I love reading them nonetheless
In the next video, I may very likely build a Zelda thing
So give me your best guesses as to what Zelda thing I have in mind
Also, special thanks to the support on Patreon
The coins there go directly to helping me make more crafting videos like this one
That'll do it for this one. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time