How To Design Your Own Cityscape

4. Build A Small Prototype

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With this prototype, you will be testing paint colors, window sizes, some perspective, light placement, practice cutting the materials, and skyscraper details. I made my prototype to be approx 1 foot square and used some of the window sizes that I knew I would be using. In addition, it had the beginnings of an Empire State building on the top.

Some of the things I learned from this: 1) Natural wood color would look very warm and artistic, but also looked a lot like a jack-o-lantern. 2) I could not build an Empire State building that looked good simply by free-hand drawing the pieces. Calculated CAD work was called for instead. 3) The smallest windows would need to be punched out because no jigsaw blade is small enough to cut out a 1/8" window.

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© 2002 Ryan Hoagland