This post will show you how to make a neighbourhood street set for your stop motion films.

Here’s what your finished piece will look like.

Step 1: Materials

1. A2 sheet of cardboard (for the backing)

2. A4 sheets of colour card (for the houses, window frames and doors). I found two of each colour was enough.

3. A4 sheets of white and black card (roof slates and windows)

4. Double sided sticky tape, blue tack and PVA glue.

5. Scissors, pencil, rubber, ruler.

6. Black, blue and white paint.

7. Sheet of wood or thick card.

Note: I built my street on a piece of wood with a bracket to keep it raised off the ground because I want to add a sewer set to it later, but you can ignore this step if you like and simply make your road out of thick card.

Step 2: Drawing To Scale

Again for my subject I have chosen Lego figures so I would recommend placing a figure on the card and drawing your houses around him to achieve a nice sense of scale (he should be able to fit through the door).

It is essential to use a ruler when drawing the buildings but you can decide how many storeys or windows you wish the houses to have. I have chosen just three windows and one door.

Step 2: Background

This can be as simple or as complicated as you wish. I have chosen a rather simple light blue sky for the extreme background and will add a dark blue skyline to it in step 3. Backgrounds are often neglected but they really do help compliment and emphasise the foreground (in this case the street set) so it’s worthwhile doing one.

Make sure to paint the background first and then start to layer over it. You always work from background to foreground.

Step 3: The Skyline

Draw the outline of your buildings over the blue sky.

Then mix a darker blue colour and paint your skyline right down to the roof tops of the houses. Be incredibly careful when painting the edges of the skyline not to get any on the light blue sky. Not as much care is needed on the houses side because you will be covering this up later.

Note: If the idea of painting puts you off then you can always purchase a large blue sheet of dark blue paper and cut your skyline out of this.

Step 4: The Roofing & Houses

Whilst this whole process could be done using paint I think that the raised effect of the card creates a more 3 dimensional effect and therefore a set with more texture.

Rather than cut out individual roof tiles I decided on using strips of roofing, each overlapping the next. So start from the bottom and work your way up. Again rather then paint like I did you could simplify the process and buy black card. The choice is yours.

The most important part of the roofing is to make sure that each roof is flush with the one beside it and always make sure your house colour (in this case the yellow one below) is stuck down first before the roofing.

The main body of the house is quite straight forward. Simply cut out your rectangle and stick it down. In the example above I have used glue (wrong option) to stick it down and you can notice the bubble effect it leaves.

To avoid this, use double sided tape which is not only neater but much more effective.

The windows and doors are made of white card, cut to size and again stuck down with sticky tape.

Note: Later I chose to replace the doors with colour card and match this colour to the window frames.

Step 6: The Road

The wood I used had a glossy texture which I believed was better suited to a road surface but you can use thick card if you do not have any wood handy.

It was painted twice and a large white line was left near the edge to denote the white line normally found in the centre of a road.

Conclusion:

When you’re done it should look something like this.

Note: The window frames were made of tiny strips of card and glued together to make a square or rectangle (depending on the window it was fitting). This is not an essential element but I do think it’s worthwhile if you have the extra time.

The panels on the doors were cut from the same colour as the body of the house but again this is up to you.

You can revisit our earlier post on how to make a path and add this to your street set.