Your Ad Here

Mexico City is a really cool city. Its huge, and has a lot of things to do and see there. I've gone there several times while doing research in Mexico. What is not cool about it, besides its high crime rate (but what city doesn't?) is all the ads and billboards. I don't think there is a single building that doesn't have some sort of advertisement on it. So, I thought, any city or large town worth its salt on the Gambusian mini-continents should have ads on their buildings. So, here is my first very modest attempt:


A few new "innovations" with this building. I wanted it to be commerical, so I made some large shop doors. Yes, they looked uneven, but I blame it on the thin cardstock I was using. Also, I forgot to darken the interiors of the shops. These aren't innovations. First, I made the balcony railings out of window screen. Its easy to cut out, but difficult to glue down to the balcony. I found that if I put a tiny strip of cardstock at the bottom of screen, it glues better and is a little studier. You can see the difference between the first verses the second and third floors. The second innovation was with the windows. It sort of a pain to make them out of polymer clay, its somewhat limiting as to what you can do, you can't get them squared up very well, and they are disproportionally thick. So, I used this mesh screen that is used for knitting or something. It is made out of soft plastic, and comes in two sizes (at least as far as I know). I used my sprue-cutters to cut out windows. They are great because you can make various sized windows. The only drawback to them is that you really have to get in there with the sprue-cutter to get a flush cut otherwise you get little nubbins sticking out where you cut. The next time I used them, I will also glue them first on a paper backing for painting purposes. Here is what the building looks like on the side:

I took an ad out of some Chinese movie catalog and scanned it under a really high resolution. Then I shrank it down and swapped out the Chinese for Spanish. The Chinese is translated into Spanish, so the ad is still legit. My printer didn't do such a hot job at the edges of the text for some reason, but that is OK. You could say the ad has been there for awhile and has faded a little. I plan to get a little more creative in the future with my ads.