Indiana Jones - 3D Map of Excavation Site on Crete

We all know this situation: The wedding of your sister is coming up, she and also her future husband are totally into 1990ies point-and-click-adventures and their honeymoon is going to crete - with a visit to the excavation site of Knossos, which - as you obviously know - is one of the settings in "Indy 4 - Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis".

So what come's to one's mind? Of course you design a 3D map of the Indy 4 excavation site on crete! (With secret compartment containing the moonstone as well as some money to support the luxury during the honeymoon.)

one big piece of plywood

paper honeycomb panels ("for free" from the packaging of a famous swedish furniture store I*EA)

corrugated cardboard

paper

sand

popsicle sticks

thin yarn

pins

wood glue / white glue (a lot!)

paint (different colours; yellow, red, white, black are enough)

different brushs

a big washer

decorations from model railways / warhammer / ...

First, play Indy 4 again (it's totally worth it!).

Then take screenshots and compose them until you have a full view of the excavation site on crete. (Alternatively browse the internet for a screenshot somebody else already took - which is what I did,e.g. this here:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/919013244741607212/C77688FFA52339588A924229A9A3D1538AE28CEE/

)

Then the most difficult step is waiting: Try to figure out, how the site would look from the birds eye view. I tried to figure out the different height levels and drew them in a "heat map" about the later size of the 3D map.

I transfered the plan to the plywood, in this case around 75 cm x 50 cm.

Then I started to cut paper honeycomb panels into pieces to build the different height levels. Fortunately I bought some furniture from the famous swedish furniture store (I*EA), which comes along with much of this material.

Once you are happy, glue the pieces in position and add pieces of paper to cover gaps, if necessary.

Cover the outside edges of the map with normal paper (except if you want to show the innards of your 3D map).

Buildings and ruins are easy to create from corrugated cardboard: Cut stripes, bend them and glue them in position. Dont worry about the open edges - cover them with a single layer of ordinary paper, as you did with the outside edges of your 3D map.

Landslides and other slopes can easily created by using scrap cardboard parts, mixing them with glue, and kneading this stuff into the right spot. Don't worry, once you try it, you'll see it's totally easy - and you can correct for a long time.

To get an adequate surface, rip some normal paper into small pieces. Then use lots of glue, soak the surface, place the small paper pieces on the glue, and smooth the surface of the paper with... more glue!

As you might have heard, excavation sites are about digging out old stuff from the ground, so there is lots of sand/soil, gravel, rocks, etc. laying around.

The best way to create an appropriate surface texture seems to be possible by sanding. I "borrowed" two handsfull from my kids' sandbox (the kids didn't seem to miss it).

I mixed some of the sand at a time with glue. Then I spread glue on the surface of the map and added the gooey sand-glue-mix.

The gooey stuff sticking to the hands started to dry after a while - I used it to create little rocks and other bigger structures.

I was lucky, my daughter was keen to help me to add the base colour :-)

But also without such a great help, this step is easy: Mix some red and yellow colour in big quantity and start to paint the whole map. (Of course be sure that everything is already dry.) Paint _everything_!

Do this step before the base paint is dry!

Take some of the remaining base colour (or mix some new). Then add a little bit (!) black colour and mix it.

Paint it wet-in-wet on the map, especially into the inner corners, which would be "in the shadows" - or anywhere else, where you want some variation in colour.

I then coloured the walls of the excavated buildings in bright white.

To imitate adhering sand and dust, I mixed a sandy colour (mainly from white, yellow and black) and carefully added it to the white walls and some sandy regions.

Therefore, I used the so-called drybrushing-technique: Take a stiff brush, add some colour, and then paint it on some other cardboard (!). When the majority of the colour is off the brush, take the (nearly) dry brush and apply the remaining colour to the map. The colour is mainly transfered to the structures that stick a bit out.

On excavation sites, you don't want to sink into the ground, so there are planks to roll the wheelbarrow over. Easiest way to create such planks is the use of popsicle sticks (or alternatively the sticks used to swirl milk into coffee).

Again, lots of glue is used :-)

What's a point-and-click-adventure with the interaction menu and the inventory?

See? That's why I took a screenshot and printed it for later application to the empty corner ;-)

OK, I should have told you about this earlier... It's the integral part of this 3D map. (As you still have in mind, it's a present for my sister and her husband and has to contain some money for their honeymoon...)

In my 3D map, there is a secret compartment. It has a lid that fits well into the scenery. It's more or less just a hole in the landscape covered by a square part of corrugated cardboard with some decoration on top.

In this picture you can see the removed lid. It's important to remove it every now and then, otherwise the colour will glue it to the rest of the map... :-/

From my model railway and Warhammer, I still had some plants and other decorations. I glued some grass and other foliage on the map - suddenly everything starts to look more natural, doesn't it?

Also the important bull's head and tail were glued on the map. (For all pittyful people out there who don't know what this means: In the game these are landmarks required to find the moonstone, an ancient artifact.) The bull's head and tail are left over pieces from one of my Warhammer sets.

The moonstone in the game is a stone disc with engraved moons.

I used a zinc-plated washer, and scratched the moon symbols into. Then I layed it into vinegar which gave it some patina.

Even when I thought "now I'm done", I still found some spots, which required some extra colour: A bit o red here, a touch of white to some edges, a spot that looked to uniform and got some extra sand colour, some darker brown on the planks/bridge, ...

Finally, it was done. I could have worked on the details for some more decades, but the wedding was getting closer ;-)

So this is how the 3D map of the Indy 4 excavation site on crete now looks like.

Needless to say that my sister and her husband were overwhelmed? One year after their wedding, they re-arranged their living room and put the 3D map to the wall - like a big picture :-D

Or as Indy would have said: "That belongs in a museum!"