Cereal box doll houses, the Desperados Dojo Mansion, and zombie survival simulators.

So here's the story.

Yesterday, I heard something post through the door after I had already been down once and signed for a parcel for one of the guys living downstairs. I don't know why I thought this second thing would be anything interesting, but lo and behold, there was a brand new Ikea catalogue, addressed to no one in particular.

I nicked it.

Mine now.

I spent the rest of the day thinking about how when I was little I liked making little environments for woodlice out of sand, and a paper house with an amazing special thread operated lift for my Polly Pocket figures [I surprise myself with this memory. Perhaps I'm remembering it better than it was... no, it was definitely as wicked as I remember it], and totally loved watching Art Attack and Blue Peter when they made little rooms and models for toys to live and play in.

And then I wondered. Now that I'm adult enough to use a pair of scissors without a guardian present and childish enough to still love this stuff... Why haven't I actually made a sturdier one out of cardboard yet?

In my second year of Computer Game Design I thought about modelling my bedroom in Maya for practice, and got part of the way there. Ever since, I've been thinking about recreating the main areas I liked to spend my time. Didn't quite happen. And now I have five empty cereal boxes beginning to clutter up my bedroom floor because I haven't decided what to do with them yet.

My original plan for this cardboard was to go around measuring my room to recreate it to scale out of the cardboard, and do the lounge and kitchen and bathroom after that. Even make little mini-us's to live in it.

Except while I was measuring I had the idea to recreate our flat in Unity 3D, and add zombies or monsters and turn the flat into an FPS. Or a zombie survival simulator. Exciting idea.

In the end I decided to use the cardboard to make a Desperados Dojo Mansion for my Lego Man. I got about this far before I decided I wanted to make the FPS/zombie survival sim of my house more.

Three walls, a floor and a bridge to fight on. But nobody to fight. Hmm.

I think maybe if I had done some solid pre-pro on it, I might have been more focused. Oh well. It's currently sat on my windowsill, along with my purple should-sort-through-but-haven't-yet folder of.. stuff, and green bag of old journals dating from as far back as a decade ago [probably].

I haven't decided if I'm going to keep working on it or dismantle it for the cardboard to make the cardboard version of my room. Although I am going to finish another box of Maple Pecan Crisp by tomorrow, so the Desperados Dojo Mansion is probably safe for now.

Unless it falls out of my window.

It's not going to fall out of my window.