Received and installed my scale yard light kit, so I had to try a night shot.

Basic diorama is pretty much done, the rest will be adding little details as they occur to me. Suggestions always welcome!

Can't believe it took me this long to think of adding this detail...

One thing you may consider would be to paint the interior of your buildings black. Would help with the light bleeding through at 'night' (if this is a problem) and darken the interior of the house during the 'day'. I also had the habit of separating each floor of the buildings with black construction/poster paper and hanging some LEDs for each level.

Your diorama looks really good and well thought out. The flag does add a nice touch.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
One thing you may consider would be to paint the interior of your buildings black. Would help with the light bleeding through at 'night' (if this is a problem) and darken the interior of the house during the 'day'. I also had the habit of separating each floor of the buildings with black construction/poster paper and hanging some LEDs for each level.

Your diorama looks really good and well thought out. The flag does add a nice touch.

I'm thinking of completely detailing the interior of the house with separate floors, stairs, furniture, etc. I've left it sitting loose on the base for that reason.

Cool!

One thing that I forgot to mention was that if the house interior is painted a dark color, it could bleed through the plastic of the house walls and make the material a bit darker. Not that big of a deal until placing an unpainted piece next to it (columns, small bits, etc...). I found this out when building model cars and cutting out the glove boxes and console lids and put them on dollhouse hinges. Putting realistic door, hood, and trunk hinges also helped me stay acclimated with my favorite swear words.

You may be able to find a flameless candle at Goodwill to flicker its way into your fireplace.

I guess I'm gonna hafta see the banker about buying that 40 Old Man Koenischknecht has been trying to sell me, I'm running out of Real Estate!

The original diorama is 95% full, even overcrowded and there are at least a couple of more buildings/scenes I want to create. One is the combination corn crib and equipment shed we had on the farm I grew up on.



This follows the spirit of the original, but I had to guess at the dimensions and I know it's taller than the original because I designed it to accommodate a tractor with a mounted corn picker on it. The one we had was so low we had to take the muffler off the tractor to get it inside and by the time I was a teen I had to duck to drive under it.

It's built out of scale lumber with 2x4 framing and 1x4 skip sheathing. Teeny tiny stuff in 1:64, lotta work with tweezers. Roof will be metal, yet to decide if corrugated or standing seam. I don't think I have enough of either on hand. It'll be painted a weathered, flaking red with a rusty roof. This sort of crib was pretty much outdated by the time period I'm modeling. In fact, ear corn production was rapidly giving way to combines, shelled corn and grain bins.

Watching your thread here gets me wondering about building a diorama of my house before we move out of this God forsaken state.

The corn crib looks great!

You're gonna need a bigger diorama.

This is not my work, but that of a fellow radar veteran. (Sorry about the background, it was on display at a USAF reunion.)
DSC_4500.jpg by David Casteel, on Flickr

DSC_4601.jpg by David Casteel, on Flickr

It's a model of an AN/FPS-24 surveillance radar. The original antenna was 120' across and 50' high and weighed 70 tons. It (and the model) rotated at 5 rpm. I think the modeler did a superb job! (It's actually a model of a real radar that had been installed on Mount Umunhum near San Jose, CA. (The concrete building still stands.)

flashguy

I have two things that were destined for a diorama. Original Death Valley Days 20 Mule Team Models. I ought to put them back together and on display.

The corn crib looks great!

@ flashguy - That's an excellent model. I've seen photos of those installations.

Other posters are right, I DO need a bigger diorama. Between the corncrib, structures and vehicles donated by a generous SigForum member and some other ideas, I've already decided to add on. Probably double the size. Give me something to do next Winter.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
@ flashguy - That's an excellent model. I've seen photos of those installations.

Other posters are right, I DO need a bigger diorama. Between the corncrib, structures and vehicles donated by a generous SigForum member and some other ideas, I've already decided to add on. Probably double the size. Give me something to do next Winter.

Join this FB group, The best Diorama Artists in the World, and be prepared to be amazed. These guys do all types, not just military, and you'll get some awesome ideas and tips.

My grandfather didn't do the dioramas as much, but he did build a scale dollhouse of the family house he and my grandmother lived in for many years...

He custom built the frame, wired for electricity, copied as much detail as he could. That dollhouse was only missing the working plumbing... it was truly grand.

Us in the first wave of grand kids were never allowed to even touch it, but the second wave of grand kids had full reign and utterly destroyed it.

@ Pyker - Sorry, no FB here.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
@ Pyker - Sorry, no FB here.

That's a shame. There's some great diorama groups on there.

In fact, it's a public group so you might not even need to be a FB member to see their stuff.

ETA: You don't need to be a FB member, I just checked.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
@ flashguy - That's an excellent model. I've seen photos of those installations.

I agree--it is an excellent model. Even more so, given that no blueprints of the antenna structure are available and he had to work from a small collection of photos of antenna fragments.

There were only 12 of those radars built, 11 in big square towers 85' high and 1 (the prototype) on a steel framework "temperate" tower. All the antennae have been destroyed. I have frequently berated the USAF for not salvaging the temporate installation (in Eufaula, Alabama) and erecting it at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Dayton, Ohio. That antenna was the largest and heaviest rotating one ever built for the Air Force, and one of them should have been saved as a historical relic.

My photo of the one at Eufaula AFS:
EufaulaFPS24Fall1960ax.jpg by David Casteel, on Flickr
(For scale, that feedhorn, the boxy structure atop the long boom, is 9 feet tall.)

flashguy

Have you kept a journal or record on he amount of time you have spent on your project? Amazing work!