Finally, another diorama! (Patreon)

My friends, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief after one of the most intense disciplines in modelling - composing a diorama. Since the T29 I'm trying to put a lot of effort into the composition, not just the basic layout of different components, but also rotation, "main viewing angle" and so on. For example, the T29 has a really poor main viewing angle because it shows the entire scene from a side. This time I tried to rotate the whole scene so it'll be nice to look at from the front side. I'm not claiming it's perfect, just wanted to let you know there was some effort put into it! 😁 I spent like, I don't know... an entire day with the planning stage... maybe I'm thinking too much about these things. 

You might spot the effort in the various planning stages captured on these photos. I decided to break up the entire base into different blocks of styrofoam which allowed me to move things around. Not like with a single carved block of foam where it's hard to go back if you're not happy with something! 

No matter how I tried though, the corner behind the wall seemed empty... and it looked like a perfect spot for some vertical element. So who knows... but chances are I'll put a tree there! I tried to avoid it as much as possible because trees are really terrifying, but it probably can't be avoided any more... 

Figures arrived today, they're French tankers from Alpine and they'll fit the scene perfectly with their worried postures. After all, the scene takes place in Belgium and the theme will be "Calm before the storm". 

This planning stage makes me always uneasy because everything looks like crap... well, it's just plain styrofoam, but still, it doesn't look like much and it always makes me worried about the result. So to ease my nerves a little and to give you something more interesting to look at, I carved the wall... I abandoned the original plan to make a full stone wall and instead went for a brick+stone structure. Not only because I have the same thing in my village, but also because it has more visual texture and last but not least, I really wanted to paint some bricks! 😁 

So the next step will be painting and weathering of the wall and yes, there will be a detailed video about the entire process. It's really easy and fun!