Are diorama builders a dying breed? Are the products being made today discouraging dio building (for example, pre-painted bases, millions of pre-made accesories, etc…)? Dios have never been as popular a medium in our hobby, volume-wise, as armor, aircraft, etc., but is the art-form shrinking even more?
And why? Are dios considered by those who have not attempted them to be too “difficult” ot time-consuming?
What do you think?
Not dying to me, according to the decreasing space in my work room.
I think it just depends on what people are into. Some might be in love with armor, others are into figures. Yet some others want to bring all of those modeling aspects together, because they are into story telling as well. I’m happy to be in the minority… more Celluclay for me [:)]
It’s a bit of a drag that the Dio forum doesn’t have the same traffic as the others, but I build for myself, and those that are into the same things. If that’s only 20 - 30 of us, no big deal. However, to get a real pulse, this might be a good question to pose in the other forms as well.
Steve
Well, it’s certainly always been a small world… As for “Dying”, I’d have to say, “no”, but the art of scratch-building certainly is… The commercial stuff is an attempt, I feel, to open it up to more folks, for whatever it’s worth, but at the same time, it “dilutes” the genre in some ways…
I’ve always considered the diorama-builder to be at the top of the static scale modeling “food-chain”, because there’s so many aspects of the hobby one has to be “fluent” in… Lotta guys aren’t into the extra work and skills required, and some are just plain into “instant gratification”, which has no place in diorama building… To coin a phrase, “If it was easy, everyone would do it”… Buying a bunch of ready-made dio parts is certainly easier, but it’s also pretty recognizable…If I do buy something commercial, it’s never used straight outta the box, for sure… I like my stuff to be “mine”… There’s so many more aspects to dio-building that I’m sure it automatically runs some folks off because of having to leave one’s “comfort zone” and work with unfamiliar materials, tools, and techniques…
That might sound elitist, and it probably is… But it also happens to be true…
Does it make any difference? If I want to build a dio, I’m gonna build a dio.
[:)]
Now, I havent built many dios, only one, really, the other is a WIP still… but even with the premade things, ALOT has to be scratch built. Even then, things like the miniart buildings take so much more work then scratch building does… danged vacuform.
Thats all i do is dio’s, models just don’t look right to me just sitting there, they need to be in their natural setting to make’em look real to me. I havn’t done much at all in free standing models. Even if someone does an awesome tank thats not in a dio, it’s not as impressive to me as one that is.
At our model show, each year there has been less dio’s submitted vs free standing. I think its because it requires alot more work & time. And people don’t seem to want put in either anymore?
I’m all about the extra work and patience. For me, it’s the journey. I am just as excited about the prospect of creating a real looking bush, as I am making a real looking Opel Blitz.
Not a big fan of static, figure-less models. The best static models still leave me totally unsatisfied. That’s my taste, but I respect anyone who builds anything.
I don’t think it’s a dying art, just a smaller genre of modelers are dedicated to it. I’ve never built a dio though I’ve thought about it. I don’t have the room to keep them, which I tend to want to do with my models. The added expense of the extra materials asociated with dios make a completed project cost more also, something I have no interest is doing is raising the cost of my projects. If fact, I’m resorting to more and more scratch building to save money. More fun too, and the feeling I get from home made parts is much more gratifying. My attention span is only about a month before I get in a hurry and rush things. We all know what that leads to, a clogged up “in progress” shelf, messy work, trashed kits.
I like to view well done dios but I’ll leave them to those who enjoy it for now.
I hope not dying…maybe few and far between…I have never bought a kit without some thought to have it in a natural enviroment, (thats why planes are hard to build around because there natural habitat is the sky). We all know they take a hell of alot longer than a average build, (my last took about a year) maybe people don’t have the time or would rather buy prefab stuff. I always want at least a scratch built base for anything, if it tell a story it’s even better! LONG LIVE THE DIORAMA!!!
I hope you guys have checked out my flak bunker dio. I did’nt get feedback from a few of you dio gods and your input would mean alot…I hate to beg but I need to know where to improve!
I think you really have to be interested in a much wider range of things to build a dio. You have to be interested in the ground, and plants and architecture as well as vehicles and people, and then apply that to understanding why things are the way they are. If that’s your cup of tea, then you will build a dio. If not…well you know the answer.
Smeagol/Gollum, if building a vacuum-formed model is harder than scratchbuilding, you may want to rethink your building process.
Now that we know dios are not dead, do we want to discuss the definition of what is a diorama 
Oh boy, hang on while I get myself some doritos and another soda. I dont want to miss this…[:-^]
I think with the complexity of modern kits, people are just worn out by the end of a build and want to move on to something else. With the abundance of 400-500 piece kits on the market, plus all the weathering/decaling/painting, you cant blame people for just wanting it on the shelf, and clear the bench for the next build. On the other hand, you could build a relatively simple kit, but just feel it needs something more to be complete (ie; a dio)
I would never say it’s dying. But we are definitely in the minority.
Its the complexity and the time and effort that I put into my builds that makes me want place it in a dio. Whether its a simple scene of the said vehical in a grassy feild or a more elaborate urban setting with buildings and tons of rubble.
Hmm…an interesting question, Manny–you know how to pick 'em! [swg]
“Dying”? I wouldn’t say so. I just think that the Art of Dioramas takes a longer time; therefore, less output.
I will say that I think that I do agree with Hans–the Art of Scratchbuilding has diminished, but that is perhaps inevetable, with the panoply of products available. It used to be that people wuld contruct their own buildings; now you can buy just about any era, any design. If anything, I would think that that fact has actuallly increased output, due to the lack of time necessary to actually create out of thin air?
For me, “space” is the issue–I got nowhere to put much more of them. I have to therefore very carefully plan what I want to build. It has to fit on a bookcase shelf. It has to be certain dimensions. That cuts down my options.
I think too, that the sheer variety of kit offerings available also cuts down on the dio building. Iknow that I have at least 5kits screaming at me from the stash “BUILD ME next!”! I want toget to them next–not spend a few more weeks on a dio.
Free time is probably the biggest issue with me - I just seem to have so little of it, and when I do, I work at a very deliberate pace. They have not lost their appeal - I love looking at 'em, at the same time marveling at what you guys are capable of and often feel the urge pulling me to have a go at one.
I think the plethora of offerings available and a thriving cottage industry of manufacturing and selling these products is an indicator that dio makers are alive and well. I see plenty of scratchbuilt diorama accessories and structures and feel that in many cases the very industry of supplying ready made items may actually spur creative juices in folks to try it on their own.
It wouldn’t hurt a bit if the kit manufacturers would follow Monogram’s example from the 70’s and hire someone to create a diorama for each of the more popular kits they market and include the “How-tos” along with a bill of materials in the kit (I’d do it free if they’d supplied the kits[;)]). Shep Paine’s work for Monogram is what got me started in the diorama business, and I never saw a model the same way again… Looking at a well-built shelf-dweller is only mildly interesting to me, and at shows, it’s not my favorite thing to do… I head for the dioramas and spend way more time looking those over than anything else… Perhaps if FSM would run, every year, an “All-Diorama Jumbo Issue!” there’d be some more interest among the shelf-people…
I did notice that there’s the “Space-issue” with some of y’all… I’ve never run into that problem m’self, since I don’t keep dios forever… I eventually get sick of looking at and cleaning them, so they get torn down and go into the junk & spares boxes… Now that I’ve got a decent digital camera, they probably won’t last as long as they did before, either… Some may last only a matter of weeks even… I may give some away if there’s an interest in them though… Others may get face-lifts, like the Tiger crashing through the building wall may, in a year or so, be changed to a Sherman in the same spot with the crew wrestling with a thrown track… (My current gig with urban dios that involve some combat scenes is to build say, a German Brummbar engaging a target down the street, then the next dio would be an American unit being engaged by the same Brummbar and reacting to it)
Also, most of my single-vehicle/single-structure 1/35th armor can be fitted into 8 x 10 photo-frames, with a smattering of 11 x 14 works… The heavy bombers are the real space-hogs, needing a minumum of 24 x24 inches for the 1/48th B-17… 24 X 28 is better… The B-29 will need even more, about 28 X 34, but that’s still workable, since it’s getting it’s own wall-mount. The largest on I’m building is going on a 16 X 8 base, but it’s a commision-build and I’m doing that one on-site, thankfully… Otherwise, I’d have had to build in a modular system… However, I digress…
I think one thing I can start doing is to post more of my stuff in the aircraft/armor hoochs initially, then steer it over the Diorama hooch for final assembly… I’m doing that with my M12 SPH build, as a matter of fact, and will do so with the Wirblewind/Spitfire/Blitz piece… I can justify it because they get to the 75-85% completed stage in the respective hooch, but I can’t finish a model to 100% until after it’s permanently attached to the dio-base… This way of posting my work may influence some of the less-adventurous “shelfers” to stray outside their comfortable aircraft or armor hooches and into here, and maybe a small percentage of those will find themselves overtaken by the “Dark Side of the Dark Side”, heh…
Moving on, still others find the figure-painting aspect of diorama-building their balliwick… It certainly was mine, at first, until I learned (even invented) a few simple tricks and short-cuts for figure painting/modification… There’s also a way to build a stunning diorama that reqires no figures whatsoever, although it’s somewhat limiting… For example, Shep Paine’s “Lady Be Good” and his B-25J awaitng the scrapper’s torch in the Arizona Desert after the war were two excellent works with no figures in sight (except for the lone rattlesnake taking in the shade under the bomber’s wing) in the B-25 dio… The absence of figures added a very effective “Desolation and Loneliness” factor that figures would have ruined…
And then there’s the time-factor… Myself, I can devote 8-10 hours a day to modeling 40-50 hours a week, and my output is still small (I’ve only been back in “business” since June of 08 also)… I treat each portion of a dio as a separate kit though, so when you consider the make-up of a typical “Hammer-dio”, like the afore-mentioned Tiger (t’s actually a Brummbar, that’s not important right now), there are in reality, three (four, if you count the figures as one additional “kit”) models making up the diorama: The Tank, the Street, and the Building. If you’re doing urban with a tree, the tree itself is yet another model to build, so when all is said and done, I’ve built four models to make one diorama (figures make the fourth)…
Then there are the dios in the dios… Again, using the Brummbar example, the track is one scene, and on the second floor of the building is the command post for the Infanterie Kompanie being supported by the Brummbar. It’s just three guys, the Funker, the Stabsfedwebel, and the Kommandant, a radio, table & chairs, and a couple sitmaps, but it’s in there and it’s a separate scene… So if you assign an average time of 10 hours per “model”, there’s 40 hours-worth of work in there… Break that up by the job-working, family-having, chore-doing average modeler’s bench-time, and we’re talking about 3 months from start to finish, provided that’s the only thing he’s building…
So… Overall, there’s a lot of things going on in a diorama, and some of those things are not genre-specific… Buildings, terrain, and foliage are separate genres for most folks… The diorama builder has more in common with the model railroader than the model builder… Many modelers consider the railroad an entirely differnt hobby genre with no thoughts crossing over…
Just some random thoughts, gents… I needed a break from the shoot-down dio… I spent the night with a Russian Spitfire (and it wasn’t a hot-tempered stripper named Svetlana)…
An excelent recommendation, Hans!
What got me interested in dio’s was both Shep Paine’s examples, (as you have also mentioned) but also the old Matchbox 1/76 kits, which came with mini-diorama settings. Man, I must have built two dozen of them!
Building a dio was the main reason I got back into the hobby. I didn’t build dio’s when I was younger, the closest I came was the Matchbox “do in a box” kits, which I have a couple of Revell re-issues, they were so much fun. I agree with the time issue, I have a full time job, wife and 3 loverly girls, so it is hard to get any bench time at times. I also agree that seeing a model on a shelf is too plain, it needs something to liven it up, it doesn’t have to be a full blown dio, a simple scene with a figure or two is more interesting IMO. I’m always thinking up ideas to match the kits I have in the stash, some I finish and others are waiting to be started. A lot of the ideas are from the great work seen on here and other sites. I do get itchy feet whenever I get a new kit, but I always try to finish whatever I’m working on at that time.
Long live the diorama…
Mark
I haven’t been too long into modelling to know if it’s dying… I am atleast trying to get into it… Had some failed dioramas… But I’ll earn it… and when I do, one more dio-builder here! [:)]
A major part of what motivates me to build a particular kit or tank is or was a particular picture of that subject in its’ element. Most times I do not follow through with even a display base, let alone a dio. 'Dunno why, probably time, and my short attention span, or the major amount of unbuilt “gotta-do” projects already in progress. I’ve got lots of dio ideas, though, and most of what I’ve been building lately has a place in them…
In real life, I haven’t done a “by-definition” dio in six or seven years. Starting to get the itch again. I find that so many of my builds don’t give the satisfaction they would if they were properly displayed…at least on a scenic base, if not part of a dio.
Back to the original question, I sure don’t see as many dios as I used to, clueless as to why. Maybe it’s the idea, already mentioned, that after the massive amount of time so many people put into a modern kit, it’s time to move on.