Dioramas I would like to build.

Show us a picture of a scene you would like to make a diorama of.

Or, if there is no picture deptcting the scene, tell us what it is.

Please, no pictures of a diorama already built.


  1. I wouldn’t mind making a cutaway view of a tunnel from the movie “The Great Escape”. Tunnel underneath and prison camp on top.

  2. I think this scene of the Titanic sinking, with all the lights and drama, would be quite intense:

PeterPan :

Please -no more Titanic stuff ! I think she been done to death ! Now a Dio of the Andrea Doria sinking , Or the Morro Castle afire on the beach , would be something different .

How about a dio of Dunkirk and the Mosquito Fleet !

How about a dio of the Battle of Waterloo?

Come on TB, a well done Titanic would be a good thing.

I agree with GM on Titanic, that would be a good one, especially if it was done above and below waterline, showing the hull breaking into the two major pieces. But years above my skill set.

Maybe a diorama of the Lusitania. I believe it was similar to the Titanic, but I don’t know.

In Vietnam during the war, a CIA helicopter was flying back to its HQ came across a couple of Ant-2 Colt attempting to bomb the very same HQ. A CIA op shot at one of the bombers with an AK-47 and shot 2 down. Not sure how a diorama would be done on this but it would be cool.

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It’s an An-2. “Two ends of a gunfight” dioramas are hard to do. One idea might be that later the CIA sent a ground party to find the wreck, and assess the damage.

Maybe bend the rules a little and have them arrive in that helicopter near the wreck in a rice paddy.

That’s a good story, I didn’t know that one.

A well done Titanic would be awesome.

Just a few that come to mind that I probably will never get to:

An Egyptian tomb.

Batmans Bat Cave.

A treasure chest partialy buried on a beach.

The Mayflower ship within a seascape

PS: What can I say. I am a big kid.

Great Escape offers a couple of cool ideas. Probably the most visula one would be Steve MacQueen attempting to jump a Zundapp motorcycle over the boundary wire on the Swiss frontier.

Waterloo offer ever so many vignettes–but all at the rik of great modeler fatigue from the heer number of figures required. Consider that a rifle square would want for about 48 figures. Which caues me to remember the old Military Modeler magazine. There was a figure modeler who was a regular contributor. She would build up replicas of famous Watterloo painting with scads of Airfix, Historex, and I&R figures. Which included The Charge of the Scot’s Grays (painting):
and the forcing of the Hugemont Gate (painting):

Personally, I’d like to see ome more ANZAC dios.
Like some of the trenches at Galliopoli. Or some Light Horsemen.

Wish this forum had a ‘like’ button. I like all the above.

I had always been fascinated by the Ark of the Covenant

Peter… There are some great ideas here from everyone. Too funny about the Ark because I was researching that once as a possible project. I like your last post too with the sea creature.

This is a good thread. It is cool to see what people’s interests are, and just maybe, it will spark someone to build one of these things.

Maybe once when you are done with the drawbridge you can do one of these things.

BTW. Your name PeterPan just gave me another idea. Why not a dio on PeterPan? As a kid I had a PeterPan Disney viewmaster reel. On it was one of my favorite 3D images. They had PeterPan floating above a kids bed. It looked so cool. Like I said… I am just a big kid.

Disneyland itself is a giant diorama. My own theory is that Walt needed a place to run his trains.

I was kidding about Waterloo, sort of in reference to the comment about Dunkirk.

THAT… is a GREAT theory. Lol. What is funny is that it is probably TRUE! It’s the perfect plan. Why not build a giant toy for me, and at the same time, let others in and make more money by doing so. I like it.

[Y]

Wrecked HK8 Emily at Makin Island, 1943.

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Yes, it did cross my mind. With the crocodile waiting for Hook to drop in [bgr].

Good on you Bakster. Hope we all can share our child-like natures.

Those are all some fantastic ideas guys!!!

At an art museum years ago I saw a traveling show of a guy who had built life-size dioramas of famous works of art. Not only was it awesome from being able to see a painting that you could walk into but but the artist had to show a great deal of creativity to work off the original painting to expand it. For example since you can walk around and see the dio from angles you never could in the original painting he had to create faces for people who in the original you only saw from the back.

I would like to try forced perspective. Shadow boxes with models and figures in different scale.

I have a few in mind from “The Longest Day”

1… more of a vignette really, but where the Pathfinder goes “Shhhh” to the French schoolmarm after landing in her garden

2… a bit bigger- the Rangers are up on the cliff top at Pt Du Hoc and one has just shot down some Germans

“I wonder what ‘bitte bitte’ means?”

3… a very involved one of the Sword Beachmaster, with his dog, a Churchill AVRE, assorted troops coming ashore and moving off the beach and the French village mayor welcoming them with a bottle of champagne.