usually sight in battlefield,burining vehicle,tank or house,cotton basically the choice,but just how do you dye it(or “paint”) a cotton,I attempt to sprinkle it with black paster chalk,result was totally disappointment.the other was fire,althought I never try before,cotton,and paint it with yellow orange?
Nor really sure, never tried for smoke effect… seems really difficult to pull off convincingly. If you wanna shoot for it, I would definitely suggest an airbrush. At least, that’s where I would start.
Good luck,
Steve
I agree. I’ve never seen scale smoke which looked like actual smoke. Cotton never really looks like the real thing.
[:)]
That’s one of the biggest problems wih modeling … you’re trying to make something that will NEVER move and will always be STATIC to look like something that IS moving. It’s just not going to happen.
The ONLY luck that I’ve had with smoke is to do it on a small “scale” … not like 1/72, but rather something smoldering. For this I used just a few strands from a cotton swab. I would then dip them in a solution of water and Elmer’s glue, similar to the same thing you would do with a tissue in making a waving flag, or a flag draped over somthing. Try the best you can to get the strands to look the way you want them to and then let them dry. After that, you can even try shooting them with some hairspray.
***Again this is only for a smoldering smoke effect. I’ve never tried fire, nor do I really want to.
there is a FSM article on a Three Stooges model with fire in a urn…not sure what issue. it looks pretty good. I have had luck with cotton to simulate steam off of hot engines in water…of course no painting and kept pulling until very thin. I like the idea of chalk to color…I created a burning p38 engine in flight, flames were cotton but mashed on the cowling due to speed so painting the cotton was easy…free standing fire i feel could be very taxing. The smoke from the P38 was cotton that I misted with black spraypaint…the overall effect was ok…i did support the smoke with a little wire to have it trailing…Cotton can be whiped into shape somewhat but coloring is the trick…good luck.
Expectations far surpass reality in this case. Most if not all dioramas to the eye, are just that, there is no fooling anyone. You can do some clever camera angles or photoshop tricks to make a photo of a diorama or model look real, but stand alone models or dioramas on a table fool no one. Thus, to agonize or be too concerned for the look of cotton for smoke is a wasted emotion and effort. Go with it, it is what it is. I’ve seen some very good looking effects using cotton. Some of it as rocket trail from a TOW missile being fired, some from a cooked afv. You are not going to make make cotton look like real smoke next to a 1/35th scale model much as you aren’t going to make water look real. It works in the context of the setting and no one is fooled by a waterfall of resin or waves of painted gesso(those waves don’t move nor does that water trickle or cascade down the rocks). Sure it looks good or realistic within the context of the setting, but no one is reaching for a paper towel to sop up the water leaking onto the exhibit table from the water splashing from the waves breaking over the hull of the gato submarine. Same with trees, snow, leaves, and in alot of cases grass. Birch seeds are like no leaf on any tree, baking soda, microballoons, salt or painted celuclay looks like no snow, wire covered with sculpey or aves doesn’t look like a real tree and the bits of moss, lichen or sponge used to make ground bracken, or leaves are like nothing in nature.
What looks good is if the “effect” works with the setting. Put whitewash on that afv, put crew in winter parkas and ice up a creek and you have a winter dio despite whatever material is used for snow. Moss and tree roots, bits of horsehair batting and or sponge become hedgerows when placed with figures of panzergrenadiers playing cat and mouse with a Sherman, and birch catkins spread around at the feet of a waffen ss figure wearing autumn peadot become fall leaves or vines on a castle wall.
This is why, if you create a model of a burned out tank and add some cotton batting painted to look like dark billowing smoke and gradiate the shading with maybe some yellow and orange near the hatch it looks like what it is with the model because we accept it for that and can make the assimilation between what we have seen on the news or in photos and understand the desired effect when we see it on a model. Put that same billowing, condensed smoke over a camp fire and it doesn’t work, unless our depiction is of campers around a burning tire. We don’t see smoke like that over most campfires so there is no context to suspend reality and accept what we are looking at as a representation of a scene. It just looks wrong.
Use what ever you feel looks best to you for your smoke material. Under the same understanding and acceptance that the small plastic vehicle is a representation of a tank and the frozen in time, plastic or resin figures around it are crew, so do we accept that painted cotton comming from the turret is a tank on fire.
I like the idea of using cotton to sim an engine on fire … having the cotton glued down to follow the cowling would definatly good.
I was think on this after my last post … one of the things about cotton … cotton balls specifically, is that the cotton has been treated, bleach, etc. Sometimes the treating process can screw with your paint applied to the cotton. The other thing that I forgot to mention was that if you can get ahold of natural cotton, before treatment, it has a yellow-y/ grey look to it. Pretty close to a light smoke, and should be much easier to color.
one way it could be done is with an orange or yellowish-orange grain of wheat buld for the fire and some how incorporate an old model railroad smoke generator into the scene.
Nice … I like it!!!
I look at it this way (for ALL dioramas)…They are basicly a snapshot-in-time, but in true 3D. Have you seen a photo of smoke and flame billowing out of a vehicle? Was it MOVING? No. So, why not model the same thing with a dio? Yes, it is static. No, it isn’t moving. Yes, it can be made realistic (my opinion there, as I can’t recall having seen one that was done, let alone realisticly).
So, with that in mind, why not try it? Find a photo o fthe kind of fire/smoke you’re looking for and try to duplicate that. I have a feeling that the effect would be wonderful, should one be ble to pull it off. (I would also suggest making SEVERAL practice attempts before commiting to the “actual” one.)
Everyone has an opinion, and this is mine, so do what you will with it. I’ve been wanting to try this very thing, but never seem to get around to it. Maybe I should start thi nking harder about actually BUILDING something that can be “burning”.
Michael
I went to the store today and bought a tank model that was on sell. I don’t even remember what it was … just a box with a long barrel and tracks. I brought it home, built it up, I even primed it. All in about 2hrs!
Then I took it outside, doused it, and set it on fire. Looked pretty realistic to me!?! I even threw a few cotton balls at it just to see if they helped. They did but just a little. However, I think that they would discourage such behavior at a show.
J/K … No models were harmed in the making of this post.
I agree w/ Mixeal. It’s YOUR model, build it to YOUR liking. All in all, no one’s going to run over to the table w/ a bucket to douse your build b/c you put cotton on it to sim fire. People get it. It’s there to SIMULATE…
However, I would HIGHLY encourage those that are interested to try the real burning model method. Let me know how that works out!?!
[BH] I bet you didn’t get pics either, did ya? [:-^]
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that was funny. Had to supress the laugh, as the wife was talking about something “serious”, and it would have been bad form to bust out laughing right then.
Michael
Nope, sure didn’t. I think I was too busy dancing around the “camp fire” with the 7 and 8 yr old kids from down the street.[(-D]
Glad that you got a kick out of it … good job of holding it in … and KUDOS for surfing the forum while having a “serious” conversation! That’s takes some concentration! [bow]
I’ll be sure and take some pictures “next time”. Anyone have a spare model lying around for demonstration purposes!?!
Hello, If it’s findable, get the September 2003 issue F.S.M. it has a very different way to simulate fire and smoke.
It’s on page 51, called “creative fire” You’ll need a small stereo transistor radio and a Seuthe smoke generator. I’ve seen it done once and it looks pretty good.
Gunners Mate
While everyone’s at it, any ideas how to make a fire that’s coming out from under a plane? I wanted to do a dio of that hellcat that crash-landed on a carrier and burst into flames. Then a crew-member rushed up and got the guy out of the pit. I believe he got the Medal of Honor. Any ideas on how I could pull that off? Thanks.
As far as simulated fire, check out the artifical silk flowers ar HobbyLobby or a similar craft store. The small orange and yellow ones or buds on the bigger ones look pretty convincing if you cut and shape them some. A little highlight painting helps too. They’re cheap enough for you to experiment with till you get what you want.
The trouble with modeling flames is that they are translucent and yellowish at the edge…all around. If you look at a fire from the north, the east and west edges will be yellow to translucent while the center will be darker and opaque. That would be easy enough to do by fading the colors as you neared the edge and would work in a 2 dimensional painting. Now if you look at the same flame from the east, the north and south will be translucent. You can’t effectively get translucence on all quadrents unless you were to somehow build the flame from the inside out in layers, much like dipping a candle, using a tinted clear medium.
The transiton line betweem flame and smole is the essence of ephemeral. So again, you would have to take something that is opaque, the smoke, and fade it to translucent in works from every viewing angle.
Since these are things we havve seen in reality so we know what it should look like. Getting a realistic effect in a model becomes much more difficult.
Frankly, I’ve pulled it off with cotton and judicious spray-painting… THe trick is to get past it not looking EXACTLY like fire because, let’s face it, only fire and smoke look like fire and smoke…
Anyway, I’ve done it in the past with cotton used as smoke & flame from a burning aircraft that was hung from the ceiling. I bought some cotton,batting, I think it’s called, and rolled it out into a kinda of a “sausage” shape, but still keeping it loose. I then used a combo of bright yellow and red at the “front” and fading it back into the trail, started spraying first black, then brown, then gray… I attached it to the damaged area of the engine, and then trailed it back into the ceiling a fair distance from the model, maybe about 3 feet… I saw a very similar technique used on a B-24 that was “airborne” in 1/72 Ploesti Raid diorama… (We’ve all seen the picture, I’m sure, of the Lib over the Ploest smokestacks…)
For armor, I think the best way to do it would be in a shadow box… You’ll never get away with it any other way if it’s a vehicle fire… Small, smoky campfires are one thing and can be done with a few wisps, but a burning AFV is gonna throw off tons of smoke & flame… So the shadow box is the way I’d suggest… In a shadow box, you can restrict the viewer’s angle, use forced perspective, background matt-paintings, and electric lighting from GOW bulbs and LEDs to simulate fire, along with the smoke being made from spun-glass “Angel Hair” and cotton… With a little imagination, you can even get the flames to “flicker”…
Best Smoke- Try a Railway shop. They make smoke generators for locomotives. Just turn it on for show or pictures. Although I have not tried it, it seems to be the most realistic effect.
Mark
Check this out.
There is a write up in Amazing Figure Modeler a few issues back on how it was done.
I have also seen a diorama of the Carrier Enterprise on fire using expanding foam.
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