Hey, Im working on an Omaha diorama, and what would Omaha be without mortars and bullets hitting the water? a lot more peaceful, thats what, but thats not what I want my diorama to look like, so here are my experiments in water effects, please give me some critisism and ideas.
My simulation of bullets hitting water:
the underwater trajectory/bubble path of bullets I know, hard to see, but looks good in real life:
Heres my imitation of a mortar hitting the water, made of tinfoil.toothpicks and plaster of paris(not done):
Finally, heres some rubble made of dried left over plaster, looks very realistic:
Thanks! im glad you all liked them. Heres my methods
Bullet splashes: Take the cotton off of cotton swabs (ear cleaner things) or any other source of whispy white cotton or such. Pull it apart into the general shape you want, and glue it to your base or whatever. Next, after the glue dries, spray in adhesive or even like a gloss finish or hairspray, just to make stuff stick to it. Than sprinkle on some sort of white powder, I used woodland scenics snow, then pray on more adhesive/gloss or whatever. let this dry and repeat until you get enough of a body top the bullet splash, and there go! very easy.
Underwater trajectory: As your resin water is drying, cover two pieces of wire in a little white glue or caulking, and again more of some sort of white powder, I used the snow again. Even silver glitter looks like little bubbles. Stick this in your resin as it dries, at the desired angle. Pull it out as your resin is very close to dry, or dry and bubbles will for, atleast with my resin.
Mortar explosion" I just crumpled tinfoil into the desired shape, stuck toothpicks in at odd angles, and covered with plaster of paris. Coated a couple times with spray on gloss, to harden even more. Im going to paint it like chur ned up water, add more gloss, clear/white caulking, and maybe more of the snow for a splash effect.
Rubble. With the left over plaster of paris from the mortar hit (above) I poured my plaster of Paris into a CD case and let it dry. When it dried, I broke it out and it crumble into nice rubble.
Hope some of this helped!! -Ian By the way Ill probably have some more water experiments soon, and then you can see them finished in my Omaha dio!
Hi Ian,
For a young bloke you are certainly making waves(bad pun[;)])!Seriously though mate,you are following one golden rule which many forget.Practice!!Doing tests and experimenting with different materials is important…especially with water,it’s not the easiest thing to fix up once it all is applied!!
I especially like the mortar and bullets hitting the water,the effects look very realistic.Keep up the good work and post some more updates of your dio as it unfolds.
Regards,
Shay[;)]
Hey, glad you guys liked them, and yes, I am doing lots of experimenting and trial and error, since resin for water is EXTREMELY unforgiving if you mess up with it on the final project. Im not exactly sure when I will start the diorama, Today my mail came, all of it was basically given to me by a very helpful and generous member on these forums, SteveM, cant thank him enough! Without him helping me out with some very low prices and donations of some old kits and figures, this diorama probably would have been too high budget for me. So what I recieved (everything in 1/35 scale: two LCVP’s, one LCM ( had no idea how large these landing crafts were in this scale), tons and tons, literally hundreds of US figure parts, arms, legs, torsos, gear, weapons etc…,Czech hedgehog barricades, and tons o stuff not suitable for Omaha beach; bombed out buildings and brick wall and even more german figures and parts than parts for americans, which in other words means an insane amount. So, Its going to take a while to get some stuff constructed so I can lay it out for planning on the diorama, but I will keep you updated! Thanks again to SteveM!
Thanks aussie! glad you likd, it, I have lots of mess ups that I did before these tests came out okay. Also, after comparing that foundation for my mortar explosion to the hull of my LCM-3, Im going to have to make it much, much larger. It looks like the splash from a rock compared to the landing craft, and I want it to be more of a big plume of water shooting into the air.
–EDIT-- does anybody know how to make that strip of wet darker sand just beyond the waves, so it looks like their washing up and leaving some water, not just sitting still?
