Hello, All! Christopher is my name and ‘dunniteowl’ is my handle. I am going to be 66 in October and since I was around 7 years old, I’ve been building model cars, ships, armor, planes, figures and such. I entered my first model contest at age 10 with a Japanese Zero that got 3rd place at my local school. (I felt pretty good about that, as a 4th grader I placed ahead of many other entries by 6th graders).
That said, what really appealed to me was building dioramas. I’ve been a builder on a low or no budget pretty much all my life and so scratch building my diorama scenery and terrain was basically looking around at what most folks would call ‘trash’ to make stuff.
Later on, I got very interested in Dungeons and Dragons and while I loved painting miniatures, I decided that designing my own game world was of more interest than playing. This also meant I needed monsters, castles, townsfolk and such that was on the order of building a giant model train setting.
Along the way, there were stops, though none of a great length and I was always improving on my techniques. Then, around 1995, I pretty much had a full stop on my model making, scene building activity. You know how it is, life sort of intruded and I got sent along different paths.
Now, since I’ve officially retired a few years back and have most of my obligatory debts taken care of, I decided I can start getting back into the hobby. This path comes at a time when I am just starting to think I can ‘afford’ to start building again and I look around and say, “OMG it’s so expensive, more so than I remember!”
So, I guess I’ll still be on a low to no budget journey. LOL.
As a younger man, I had a subscription to FSM the magazine. I used it for inspiration and to learn new things from much more experienced modelers. This forum is my ‘subscription’ to access the minds of much better and more experienced minds of modelers for more inspiration and techniques.
With all my scratch building of things, I am also hopeful that I might, at some point, provide others of you with a serious desire to make stuff yourself for dioramas some techniques, tips and tricks to create a scene worthy of the models you build.
I do mostly (or did) 1/72nd scale diorama scenes and 1/35th small scenes and none of it was historically accurate. Think adult level playing with toy soldiers for the most part and using my imagination to create a battle scene I thought would look cool. 
Additionally, I am primarily interested in doing fantasy and science fiction level dioramas for things that spring from my mind. As to doing something historically accurate, I think I am going to have to reach a point of ease where I can say I ‘have a stash.’ I’ve been out of this thing for nearly or slightly over 30 years and my previous ‘stash’ is now long gone, the victim of moving often and having things ruined in weather events.
I’m pretty much starting over at this point and am looking forward to squeezing knowledge from the rest of you as I get back into a hobby that I truly enjoy and have done for most of my entire life.
Thanks for having me!
