Here is my first attempt at making a diorama. I wanted to first say that this turned out to be much bigger than I expected and took a lot more work than I thought! 1/35 is no joke and I will probably do 1/72 dioramas in the future for the sake of my attention span, money, and space.
I built this model with my Emhar 1/35 Mark.IV and men from Tamiya’s and Masterbox’s WW1 kits. I built the trenches out of wooden coffee stirrers and the base is made of regular sytrofoam and some plywood. The earth is made from water, plaster, and sawdust. I then painted the base with 50 cent craft store paint and a bit of future. The tree is simply a branch I harvested from a dead tree.
I plan on presenting this build at IPMS Flight 19’s Modelfest '20 down here in Florida. I know there are mistakes in it, and I know it can be better, but I think I did a decent job.
Asside from the build, I wanted to that you all for your advice and help here. I feel that from my first build, I went a long way and now I’m knee deep into scale modeling with my local IPMS chapter.
Very nice first dio. I would urge you to consider to sticking to 35th. They don’t need to be as big as that and there is a lot more variety in kits and accessories.
That came out well. Next dio you build, start by building a scale model of it quick and dirty with scrap. That reaslly helps to get the composition right.
Since you are taking it to a show, some comments seem reasonable. The tank seems out of place. In it’s position, it would have had to back up into it, which seems odd. And it would cave in the wall of the trench.
Try integrating the figures into the landscape more. It all looks like wet mud, which is good, so splash it on your guys. Dig them into the surface when it’s still wet.
And make sure the guy with his Lewis gun doesn’t kill his officer.
First off for being the first diorama it came out well.
I’ll piggyback of GMorrisons comment and add a few more. The soldiers should have gasmask haversack carriers. You really didn’t want to at the front without it if a gas attack came. If you look at photos of British soldiers at the front during WWI usually all of them have one around their neck or nearby when at the front.
The other thing that sticks out to me are the sandbags they look way too clean. You’d want them to match the environment. Just think the soldiers going over the top what are they doing going to do? Step on them and get mud on them.
Keep at it you have talent. I’d just say look at a lot of photos during the time period you are portraying to get a good idea how the diorama should look.
For your first diorama, it came out decent. You learned an invaluable lesson in that IPMS. But now you know what to expect. I immediately noticed the “too” clean sandbags, although your groundwork is muddy enough. Don’t be discouraged; you did pretty good.
