Hi, folks![:)]
In the other forums, the “do you remember your first?” question has come up many times, and the answers have always been interesting. I don’t recall seeing that Q here.
So, what was your very first attempt at creating a diorama?
Did you start small, or did you dive right in on a big project?
My very first attempt at a diorama was WAY too ambitious, but I remember I had a great time trying it and I learned a lot. I must’ve been 10 or 11 years old.
There was absolutely nothing original about it: I tried to recreate Shep Paine’s Brummbar diorama from the 1/32 Monogram armor series in the '70’s. Those diorama tip sheets were great, weren’t they? I just loved that scene with the Brummbar rolling through the ruins of an old house.
I think I used plaster for the ground, and scrap plywood from dad’s workbench to make the building. Here’s the best thing: my nextdoor neighbor’s dad was an avid RC flier, so he supplied me with a buch of crunched balsa wings and fuselage bits that I turned into the destroyed 2nd story floor and roof.
Man, I had such a great time building that!
I still have the Brummbar, but I have no idea what happened to that diorama. I suppose it didn’t survive one of the many moves we made as a military family. Ah well, the fond memories live on![:)]
Mine was pretty recent. It was also pretty simple. It was a Bradley sitting in the desert. The only things on it was rocks,sand, and some dead trees. I was just glad to have done something beyond just the model. I think I did better on my last one with a jeep. I can say though if it were not for this forum then I would have never had done either one, I would still be doing cars and not even getting into detail very much with them.
I had my first just a couple of months ago. I actually posted it here previously. It was just a test dio since I used recycled materials for it. I am now recreating it after learning a lot of things here in the forum.
Wow J-hulk, I just had a flash back that about took me off my feet. I did Monograms Sherman tank with the rocket launcher on the top. I marveled at the diorama of the Screamin MiMi and knocked off Shep Paines idea for that one. You’re right those tip sheets were great and back then I thought that Shep Paine was the center of the universe. It too was a little too ambitous for me, but I learned alot from that endeavor.
The first real dio I did was not models, per say, but miniatures. A friend and I found out about a painting contest in our town, so we decided to do something truly origional: a medieval strip club, complete with brothel, dancing poles, bar, patrons, everything. It was the only dio I have ever seen that you had to be 18 just to be able to see it. Won 1st place, too.
Mine was a little base with Airfix’s Me-163 Komet on the tarmac, a couple of crew members around and a Flak ‘tower’ in a corner. Did not look too bad (I’ve done worse since!). I also got a couple of prizes for this, in the junior classes, as i was only 13.
I only got the idea of creating a ‘base’ after I saw a number of people doing that at that club I was member of.
Nowadays, I put everything on a base (not necessarily a full blown diorama though!), as it saves on repairs following transport and people touching the actual model at shows…
Mine is a snowy field with a dead german and so far maybe some GI’s checking out the track for possible goodies only to find more germans in better shape that their conterpart? I have it on ron USMC’s site on the upload section, any input would be great?
My first was a big one; Dragons Sherman Firefly, 5 Canadian Infantry, a German sniper, three buildings from Custom Dioramics, and
resin cobblestone. Turn out pretty good too.
My first was also swiped directly from Shep Paine’s pamphlet of the B-24 getting the wild paint job for the formation craft. The only originality was I painted the wacky part differently. Mine was yellow with flames. Perhaps at 14, I couldn’t tell a WW2 bomber from a dragster. It was fun and it taught me a great deal, starting with planning where to display it before building it. A 1:48 B-24 is too big for most bookshelves. A dio for Panda’s 1:32 B-17? Perhaps an outbuilding. A big one! Now I’m working on the Bismarck as she appears today in a shadow box. Mr. 18thscalemilitary, I MUST see a diorama 52 years in the making. Please post pics.
My first one was inspired by an academy M113 that my friend Eric asked me to build. Halfway through the build I was immpressed by Vietnam dio that I had seen on another website and I wanted to see if I could do something simular.
With a spare base,scratchbuilt palm tree and some foliage my little dio came together. I posted it on Ron’s gallery and had some really good feedback!
My next dio will be another Vietnam scene involving hueys! I’ll most likely end up biting off more than I can chew-but hey, I’ll have lots of fun building it!
My first was an old Matchbox 1/72 109E, in the classic Battle of Britain pose, ie, wheels up, prop bent, belly down, on a typical shingle beach. No prizes for originality, but it covered the fact that i’d lost the wheels! It was tiny, no more that 6 inches square.
My first diorama was a to scale battle of Oustlee, (Civil War) i spend nearly two years just hand painting the figures. the size wa a simple 8 foot X 8 foot sq. The battlefield not not that hard to do. Wife was glad when i finished it so we could have our dining room back.
Some interesting stories here!
It seems ol’ Shep has influenced many of us.
After starting this topic, I realized I had attempted a “diorama” earlier than the Brumbarr I mentioned in the first post.
I had taken a low, flat cardboard box, filled it with loose dirt from the backyard (undoubtedly filled with nematodes and night crawlers!), tossed in a few blocks of white styrofoam for buildings (windows and doors drawn on with a magic marker), and displayed a Revell 1/? scale T-34 in combat alongside Monogram’s 1/35 scale halftrack going against a 1/48 scale Bandai Tiger II , all supported by a mix of assorted scale figures. I was but a wee lad then!
I remember I had to toss it out when moisture in the soil sogged the cardboard box!
Anybody else create one of these half-diorama, half-playset things?
my first diorama used a shoebox, with extruded foam ‘rocks’ and pine trees made from popsicle stix and paper cones for the ‘landscape’ and three plastic dinosaurs (i guess u could consider them as armored vehicles in a way) as the figures, with a piece of paper curving up behind the scenery as a cyclorama type thing. (hey, i was only 8 years old then)… i still have it on a shelf behind the modeling bench in the basement, and whenever i get a bit depressed about my modeling skills (or lack of them) i can look back and remember where i started from. [;)]
frosty[:)]
Compared to some of the results seen here, my first foray into dioramas was dismal, at best. It was a scratch-built shoebox diorama in fourth grade that illustrated the building of the railroad by Chinese immigrants. The two or three figures were made of clay and the train was a small, plastic toy.
The highlight of the scene was the greenery, i.e. real twigs, grass, and shrubs. I also glued dirt onto the base to recreate sand and gravel.
It got me a decent grade, of course, but WAY too much aggravation and frustration went into the project. As an educator myself, I now appreciate NOT forcing creativity like that upon students-- at least not with such a short deadline. Given enough time, it could have been a lot better…
Fortunately, subsequent attempts have yielded MUCH better results.
My first was a MG-42 w/crew and I only did it because I wanted to try somethings out before I did a larger project.
It was fairly small, just the MG and its crew on Celluclay ground work made to look as if they dug out a fox hole. It had sticks for trees, small rocks for boulders, small roots for scrub brush, even took a stick and splintered the side to make look as if it took a shell hit.
I just got one of those Brummbars from ebay. I was looking through the kit and found that great set of directions. ( it gives tips on weathering, figure painting & dioramas.)
I scanned the directions to do some sort of post - to compare them to todays. If they sent directions like these, it would save alot of posts in this forum.
That is too weird. Here they are. (Sorry no pictures of Sherm or Bill on this one)
