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Badder

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Everything posted by Badder

  1. Calling this section 'Marginal' might get you lynched, mate. LOL But thanks. 70k is incredible really, considering I've not done much work on it for a couple of years other than mess around with the tree and do a bit of adding moss around the building. I am close to finishing the tree though, with just the main bulk of the foliage to be added. Once that's done I'll return to my Pit Stop dio and leave this one to sit for a while. The diorama base is terribly dusty though. I may pop back and do a 'guide to vacuuming and cleaning a dust-covered diorama!' lol. Keep safe my friend, Rearguards, Badder
  2. After further experiments, I've finally settled on a method for adding foliage to the tree. The static leaf applicator DOES work, to some extent, but isn't perfect, mostly because I've been using it to apply leaves to large, already-made, bunches of fishing line twigs. It would work much better on individual lenghts of line, but then that would make the construction of the bunches extremely difficult. It would also be very time consuming, what with there being many thousands of lengths of line. The main problem is not the method itself, after all, the majority of the leaves DO 'stand up', the issue is about the 'reality' of numbers. The number of leaves required to get a truly realistic effect on such a large tree, is mindboggling, just as in real life trees. We're talking tens, if not hundreds of thousands. It will never look truly realistic unless I applied tens, or hundreds of thousands of leaves. I thought I could get away with only leafing the outer parts of the tree, but then that would mean having to hide the 'empty' interior, which would look naked and stupid, otherwise, and then I'd be back to square one! Nevertheless, I did spend several hours punchin out hundreds of tiny 1.5mm 'oak-leaves' and applying them to a 'branch' of the tree which had around 8 bundles of fishing line twigs on it, The result was good, but even when doubling up the card and punching out 36 leaves per press of the punch, it would mean hours and hours and hours and hours of punching. Still, as I have said previously, it would be viable for making bushes. In the end I decided to revert back to the original method, with herb sprinkle. So, with all that faffing about experimenting over, I'm now cracking on with adding the foliage, inserting 'herbed-up' bunches of twigs into the tree. Here they are just poked in and not fixed in place. I will have to make some more as the tree is 50 percent larger in surface area than the original. Once I've made enough to leaf the tree I will pull them all out, finish off the trunks and boughs with more moss/lichen and bark effects and colourings, then fix the foliage in place and then give the leaves raking sprays with various shades of dark green.... this will be a conifer. How many times have I changed my mind on this? LOL. TFL Badder
  3. Only just noticed, but some days ago, my Ever Evolvin' Dio WIP surpassed 70,000 views. At least 50k of those were me I suspect lol.

  4. Have a look at this. They set off explosives in a 'street'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0v2Uq8z7aI
  5. Hi. Funnily enough, I don't think the 'central piece of the window frame' needs to be removed. If the lintel and the roof above it fell at the same time, it COULD have all fallen inwards, or outwards, missing the window completely. Or perhaps the roof collapsed first, leaving the lintel in place, protecting the window. Then later, in wind, or whatever, the lintel fell, exposing the window, and wind took off the windows, leaving the central piece? As I said, odd things DO happen. I once saw a documentary about WWII bombs, where they had a real terraced street and set off explosives equivalent to the different bombs used by the Nazis. They set off explosions of from incendiary bombs, up through HE bombs, up to 500lb bombs and then even the equivalent of a V2. From the beginning, there were some milk bottles on a doorstep of one of the houses, and one survived all the smaller bombs and didn't shatter until the 500lb bomb went off. I am in the middle of making a ruined farmhouse, and I will definitely be leaving a few 'odd-looking' bits, so long as the odd bits can be explained by physics. Rearguards, Badder
  6. Hi Rod, Yes, paint the figures! LOL. Seriously though, excellent work. The only suggestion I have for you is to add some height, something much taller than the tank and fountain. They are both the same height and it makes the vignette look 'flat'. An olive or palm tree, a telegraph pole, flag pole, or corner of a high wall, or something? Rearguards, Badder
  7. Hi, That's a stunning Jagdpanther, and it's already looking to be a stunning diorama/vignette. The finished thing is going to look.....er.... stunning. One tip, colouring individual cobbles would have been far less tedious had you used some cobble-sized stencils, with an AB, or brush. And whilst on the subject of cobbles, if this were my dio, I'd polish them up, if not all of them, those which would have been polished up over the decades/centuries by shod horses, carts, hobnail boots, and more recently, Jagdpanthers. Your choice of materials looks to be very wise, and I can offer no advice there. If I may suggest one thing, and that's to be observant of the laws of physics and building construction. I know some very odd things can happen during explosions and building collapses etc, but if too many 'odd' things happen, it can look..... er..... odd. I am being fussy, but the half-collapsed 1st floor window on the right doesn't look right to me. There'd be a stone lintel over the window which would probably have fallen out in one piece, rather than snap in half with one half still embedded in the wall, and so there'd be nothing structural left overhanging the window aperture at all. And on that note, there doesn't appear to be any lintel at all over the adjacent window, just bricks. If neither window had a lintel this would explain why they collapsed as they have, but then the builder should have been shot for incompetence. (not you, the 'fictional builder', he should know better) LOL. Aside from that, it's all looking good. Rearguards, Badder
  8. LOL This time it's not the herbs that are the problem. It's the adhesive, or rather the aerosol can it comes in. Spraying it on isn't a good idea. I should have decanted it into a container and brushed it on exactly where I wanted it. That's what I'm going to do next time.
  9. Right. I carried on adding fishing line twigs to the tree until I was happy with the density, and then tackled the thorny issue of the trunk. The two main boughs sprout from the trunk at around 15ft, which is too high, so it would mean having to add branches lower down. Which would be fine IF I could be bothered. Which I couldn't. Instead I decided to decrease the height of the trunk. By binning it and making a new one. Or maybe not. I thought of an alternative which was to have the trunk split in two almost immediately, or that the tree is actually two trees, joined at the hip. I may stick with that idea, or I might just add a very short extension, making the trunk just 8ft tall. Whatever, I had to adjust the angle of the boughs/trunks, with the main one now standing vertical, The other bough was also made more upright, and I filed the touching sides of each bough so that they would be more obviously melded together rather than remain separate. With that done, I gave the tree a spray with Red Earth acrylic ink. A wash with black acrylic ink followed, applied by brush. This was the first time I've used my Evolution CR plus in well over a year, as I've been without a compressor until a month ago. My trusted 25yr old 6 litre Simair blew a hole in its tank and it took me a while to find a suitable replacement, the Sparmax 620x, which whilst a bit noisier than I had expected, seems so far to be excellent. (Touch wood) I then made a boo-boo, impatience, being the cause. What I SHOULD have done was carry on making more twigs to fill in some of the gaps in the tree, whilst leaving a lot of open spaces THEN think about adding the foliage. What I actually did was give the twigs a spray with adhesive and sprinkle herbs over them. Which of course, looked rubbish and glued a lot of the twigs together. And a lot of herbs stuck to branches, boughs and the trunk. Still, not all was a disaster, because the herbs on the branches and boughs/trunk look like ivy, or moss etc. It got there accidentally, but I WAS intending to add it deliberately before the foliage goes on proper. Meanwhile, gluing a lot of the twigs together may actually be beneficial, because I've done the same before, with the excessive use of CA. The twigs can be pulled apart, and in so doing, what was once two twigs, then looks like 1 twig split in two. I had the idea to do this before: gluing 4 or 5 pieces of line together to form a very thin branch, then pulling individual bits of line away to one side to make very small twigs. First though, I had to give the tree a soak in hot water to wash off the herbs and at least SOME of the adhesive. It's blooming strong stuff, and even after a soaking the fishing line remained sticky. So, that's the stage I'm at now; breaking up some of the glued fishing line twigs, whilst leaving others stuck together. I will then try splitting the latter up to form fishing line branches with fishing line twigs sprouting off of them.The tree as it stands now. At the very least there will be a root system added to the base, and potentially a short length of trunk. Here you can see the 'ivy/moss', the remains of the herb sprinkle. Also note the white, which is the remains of the spray adhesive. There are many clumps of line (purple) which are still stuck together, but also some which are white because they've got more adhesive on. The 'look' isn't actually bad, and I COULD make this a winter deciduous tree? Who knows? I don't. LOL So, my plan for now is to carry on doing what I'm doing and build a leafless tree. If it looks realistic without any leaves, I'm going to leave it as and call it finished. If it doesn't look realistic, it will get leaves. TFL Badder
  10. Hi John, That was a real LOL I gave you BTW. Thanks for dropping by. I can see what happened. Seeing the tree being worked on, you must have thought you'd gone back in time. Rearguards, Badder
  11. Hi Phil, Blimey! I thought my dio was big! And I don't envy you having to scribe all those lines, no matter how compliant the material! Just doing a 4x4 inch wall of 1/35th brickwork would do my head in! Great work. Rearguards, Badder
  12. Hi Nick, No need to 'tread wary' with me. You can say whatever the heck you like lol. I welcome savage criticism, but as far as I can recall I've only ever received the odd 'polite suggestion'. I guess that unless we make a list of those who like savage criticism and memorise it, it's best to play safe and be polite to everyone. lol But that's by-the-by because, try as I mightm I can't find anything in your dio to 'rip into' lol. As for 'smaller scales', 1/35th is my limit for AFV military models. I started out on the hobby in about 1978/9 with Tamiya Military Miniatures and that's always been my preferred area of work. I have NOT been tempted by their 1/48th scale at all. I did once build their Prince of Wales 1/350th, but ruined that when it came to painting it. I had a 2nd hand Aztec airbrush which just wasn't up to the job and it ended up in the bin. I did once build Tamiya's Schumacher Ferrari F2001, (being a huge Schumacher fan) added engine wiring harness, etc and had it painted/decalled-up beautifully, and absolutely loved building that. Unfortunately, I kept the separate assemblies in a box as I was going through a messy divorce, moving home several times and in the process it was lost. Grrrrrr! So, with my interest in F1 and motor-racing-in-general harking back to the days of Hunt, Lauda, Andretti, Cheever, I was bound to come see your work at some point! Ah! Yes, one criticism then! I'd love to see your cars on plinths rather than in dios! lol. Really, just joking. Amazing work. Rearguards, Badder
  13. Hi Pete, You're right in that I did wonder. The internal structure of the original tree was just too messy to 'recycle' though. I never intended it to be 'opened up' to view. So the top part of the tree is basically all brand new, except for the odd real branch, one of which has the original fishing line 'twigs' on it. The rest of the real wood, and fishing line 'twigs' are all brand new. Each of the 'twig' bundles contains 26 twigs, each about 1.75 inches in length, =45 inches =1.14 metres. I've made 120 bundles of twigs so far = 136 metres of line! And I've still more twigs to make. The spool contained 230m of line so I should have enough to complete the tree, JUST. I'm still having issues with the original trunk, sorry, Triffid, and can't yet decide whether to use it and make a very tall tree, or replace it with a thinner one and make a shorter tree. I suspect I'm going to go for the latter. Even in the shorter form, it will still be as tall, or slightly taller than the original. Meanwhile, all of the fishing line from the original tree will be re-used, either to make another tree, or bushes, or both. Rearguards, Badder
  14. Hi Nick, Funnily enough 'All sorts of great work going on' is a comment which appeared word for word on my YouTube video on 'how to make a tiled roof'. And in that 15 mins or so vid, 10 minutes consists of nothing but close-up shots of a piece of graph paper. There are some strange people about. lol. But here, the length of this thread can hardly fail to contain anything but 'lots of work'. Whether it's 'great work' is debatable lol. But thanks! I think you're a level or two up from me though! TC Rearguards, Badder Hi Steve, Now you're just quoting random stuff lol. If I had pearls, real or metaphorical, I'd sell them. Hope all is good in your universe. TC Badder
  15. Hi all, You know me: I bet he changes things yet again. Yes. Lol. As I continued to build up the tree pictured above, I realised it was all going 'pear shaped', which would have been fine if it were supposed to be a pear tree, but it isn't. The trunk was way too thick for the height of the tree vs where the boughs and branches were sprouting from. It would have to have been a pollarded tree, which I didn't want. So my first thought was to increase the height in scale with the trunk, and it ended up 2ft tall. Which, whilst not impossible, would seriously restrict any future decision to 'case' the diorama. So, either scrap the trunk, or find some alternative 'silhouette' for the tree. For now, I've plumped on the latter, with a trunk which splits in two at a height of around 5 inches and the tree's total height being around 18 inches. Unlike the original tree, I'm building this one from the top down, as, being a much larger and 'open' tree, demands that the upper branches and twigs are arranged more realistically. Previously, I'd relied on the foliage to hide a lot of the 'bad' branch structure. All the while then, I've been doing a lot of 'dry-fitting' to check the branches and the tree's silhouette. I'm getting there. I just have a few of the upper-side branches to sort out. After that things should get MUCH easier, with all of the rest of the branches angling towards the horizontal. When it comes to adding foliage I will give the 'tin-foil and static applicator' a go on a test piece and see if that's viable. If that doesn't work I'm going to go for either a herb or paper-punch leafs scatter. Still intrigued by the 'cone' I am going to try adding scatter to individual bunches of fishing line by encircling them with the cone. I've also had the idea to splay the bunches of fishing line twigs out FULLY by using putty, then adding adhesive, then adding sprinkle. That should stop individual 'twigs' clumping together...............But that's for later. Here's where I'm at right now: The twine wrapped around the boughs is just there to hold the two together while the CA cures. TFL Badder
  16. Ow do Ozzy? Problem................... The funky winter camo and truly superb snow effects have one drawback in that they make the StuG hard to see! lol. Seriously though, you've done a fantastic job. I had to turn the heating on because my hands and feet were getting cold. Oh and the tree deserves a big mention too. It's up there with the very best model pine trees. TC Rearguards, Badder
  17. Hi Stickframe, I must apologise for not having had a look at what you've been doing from the start. It's my own loss. And I am literally lost for words. This is an incredible display of engineering, and artistry. I, for one, can forgive you the cock-up with the roll-up doors. I've lost count of how many 'alterations' I've had to make to my current building and it's nowhere near as complicated as yours! I'm also amazed at how quickly you've progressed. The only small piece of comfort I can take from this is that you're working in 1/20th scale. If this were 1/35th I would genuinely bin my 2 dioramas, even before they are finished. lol. Rearguards, Badder
  18. Using a static grass applicator and tin foil leaves worked. I made a long deep paper trough to place the tin foil leaves in, ran CA glue along a length of fishing line then held it over the leaves before bringing the applicator sieve over the top. The leaves jumped about and many of those which hit the line stuck in place, in the 'standing' position. However, a lot of the leaves hit the glue and didn't stick, but then picked up glue, fell back down and stuck to the paper trough. It then got messy and a new trough had to be made. The next experiment will be to see if I can use the same method to add leaves to a 'clump' of twigs. I think I'll need to use a cone-shaped container to contain the leaves and place the 'clump' inside. Stay tuned. Rearguards, Badder
  19. Things in the 'twig and branch' department were halted for a while, as I experimented with various ways of adding foliage. I had hoped that a static-grass applicator could somehow be used to 'sow' the tree with leaves, but I still haven't managed to get it to work. I did think that the wire-cored twine in the branches would help, but it appears not to be the case. I also experimented with laying the fishing line on a steel ruler, sprinkling it with paper leaves, connecting the applicator clip to the ruler and passing the sieve over the top to get the leaves to stand upright, but that didn't work either. I'm sure there must be a way to do it. If anyone has any ideas please let me know? Work has resumed on the tree itself. 'Bundles' of fishing line are often splayed out into a fan formation, but sometimes a bundle will be split in two where it connects to the end of the branch. A bundle though, consists of 20 strands of line. There are 74 bundles so far. meaning that there are 1,480 separate fishing line 'twigs'. I reckon this lot here is about 1/3rd of what will be needed. I don't fancy gluing leaves separately to any of them, let alone 4,500 of them! lol. So, it's going to have to be the old 'spray and scatter' method again. I've just tried making the leaves using a paper punch and tin foil. That absolutely does make the leaves jump about, but they don't stand upright like static grass does. I will try adding adhesive to a fishing line twig and placing it amongst the leaping leaves. Maybe SOME will stick to it in the 'standing up' position. TFL Badder
  20. It certainly did...................... or possibly a Triffid. Shortly after that photo was taken it ended up just being an upright log.
  21. OFF WITH IT'S HEAD, AND ARMS AND EVERYTHING REALLY! After making a few replacement branch and twig structures - the kind of thing you can do most of whilst watching a film: really... .winding fishing line around your fingers, trapping it with twine, applying a bit of CA and then snipping the loops, isn't hard. A blind person could do it - I decided to forgo the 'frazzling the ends of the fishing line' bit. Frazzling the ends of the fishing line was an idea I came up with when I was dabbing the fishing line in herbs, as it broadens the surface area of the 'clump' and gives thicker foliage, which is what I wanted at the time. This time, I don't. So the line is staying straight and I think I have an idea as to how I'm going to apply the leaves. Whatever, I've been making loads of loops at the ends of pieces of twine, and have then joined loads of those up to make 'branch and twig' assemblies. When I've enough of these they will be affixed to the real branches and boughs of the tree armature. I had some suitable bits of branch/twig in the 'log basket' which I gathered last autumn and 'fired' in the microwave. Those are currently being trimmed to fit the tree. All of the old clumps of foliage will be re-used. The tree, truncated. lol And some new bits of 'bough' Two new 'branch and twig' assemblies. I will need about 10 in total. They only take 10 mins each to make. The hardest bit is getting the arrangement right: lots of test-fitting, snipping and re-test-fitting of branches etc. At this point I am considering a test-run for adding the foliage............... I have been experimenting with using paper leaves and a static-grass applicator. So far I haven't been able to get it to work in the way I want, but I'm hopeful. TFL Badder
  22. It should be fairly obvious that I'm not one of those people who keeps their mistakes, mishaps and silly decisions a secret. No one is perfect, especially we modellers, and things do 'go wrong'. So, it's confession time. LOL. This tree had been sitting on a shelf on the book case for a couple of years, not looking how I wanted it to look. So I thinned it out. But there was a reason for it looking the way it did, and that was mostly to hide the 'not-so-good' internal structure of the tree. In removing the Dil and thinning the tree out, it exposed that bad structure, which I had forgotten about over the years. So, I've attempted to improve it. Cutting the tree in half was a good idea in that it opened up my options with regards to restructuring, but it's still been rather difficult. In fact, I've capitulated. Or rather, I've given up on trying to alter, or add to what's already there. But it's not a complete disaster. I have the materials, I have the trunk of the tree and lots of indestructible clumps of foliage. I CAN START AGAIN! So, the tree is going to get completely dismantled and rebuilt. It shouldn't take long. In fact it will be done within a day or two. TFL Badder
  23. Excellent work Moondrome. The road is looking great, as are the tank, figures, building, fence, and shelter. The only thing letting it down is the tree. Did you happen to post photos of the tree on FB earlier this week, because I saw some like yours that were pretty much identical? Trees, or at least, realistic ones, are quite hard to make, but there are 'tried and tested' methods out there that produce good results using materials that you already seem to have. May I suggest you get rid of yours and start again, after having watched some vids on the internet? There are literally thousands of them. Because at the end of the day a poor tree stands out like a sore thumb and can ruin a diorama. I'd prefer to see no tree than a poor one. Yours isn't as bad as many I've seen and doesn't 'ruin' the diorama as such, but a better one would compliment the rest of your diorama, which is far more realistic. It's almost as if the tree was built by someone else. Rearguards, Badder
  24. Hi Pete, Yes, having thought about it that will be my next video. I do need to make some out-buildings for this one. I was planning on using the moulds I already have, but I could always make moulds of MiniArt's Polish City Building which was shown in the last video. I'll make a mould of that side wall I used to demonstrate how to remove parts from the backing sheet properly. i.e. NOT how most people do it.......... yes, I'm plugging the vid lol, which can be found via the link at the bottom of this post! Rearguards, Badder
  25. I left the top half of the tree detached so that it would be easier to sprinkle herbs on the bottom half. Previously I gave the tree sprays of dilute PVA using an old trigger-action window cleaner bottle, this time I'm using an aerosol glue used for picture and photo-mounting. It's pretty vicious stuff and once dry will produce a really strong bond. Unfortunately, it's also a bit 'rubbery' and has glued many of the individual 'twigs' of fishing line together. Now worries though. I shall pull those clumps apart once fully dry. To do it now would mean much handling and this would crush the herbs into flat mats. So, patience is required! In retrospect ,I should perhaps have sprayed the twigs with the glue, then separated any clumps before they dried. Then the second coat of glue wouldn't have caused the twigs to clump together and THEN I could have applied the herbs. Oh well. The effect as the two halves of tree sit on a radiator isn't bad to be fair, and it's certainly better than the original. Again, I've learned something and my NEXT tree, a pine tree, WILL be a corker! lol TFL Badder
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