AMMO Hart's Tongue & Dry Fern Foliage Sheets

[Mike]

Hart's Tongue & Dry Fern Foliage Sheets
1:48, 1:35, 1:32 AMMO

These two boxes of pre-cut paper plants are part of a collaboration between Model Scene and Mig Jiminez's AMMO to bring their products to a wider audience. Creating a realistic looking backdrop involves adding various types of vegetation, otherwise you run the risk of your diorama looking artificial and too structured. Adding in different plants will go a long way to addressing this concern if they are done realistically.

Each set arrives in a shallow clamshell box, with two sheets of extremely thin coloured paper inside, one which the patterns for the plants have been laser cut so that they are just barely attached to the backing. They are suitable for use in a variety of scales, but anything below 1:48 would begin to look like your diorama was set in the Land That Time Forgot. There are no instructions with the package, but if you aim for the cover picture as your goal, it's not rocket science to get them posed and ready for action.

Hart's Tongue (A.MIG-8455)
The Hart's Tongue had three sheets, which I can imagine is easy to do given the thickness of the paper, with each sheet holding six arrangements of six leaves each as the basis of a clump. A few sections of paper need to be cut away to release the arrangement, and once free it is incredibly susceptible to draughts and even your exhalations. For my test picture, I grabbed each leaf in turn with a tweezer, and applied light pressure with my fingertip to the free edge to give the leaf a v-groove, then arranged and distorted the tips to mimic the effects of gravity and passing people/animals. There is a pale green centreline "cut into" the middle of each leaf, but with some very careful brushwork, you could add flecks and variegation as per the box lid. Adding more bunches of leaved would improve the look, but how you arrange your shrubbery is up to you.

Dry Fern (A.MIG-8457)
The two sheets of fern material are a red brown shade as you'd expect, and each sheet contains around 30 separate pieces of fern of varying sizes, shapes and density of leaves. They are tricky to cut free without tearing, but once out, holding the "stem" between thumb and forefinger while you tousle the loose leaves gives a good effect, although I think I may have squashed mine whilst handling them, looking back at the photos. Again, you could vary the tone by airbrushing parts very lightly, and a nice tangle will give a more realistic effect of the decaying ferns.

Conclusion
The detail is super on these handy little plants, and with some care and careful application they will add a spot of colour and visual interest to any diorama, but take care to place them only in a suitable environment where they occur naturally, or they could look silly. Best not handled while you have a blocked nose or hayfever!

Review sample courtesy of