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Ever evolvin dio. ft. 'THE INDESTRUCTIBLE TREE' as ft. on youtube.


Badder

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4 hours ago, Major_Error said:

But guess what, @Badder;

You have given us a lot of good time too!

Lots of good ideas, lot of good pictures, lot of help, lot of tips etc etc etc.

 

I will also give you a "big hand" for the work you have done and for sharing this and the thoughts with all of us "out here in the wild"!

 

8-)

Thanks for that. Most appreciated.

It was always my intention to show everything in detail, including mistakes, re-thinking of things and evolution. I didn't know if people would like all that detail, but I figured it's what I MYSELF would like to see if I were visiting a diorma WIP. So it has been a pleasure to have had 'regulars' like yourself to keep me going. Rest assured this diorama will get finished.

 

Stay safe.

Rearguards,

Badder

3 hours ago, FrancisGL said:

Hi Badder,

Now that I only see "what others do", it is a good time to take a look at the Dioramas section, too complex for me and laborious, although together with the figures, one of the works in modeling most respected and envied by me .

The last thing you see in the photos, it looks great, the vegetation chosen and shown, it looks very real and beautiful, I would say that it is very well integrated into the walls.
If you ever finish it, I have to see it, and I hope you will take photos of all "its angles" and details.

Take care and I hope you had a pleasant birthday at least.
Cheers mate
Francis.👍

Hi Francis, I hope you and yours are well?

 

Yes, I am very pleased with how the mosses are holding up. If I hadn't soaked them in Glycerin, they'd be crumbling and turning to dust at every touch. For now they remain soft and bendy and fresh.

As I said to Major above, this diorama WILL get finished. It may even get finished sooner rather than later. And believe me, there will be shed loads of photos from every conceivable angle when it is!

 

Thanks for the Birthday wishes, I will use my time machine to go back and thank you on the day. 😆 Seriously though, thanks it was a nice chilled day.

 

TC my friend,

Rearguards,

Badder

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Well done on this thread getting 50,000 views!! I'm not at all surprised.

I hope you and yours are keeping well in these strange times!

We are all fine but as a result of all that's been going on I've struggled to get much modelling done, let alone get on Britmodeller much. I've been trying to make up for it a bit today as this is the first day for a while I've not been dealing remotely with work related stuff!

Take care.

Kind regards,

Stix

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On 4/4/2020 at 5:47 PM, PlaStix said:

Well done on this thread getting 50,000 views!! I'm not at all surprised.

I hope you and yours are keeping well in these strange times!

We are all fine but as a result of all that's been going on I've struggled to get much modelling done, let alone get on Britmodeller much. I've been trying to make up for it a bit today as this is the first day for a while I've not been dealing remotely with work related stuff!

Take care.

Kind regards,

Stix

Thanks Stix, I thought  I was going to get a medal for 50k, one that i could pin on my signature, but no. Tight wads!:whistle:

Me and the other half are doin okay. My eldest son and brother-in-law and their families all recovering from the virus. both brought into the house by their kids, so I'm glad our kids have all flown the nest. The only problem is the wife is working from home so I keep getting interupted in my own model-making as well.

 

Could be worse, I could run

out of CA, and acrylic inks... oh hang on, I already am!

 

Rearguards

Badder

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  • 5 months later...

For reasons I won't go into, because I can't think of any TBH, I had occasion to move the diorama base from where it's been sitting gathering dust for a couple of years. I stored it temporarily in the living room where I was doing a bit of modelling anyway, and Molly the Malicious Mouser ran in and jumped up onto it!!! LUCKILY, she only trod on the static grass area, and stepped daintily over the Seafoam hedgerow, so she didn't receive a slap around the face with a wet fish.

 

Everything is fine, as I said, but VERY dusty. We're talking more dusty than a very dry lizard in a dusty desert. That would be great if it were a dusty desert diorama, but it's supposed to be all fresh and verdant and green! I'd use my airbrush to clean the majority of it off, but I'm still sans air compressor and blowing orally will have to do!

 

 BTW, I WILL be returning to work on the hedgerow, replacing or improving the foliage. Some time.

TFL

Badder

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  • 4 months later...

I've just found this whole thing..Blimey, what can I say...I started last night and had to bail out at page 30 or something as it was after 1am, just read thru the rest this morning..

What a brilliant and informative piece, your results are astonishing, I've learned so much essential stuff in the last few hours reading thru it all.

My particular interest is more with the buildings and effects as I'm looking at a more "urban wreckage" theme, but what you did with the "greenery" and how your techniques evolved was fascinating.

It'd be great to see how all this panned out in the end with vehicles etc...

Inspirational stuff indeed !

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I just finished reading through the whole thread. WOW! I learned so much and feel so inspired to build a diorama myself. However, just the thought of all the hours you can put in to a diorama to make it look this good makes me feel like im considering entering a marathon. Reading this thread was like reading a good book and falling to sleeep at the end. The discipline and motivation to go on and on and post updates year after year, that is as impressive as the results. Hope everything is well and hope to eventually see the finished diorama. Cheers

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On 2/26/2021 at 12:03 PM, Pig of the Week said:

I've just found this whole thing..Blimey, what can I say...I started last night and had to bail out at page 30 or something as it was after 1am, just read thru the rest this morning..

What a brilliant and informative piece, your results are astonishing, I've learned so much essential stuff in the last few hours reading thru it all.

My particular interest is more with the buildings and effects as I'm looking at a more "urban wreckage" theme, but what you did with the "greenery" and how your techniques evolved was fascinating.

It'd be great to see how all this panned out in the end with vehicles etc...

Inspirational stuff indeed !

 

 

On 2/27/2021 at 6:10 PM, Fredrikc said:

I just finished reading through the whole thread. WOW! I learned so much and feel so inspired to build a diorama myself. However, just the thought of all the hours you can put in to a diorama to make it look this good makes me feel like im considering entering a marathon. Reading this thread was like reading a good book and falling to sleeep at the end. The discipline and motivation to go on and on and post updates year after year, that is as impressive as the results. Hope everything is well and hope to eventually see the finished diorama. Cheers

 

Hi chaps, and thanks!

Most appreciated.

I don't envy anyone who sets out to read every single page. LOL, but congratulations! When I started this project I intended it to be my 'very best dio, ever' and probably the last I'd make, so I was meticulous, yet not afraid to scrap things and start again, or go back and improve them. I also never really planned too far ahead, so ideas came and went. I thought I'd share as much information as is possible, methods, tips, and going into fine detail. as I figured it's better to do that than just post photos and say 'this is what I did today'.

I got to a stage where I could see the end product, but was lacking the actual model AFVs to inhabit it! So I returned to building AFVs and ultimtely got distracted by 'winter camo' AFVs, which weren't suitable for this dio. And then I got distracted by making a dio for those instead. At the very start of THIS thread, you'll see a MinaArt Ruined Village House, and my attempts to expand it with plaster casts of its gable wall. Well, that was soon put aside, replaced with their much better Ardennes Building. The first building though, formed the 'seed' for a winter dio instead. That's now my ongoing 'PITSTOP' diorama, also found in this forum and I'm nearing the completion of the building. Once I have finished it (in the next week or so) I will return to this thread and do some work on this dio. It's very very dusty, and some of the hedgerow needs re-doing as the seafoam is very dry and brittle. I suspect I'll be using real moss to replace some of it, so stay tuned.

 

Thanks again chaps, it really is appreciated when people take the time to have a look at everything and comment. The fact you've enjoyed my efforts and have learned things or have been inspired, is humbling and makes everything worthwhile.

 

I hope to see you around in the near future.

 

TC

Rearguards,

Badder

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7 minutes ago, Pig of the Week said:

It really was a pleasure and an inspiration to read Badder !... I'll be v. interested to see your winter scenario too...

Thanks again,

If you go to the Britmodeller header at the top of this webpage and look just below it you'll see 'home, dioramas vignettes and scenery, and WORK IN PROGRESS DIORAMAS.' If you click on WORK  IN PROGRESS that'll show all the dioramas which are in progress including my Pitstop diorama. There is another with the same title, but mine has my nickname next to it. That entire thread consists of nothing much other than scratch-building a ruined farmhouse and as you are particularly interested in buildings I think you'll find that the most useful of my threads.

 

Badder

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/3/2021 at 11:48 AM, Pig of the Week said:

Spent a few interesting hours yesterday studying your "walls..." thread, again epic stuff, you should produce a book really !

Thanks Piggy,

As I have said throughout this post, it's a real pleasure to read such comments. I am truly glad people find stuff of interest in what I post. I have learned so much by experiment, and when it works I am happy to share it. I am also happy to show my mistakes, bad decisions etc, because so often we see 'perfect' work and in reality I doubt any model-maker is 100 percent happy with how things turned out, and most probably made mistakes along the way as well......... only they don't show them! lol. As for writing a book, I will probably just create a video for YouTube. 

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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Right, it's been an age since any progress has been made on this dio, but I am about to get things moving again!

The dio has been sat on a worktop gathering dust, and has been 'tip-toed' on by Molly the cat on numerous occasions, but thankfully she's done no damage. The main problem has been a thick accumulation of dust, and a drying-out of the Seafoam in the hedgerow, which has become very brittle. The moss, which has now been stuck in place for, what?  A year and a half? is still well preserved, and not brittle at all, but it has shrunken very slightly. 

 

So, I'm going to remake parts of the hedgerow. And I'm going to remove all of the purple 'ivy' from the house. Some will be removed physically, some will be repainted green. But on the whole I think there's a bit too much ivy on that end of the building. And as for the large tree, I'm going to open that canopy up, making it much more airy.

 

Most of the work then, will involve replacing existing plants, and/or improving on them. At the same time, I'm nearing the stage where I can add ivy to my other building under construction in my 'Pit Stop' dio, so I can kill two birds with one stone. With that in mind, I finally got around to purchasing some braided fishing line... 150m of mid-green 'cotton-like' line, 0.06mm in diameter, but with a 9lb breaking strain. Yes, you read that right!

wuaN1to.jpg

This will form the vines for the ivy, and twigs for the large tree and the bushes in the hedgerow.

All of the leaves will be paper-punched.

Stay tuned!

 

TFL

Badder

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I've been carrying out further experiments in producing a more realistic 'creeper' plant, which might also double-up as foliage for trees and bushes. I'm sticking (sometimes quite literally) to the paper-punched leaves, braided fishing line and cyano glue method, but I'm in the middle of one experiment to see if I can use my earlier 'washing line' method, but then turning the line and adding leaves to the other side of the line.

 

To give you some idea the finished 'twig' will look like the one shown below, with leaves in symmetrical pairs along the twig only here I was conducting another experiment to see if it was feasible to glue the line directly to the walls of a building and then stick the leaves to the line/wall. Rather than experiment on the building itself, I stuck the line to paper. That seems to have worked well. FYI once the line was glued in place I used a double-ended scribing tool to add the leaves. I'd use one end to put a ting dab of glue on the line, turn the scriber around, lick the non-gluing end, dab it on a paper leaf to pick it up and then gently touch the fat end of the leaf to the dab of glue. That would 'grab' the leaf. The process was fairly quick and easy so long as I didn't mix up which end of the scriber was for glue'and which was for saliva. lol.

wtBc3Fa.jpg

 

 

And on the subject of the scriber, I bought 3 for just a few pounds. Scribers come in very handy for carving details in plaster wood or plastic. However, I've always wanted to purchase a 'scribing block' because up until now I've made do with a spirit level, 'line of sight' a ruler and a set square, or 'one off' measures made from coffee stirrers. Having purchased the scribers which are surprisingly long, it occurred to me that they would be perfect if mounted on a block. I was going to make a block, and bodge the upright post etc, but I had a good old head scratch and suddenly had a brain wave........ my Freshwater Angling trophies are basically marble blocks with an upright steel rod on which the parts of a trophy are 'dropped' with the last part screwing down onto the rod to 'fix' all the parts. All I needed was a moveable mechanism that would hold the scriber tightly, drop onto the rod and be moveable, up and down the rod, Well I was stupid enough to buy one of those multi-pose crocodile clip, clamp and magnifying glass things when rejoining the hobby and that had just such a mechanism....

 

So, I give you 'Badder's Scribing Block', I can't remember how much I paid for the clamp/magnifier thing but the 3 scribers were less than 1 quid each. The cheapest (and rubbish) scribing block I could find on line was 18 quid.

tnvFNTT.jpg

 

TFL

Badder

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And yes, before anyone asks, the reason I couldn't use the crocodile clampy magnifying glass thingy as a scribing block was because the base of that wasn't milled flat, it was just a lump of cast alloy and was wobbly.

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6 hours ago, Pig of the Week said:

Nice improv with the block..

Aggregate Weight Champion eh..so you're a Big lad then Mr B ? !  :)

Thanks Piggy,

I'm dead chuffed with it as a personalised scribing block lol. I photographed it so as not to show the other plaque on the side with my name on it for 4 years out of the 5. I was a very keen angler back in the day. Unfortunately my deteriorated health means I probably won't ever be able to go again. On the plus side you all get to read this drivel instead lol

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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Apologies for repeating myself, but the paper-punch I used to create the 'leaves' above, was purchased from Hobbycraft for less than 5GBP. It's a 'craft' paper punch for making decorative borders on birthday cards and suchlike, but the 'waste' from the punch provides excellent tiny leaf shapes; 18 heart-shaped leaves, 6 lozenge-shaped leaves, and I only realised it yesterday, 6 tiny circles (the centres of the 3 flowers and 3 off to the sides of each flower) I have no idea why I didn't notice they were circles before. Or perhaps I did. I can't remember lol. But with every press of the punch I get 30 very small leaves. This then is far, far, more than you'd get from a 'purpose-made model-maker's leaf punch' and for a fraction of the price as well!

m0C56Lb.jpg

 

Having discovered that I'm getting 6 tiny circles (slightly under 1mm in diameter) I will be using those as flowers, first off laying them on a cutting mat and pressing a blunt pin into the centre to make the circle deform into a shallow bowl shape. At this scale the 'dent' in the circle will decrease the diameter to maybe 0.5mm, which translated into 1/35th would be 17.5mm and that's pretty much perfect for a common or garden daisy. So my grassed area will be getting plenty of those!

 

I'm now going to punch out hundreds of leaves, maybe even a thousand, and separate the 3 different types out into containers. Any Type-1 diabetic out there will recognise them as the containers for blood-testing strips, old-school photographers will recognise them as film-roll containers. They are the exact same containers. Waste not want not.

 

TFL

Badder

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  • Badder changed the title to Ever evolvin dio - Daisy, Daisy, give me your....

The little punches make great leaves and foliage, really look the part..just huge levels of patience rquired sticking them all on afterwards I imagine !

Inspired by your operations much much earlier on in this, I've ordered some silicone mould stuff to attempt some brick wall casting, be interesting to try it, I'll probably revisit some if your previous to look for any tips !

 

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6 hours ago, Pig of the Week said:

The little punches make great leaves and foliage, really look the part..just huge levels of patience required sticking them all on afterwards I imagine !

Inspired by your operations much much earlier on in this, I've ordered some silicone mould stuff to attempt some brick wall casting, be interesting to try it, I'll probably revisit some if your previous to look for any tips !

 

Hi Piggy,

Your silicon moulding stuff will come in very handy. Have a look at @RichOs 'Cooper's Rocket' in this forum. He's done some silicon mould-making and his WIP is well worth reading in depths as well.

 

  BTW, i set up a 'washing line' of fishing line and, whilst listening to and glancing at a film online, stuck a load of leaves to it.  (to the line, not the film lol) After 10 mins I stopped and counted how many leaves were on the line. There were 55. It worked out that at a 'leisurely pace' was 5 leaves per minute. I then added as many more as I could as fast as possible, and got that up to 12 leaves per minute. That's not bad, but yes, it's going to be a long job! Usually though I find even quicker ways of doing things as I go on... with maybe some 'cheating' going on as well.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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After a dozen or so experiments, I've decided that the problem is not so much the method of construction but the thickness of the paper leaves. I've been using very thin card rather than paper, and it's proving too heavy. For example, here are some very small flowers made with the circular off-cuts made when punching out the leaves. They are plenty small enough, but are too thick as well. I will give up on the card and try some very thin paper instead. I'll go to the furthest extreme first, using cigarette rolling papers.

buro9Pz.jpg

 

TFL

Badder

 

 

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Good point !..with the man's feet they look like mushrooms rather than leaves in scale, though maybe put a few wild mushrooms in there somewhere ! 

I was looking at so called 1/35 scale bricks a while back and found they were too big if you calculated what they actually should measure to be normal sized house bricks.

Quite tricky to get all elements truly to scale.

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9 hours ago, Pig of the Week said:

Good point !..with the man's feet they look like mushrooms rather than leaves in scale, though maybe put a few wild mushrooms in there somewhere ! 

I was looking at so called 1/35 scale bricks a while back and found they were too big if you calculated what they actually should measure to be normal sized house bricks.

Quite tricky to get all elements truly to scale.

They were going to be daisies lol. But they look more like buttercups. And I didn't bother cleaning my brush properly so they are off-yellow. I wasn't bothered about any of that because the card, thin as it is, is way too thick and it didn't respond well to being poked in the middle with a scriber. So I'd scrapped the idea even before I took the photos. They are there just to show it didn't work. As I said, I will be using very thin paper for the flowers and leaves in the very near future.

 

As for 'house' bricks being out of scale, it really depends by how much and whether they look wrong. 'House' bricks have in the past come in various sizes. It wasn't until modern times that the 'brick' was standardized in the UK and elsewhere. Even now there's quite a difference between bricks from different nations. Russian and German bricks are the largest in the list below. And not all 'bricks' which look like bricks, are 'house' bricks. Some are made with different materials, like solid red sandstone, rather than fired-clay, and not all are standard size, so yes, you can get 'bricks' that are a fair bit larger than the norm. So, again, if they LOOK right, I wouldn't worry too much. Tamiya's brick wall set is dirt cheap and as far as I'm concerned they look about right to me.

 

 

'Modern' Face brick ("house brick") sizes.

 

 Australia 230 mm × 110 mm × 76 mm...... 9.1 in × 4.3 in × 3.0 in

 Denmark 228 × 108 × 54.mm............9.0 × 4.3 × 2.1

 Germany 240 × 115 × 71mm..............9.4 × 4.5 × 2.8

 India 228 × 107 × 69mm...........9.0 × 4.2 × 2.7

 Romania 240 × 115 × 63mm..........9.4 × 4.5 × 2.5

 Russia 250 × 120 × 65mm.................9.8 × 4.7 × 2.6

 South Africa 222 × 106 × 73mm..................8.7 × 4.2 × 2.9

 Sweden 250 × 120 × 62mm.............9.8 × 4.7 × 2.4

 

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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I checked out just German bricks when I looked before ( as you've illustrated comprehensively they're a bit bigger than UK standard it seems ) and reckoned that in 1/35 they shouldn't exceed 7mm in length ( German size comes out at 6.8mm literally)

As you rightly say there have been bricks and blocks of different sizes thru the years, and of course the caveat

" if it looks right..". 👍

I shall grab one of those Tamiya brick sets to cast from as you did !

Have you btw ever encountered those card ( I think) brick sheets also by Tamiya ?

Edited by Pig of the Week
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3 hours ago, Pig of the Week said:

I checked out just German bricks when I looked before ( as you've illustrated comprehensively they're a bit bigger than UK standard it seems ) and reckoned that in 1/35 they shouldn't exceed 7mm in length ( German size comes out at 6.8mm literally)

Have you btw ever encountered those card ( I think) brick sheets also by Tamiya ?

As a matter of interest I just measured the Tamiya bricks and they look to be 7mm long.  They could be 6.8mm but I wasn't going to get my magnifying glass out to worry about 0.2mm.

As for embossed brickwork on card, I haven't seen any by Tamiya, but that doesn't mean they don't make them.  I have seen others though. I have also seen vacuformed plastic sheets with brickwork or stonework on them. They are all perfectly good, but you're never going to beat bricks made from plaster of paris, which is basically 'stone' and is brittle, can crack, chip and be eroded away. If I were wanting to make a new building with a lot of nice perfect brickwork though, I'd definitely consider buying a sheet of bricks, either embossed paper/card, or the plastic sheets. In fact, I have cut out brick sized pieces of thin card and used those to face bricks which were set too far back from the face of the wall. I could have filled the cavity in and carved new mortar lines,, but it was quicker and easier just to stick some bits of card on each brick and rub some plaster of paris into the mortar gaps. So, all options have their uses.

 

Rearguards,

Badder

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Good to know the tamiya brick sections are good to scale, I will order a pack of those today now I know !

This is the ebay no. for the tamiya brick card, have a look and see what you think.. 332027647025  it may be useful to you too perhaps.

I got a mini art building that I'd like to copy a whole big main wall section of, to make multiples in plaster, I also have the silicone and hardener, I just need to get my head round the best way to make the mould as I'd rather not waste the silicone kit as it wasn't cheap !

 

ps having looked around I may have been better off getting a tub of latex as this seems far cheaper than the silicone mould kit. I'll likely get some latex and save the silicone for more detailed bits, as the wall I want to copy is fairly free of fine detail..

Also when you make your moulds do you paint individual layers of latex on the master, setting between each coat...or do you just pour it on in one go in a container ?

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