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Episode 3 Closing on Ponyri

a photo feature by Tim Martin
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This time around Tim Presents scenes from Field Marshal Walter Modell’s 9th Army’s continuing advance south on Day 2, aiming to crash through the final and most formidable Red Army defences at Ponyri to rendezvous with the 4th Army’s north-driving pincer (after its anticipated victory at Prokhorovka) somewhere just east of Kursk. What could possibly go wrong?

Trying an all-monochrome batch this time, flattening out the contrast in some of them to mimic contemporaneous photography which seems to work OK (?), plus the 1st & 3rd Hummel test-firings which (after I was done laughing) both required rebuilds of the gun & fighting compartment. The 2nd - with a 100% charge - launched the barrel into the next suburb along with one of the crew, still MIA. Failure of the one-way valve in the modified breech (designed to fall shut after the fuse burned past it), combined with the shell apparently jamming in the barrel turned the gun into a rocket. Even J07 wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but after a few weeks I ran out of patience, and before the neighbours called the local constabulary. Ep 4 next time – Street fighting in Ponyri with pyrotechnics.
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About the Author

About Tim Martin (Dioramartin)
FROM: NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

Celebrating 50th year of scale model building (1966, Ford Mustang in Boston, Mass.) & the glue hasn't got to me yyyyet. Born & lived in England until 1987, since then in beautiful Sydney Australia.


Comments

kipanderson
Hugley effective. Congratultions on a great project.
OCT 29, 2016 - 08:00 PM
jimbo27
great pic I thought they were the real thing(or were they ??)
OCT 30, 2016 - 10:38 AM
kurnuy
Congratulations with the presentation , top ! It works for me, well done Tim .
OCT 30, 2016 - 01:15 PM
americanpanzer
wow! fantastic effects! looks very authentic!! great work
OCT 30, 2016 - 07:28 PM
Dioramartin
Thanks again guys, Stephen – hmm but I can’t really get the effect without the complete recreation – I tried photoshop et al with dire results - like really awful. Believe it or not I’ve never wrecked i.e. written off any vehicles, mainly because I’m careful to insulate them from the obvious heat-generation & the blasts are so fast anyway there’s little time to melt anything. All the Hummel parts that blew off came away cleanly - I guess because I use a minimum of extra-thin cement when building – so repair/touch-up was relatively easy…unless I couldn’t find them again e.g. the brass barrel. One exception to the above - blowing off the same T34 turret four times (photos coming soon in Eps 5 & 6) finally rendered it useless, but the hull was still untouched. But with buildings - for reasons I can’t actually put my finger on, they took as much time/effort as several AFVs to complete - they are expendable! Cheers, Tim
NOV 01, 2016 - 05:41 PM
Bravo1102
Sorry to hear you can't produce good SFX in Photoshop. It takes a lot of experimenting to find the mix. Some take numerous effects layers and transparencies . Since I also composite most of my images it's simpler to have the pyro be its own layer on top of (or between) everything else. I have found it's a lot less time consuming to shoot each element separately than try to put it all together at once. But then I typically portray more complex action with lot more images to tell longer stories with characters and dialogue.
NOV 01, 2016 - 07:29 PM
Dioramartin
Intriguing – can you show me/us samples either a link or post some images here? Cheers, Tim
NOV 03, 2016 - 07:43 AM
Stickframe
Hi Tim, I've got to say, you're certainly pushing the boundaries of what a dio can be! This looks great. Unhappily, I'm fairly low tech when it comes to both photo manipulation and, well, uh, full on special effects! Wow... I do feel pretty comfortable tackling complex ground planes and surfaces - I think a big element contributing to the believability of this work is your rigor on the ground plane, and your attention to continuity of treatments - you've done a great job - I really like your couple of color pics - as they clearly show the various "layers" you've built into this. I know that's time consuming work - and the results make it worth the effort! The detail on the build matches the detail on the vehicles and figs - nice! Cheers Nick
NOV 05, 2016 - 05:22 AM
Dioramartin
Thanks Nick to clarify & apologies if I’m mis-reading your post, but the only photo-manipulation I’m capable of (or wish to manipulate) is tweaking the contrast/brightness of the pics, what you see is what I saw through the view-finder(s) using low-end 8-year old stills camera & cam-corder. In other words I’m not doing/using anything special, the pyro’s child’s play & my kit/diorama base/figure-making skills are nothing other than average compared to some others on this site. Meaning not only could anyone do this but doubtless some could do better & that’s not false modesty, it’s fact. As far as I’m concerned all I’ve really done is combine so-so elements to come up with something (relatively) original & I’m quite content with that. On the other hand your pioneering is way up there with concept, lighting, atmosphere etc. and I can only repeat what I said on your own thread, it’s currently the Best (with Kurt’s Ardennes dio a close second & several others under construction likely joint seconds/thirds). Cheers, Tim
NOV 05, 2016 - 09:58 AM
Stickframe
Hi Tim, Ha! Sorry if I created any confusion! I think you've got a great project! In reading the various posts above it sounds like many of the folks here have some strong photo and related effects skills (including you!) - I was just noting that I don't (ha!) the black and white, plus firing, smoke etc is pretty cool! Thanks by the way for your nice words - there are lots of very talented builders on Armorama - I check out lots of the posts in many subject areas, as there are so many neat builds and techniques being used/tested here, really remarkable work - and builders and projects I admire too! Ok - looking forward to your next project! Cheers Nick
NOV 05, 2016 - 11:49 AM
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Copyright ©2021 by Tim Martin. Images and/or videos also by copyright holder unless otherwise noted. The views and opinions expressed herein are solely the views and opinions of the authors and/or contributors to this Web site and do not necessarily represent the views and/or opinions of Armorama, KitMaker Network, or Silver Star Enterrpises. All rights reserved. Originally published on: 2016-10-29 04:16:51. Unique Reads: 9972