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Stalking the Russian Bear

Very good job, I like your groundwork diversity with the correct amount of fallen leaves. How did you do the blossoming tree? It looks great and real. Cheers Claude

Hi Marty, The first thing that struck me about the dio was that it wasn't made on the typical squared area,enabling the viewer to be able to look at the dio in various ways.Your groundwork looks superb,right down to the bird's eggs in the tree(nice touch)!To top it all off you get the feel of the action projecting off of the dio. You wouldn't mind sharing with us which products you used to make your trees?! Cheers,Shay

Marty's right on the money, great job! What did you use for trees anyway?

Thanks for the compliments on the diorama. I really appreciate hearing that you liked how the diorama was laid out. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I did use a base that allowed the diorama to be viewed at different angles. I tried to set up the ground cover that the infantryman with the shaped charge is the focus (everyone is looking at him from behind cover) and then bring the viewer into the diorama with the infantryman looking back off the diorama for more help. The diorama can be viewed too from the tank with the infantryman like shadows behind the trees. When thinking about all the trees I would need in this diorama, I thought I would have to build everything from scratch using wire and plaster, but I happened to be at a crafts store called Michael's and wandered over to the dried flowers section. There I found a dried flower product called Caspian that looked like budding trees in 1/35th! So I used them for the leafy trees. What I did to get a thicker/fuller appearence was get a thick twig with branches and then added more branches to it with super glue and a pin-drill. It originally was a nasty colored green so I dyed it again green with oils and then handpainted the branches brown and dried brushed it to a lighter brown. I think there are some four of these foliage trees of various sizes. I also added that nest with the eggs. Glad you liked that. The other trees are roots from the backyard, another brown Caspian dried plant, mosses that I assembled into bushes, and some dried ferns from Michael's too. The grasses are mixed colors. The leaves are Hudson & Allen Forest Litter. The little tuffs of grass are a Silfor product (that I found in a review on Armorama)! The water is poured resin. Marty

Very nice layout and overall planning. The groundwork is really nice. Gotta love Michael's Crafts. My wife took me to one and I found loads of dio-material, and relatively inexpensive also! Cheers, Charles

Hi Marty, Very nice thought out and an interesting layout. The whole thing workd well and as others have said the ground work is excellent. Thanks for sharing. Cheers Al

GREAT JOB!!! thats a really natural looking dio. I mean i could see myself walking around on that one. Those dead leaves are brilliant!!

great scene i like it much! Mirko