Hello mates!

Here is my current vingette. It is a shell hole on normady that is taken as cover by allied troops. Heres is what i got done today. It is a 12 by 5 base.

Cheers!

Gday Jordan
Looks good mate!
A good sequence of pics showing your development here too.
What part of Normandy, or is it St. Anywhere?
That is quite sizable for a vignette; almost diorama sized, I'd say!
What are your plans for the area of ground outsde of the shellhole?
Cheers
Brad

Hey brad

Thanks for the comments, I am going to try to make it a wooded area outside the shell hole. Kinda decided on this so that splintered bits of trees etc could fall inside the shell hole thus making it not so boring. I have no set place of where this certain diorama takes place.

I will try to keep this going as a build log

Cheers!

Looking good. It would be cool if you made them paratroopers. Then you could have some chutes hanging in the trees and such.

-Mike

As you progress, don't forget that the top edge of the hole will be rough and uneven and not have grass right up to it.

Heres a bit of an update. I got the black primer coat applied this afternoon. I tacked one of the 1/48 models that will be used as a size comparison. I also wanted to quickly ask....what do you all use for grass. besides static grass, what could I use for tall grass?

Heres a quick update on what I got done today. I got about 85% of the base painted with the grass and tanktraps put in. Give me your thoughts about the sand. I think it looks a bit to bright. That might be because I took the pictures under my table light.

Any suggestions would be awesome!







cheers!

Hi Jordan

It looks good so far.

However, I have a few nickpicks. If you are depicting loose sand/earth in a forest the tank obstacles should be sunk into the ground a bit. However, if it is a road or similar you should leave them as they are.
I assume you will paint the crater in lighter colours to fit the sand/earth area?
The sand is not too bright if you are making a beach, but if you are going for a forested area you might want to give it a wash or two.

It looks good and is a good idea and tells an effective story when finished I am sure. Where did you get the display case? Did you make it yourself?

Thanks for the comments Jesper, You will notice that in the begining posts, my inital goal was for this scene to take place in a wooded area. After filddling around a bit, It was next to imposible to fit any trees that would be to scale in a case that is only about 7- 8 inches high. So I decided to switch to a beach scene. So yes, that is why I painted it a sand color. Also, thanks for the catch about the tank traps. They do need to be sunk in maybe tilted a bit. I will fix that today. Also about the shell hole, Im gonna need some help with that. Since the shell hole is the point of view of the scene I want it to look good, but im not sure how to go about painting it. My first thought was to simply paint it the same color as the beach with a black rim, shading washes etc. But then I thought about the difference of dry sand compared to wet sand. So perhaps a darker shade of sand color inside the bottom of the hole and getting lighter as i go up the sides. Those were some of my thoughts but none of them sound right. Anybody have any suggestions??

Cheers Jordan

IMHO....I think the crater hole should be much lighter for a beach scene. Also, to achieve a more realistic effect, I would spread some of the "under earth" (for lack of a better term) around on top of the lighter beach sand. You want it to look like an explosion occured there not a huge gopher hole. Sorry if any of these suggestions were mentioned before, I just breezed through the thread but so far its looking great! Keep us posted!!!

Good point! So you mean by underearth, the stuff that is thrown up when the shell impacts.
BTW, the black around the crater, is still the primer coat. I ran out of time lastnight and was only able to paint up to the point seen the in the pictures.

Ola Jordan

Well I followed this one a bit and have to say that the start is very good so far. As you say yourself you are going for a beach scene which can result in a scene with some good action. Assuming you go for a normandy beach landing scene.
As is mentioned before in the case of a beach scene you should sink the Tank obstacles more in the sand. Also put driftwood and other loose stuff around the base of the obstacles to give the impression that tide washed it there. Barnacles and such also do a good job on tankobstacles. Same for seaweed. Also important is that when you have an explosion on the beach that creates such a big crater you should not only have loose sand/ground around the crater but also on the tankobstacles thrown there by the explosion.
For a Normandy Beach Invasion dio you can go pretty wild with stuff out of your scrapbox and throw it around in the sand. Weapons and personal gear lost by soldier due to explosions bullets or simply tossed away.

Looking forward how this progresses.

With friendly greetz

Robert Blokker

Wow, never would have thought of all this. What would I use for seaweed?? Seems like one of the harder things to recreate...

Well Sea weed and Kelp are not that hard to make certainly because there are so many types of the stuff... From a more wirey type to types with more leaf like structure. Basically it is the same with your choice of materials. You can use sewingthread for the wirey type just bundle some strands together at uneven lengths, Aluminum foil painted in several greens for the leafey type. You can use cigarette paper, tissue ripped to very thin shreds and painted green. When you experiment around a bit with several media I'm pretty sure you can come up with something you will be satisfied with.

Cool!

Thanks mate for all the suggestions!

Hello once again mates! Sorry about not having any updates lately. You can expect some in the next day or so.

Cheers!