Hello everybody:

Here some pictures of the making of a small diorama including the Marder III from Tamiya OOB, plus 3 figures.

Everything started after I finished this Tamiya Marder III, I have to say that the kit is excellent and pleasurable to build.





But, for some reason I thought the kit was missing a nice base or perhaps a couple of figures, so I decided to make a small dio with it.

I bought a $2.50 wooden base at Hobby Lobby stores as well as a old Italeri wall set, which was really unrealistic, any how I used the wall shapes to made mine with some balsa wood also bought at hobby lobby. Then glued the pieces to the base as shown below

Here the kit on site.....

Next step consisted of building the "stone street" and finishing the walls for which I used a pot of lightweight spack bought at WalMart....




As shown below, an #11 blade was used to make thin cuts on the surfaces trying to resemble various stone shapes....

AFter letting all set for one night, a 320 grid sanding paper was used to smooth the surfaces. Then some various mixes of gray tones obtained after mixing black and white acrylics were applied as seen below trying to make different "stone colors"..


A raw umber oil wash was then applied to all the surfaces...

Some bricks were made from the same material, painted on orange with acrylics. Pastels were used to weather the walls.....




I added the two figures that came with the kit, just made some "head surgery" transplanting a couple of Verlinden heads......a third figure from Dragon was also added with a flame thrower...






More pictures coming soon since I already finished this project!!!

Any comments and questions are welcomed.

Mirko

I am seeing quite a few SPG's being built at the moment, and all to a high standard this being no exception. a very good build and pictures that show how a wash can really bring something to life, Great work Mirko. I will add that is some fine figure painting you have on the go and the SPG's really need a crew.

wow this is some good stuff! very lifelike marder and the building! i think i like the building best...or the flame thrower!! one little thing though, the bricks don't look convincing, like they fell it that way and they look a little bit big. for bricks once, i just spread some plaster out on a piece of wood, very thinly and after it dried, did my best to carve up the layer of plaster into small rectanges to be bricks. i used an axacto knife. it didn't matter that some bricks broke in half, or weren't perfectly recatangle, or the same size..they came out looking like chunks of rubble and brick. if some are disfugured, that is good because it looks like damage. if you try this method, maybe color the plaster when you are mixing it with pigments and acrylic paint because i did not, and it was a pain to paint them after i made them also cat litter is good for rubble.

Way to Mirko! Exceptional build, especially on that house ruin. Maybe you could send the whole thing in as a feature to be published on the site. I am sure many, many of us will benefit from your experience. Eagerly waiting for more photographs of your stuff.

Hello and first of all thanks for your comments!!! I agree about the bricks, but this was my first time....anyhow, I think I did something similar to what you mentioned. Basically I used the same spackling spreaded over a piece of glass, did cut the brick shapes when still fress and once it dried out I just started breaking them. Now that I think about it I should probably have painted them before removing for the glass...hahahaha...it was a pain in the butt to paint each brick....hahahaha....well that's the way to learn...
I will post some more pics tomorrow of the finished model, and indeed I used clay cat litter to add more debris, I also turned the bricks a little more darker than they look on those pics.

I was trying to put a sniper on the second floor of the building but then I realized i didn't have one available...hahaha...so then the flamethrower came handy.....

Well thanks for your comments again...more coming soon

Mirko

Thanks a lot for your comment Darren, very appreciated. Agree 100% with the oil washes...

Mirko

Thanks a lot Sebastian....honestly, this was the first time I have built a ruined wall....so it was quite an experience for me too. As you can see I barely spended $15 in all the materials for the dio (not considering the kit) which nowadays the cheaper the better...hahaha

Thanks a lot , more pictures coming soon.

Mirko

I like it a lot Mirko, your figure painting is very talented. You hit the skin tone spot on.
Could you tell us what paint you used ?

Hello again, for the figures I used Tamiya Acrilycs including their flesh color, finished with shades of yellow ochre and red cadmium oils to accentuate some shades and lights...

Well, here some pics of the dio almost 90% ready









Any questions and comments are welcomed.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!