Hey folks been away for awhile. Ive drug out one of unfinished Nam dios some of you may remember it from while back. It still far from finished but at least Im making progress this time around. Just wanting you folks to see if I need to make any changes yall might see something Ive over looked. I will be adding at least three more figures one grunt and two more Vietcong. Heres the pics.

Looks great buddy

One thing you need to weather the truck it would be covered in dust i suggest trying using pigments, also add some pigments to your figures becuase of all the dust and mud.

The VC thats falling out the tuck doesnt look right he needs re positioned,

Also who would of shot him if the Grunts are the other side? of the truck and there would be numreous bulet holes in the truck and maybe the odd flat tire formt the ambush

great work though

nice composition.

one thing that comes to mind is that portraying the left hand front wheel deflated and some bullet holes in the front left portion of the truck (maybe even a dead VC in the passanger seat) would add to the sense of action and to the VCs' being stranded in a tight spot.

The upper canopy is looking nice and the large tree trunk is good too.

What you might want to consider is painting those aquarium plants to disguise the fact that they are aquarium plants. The best example of this that I have seen comes from a Spanish modeller named Domi.

Bloody good jungle

Chas

Hi there

Looks a great dio idea.

One thing I would suggest though is giving the load area of the truck as much of a filling as is humanly possible even with the limited stock of boxes and barrels you might have at hand. The VC needed to get as much up the trail as they could with the equipment they had.

A way of doing this might be to use cheap foam cut to the rough shape of the load you want to portrey and then using tissue paper to make a tarpaulin to cover the load. The boxes you have there can be the ones that are visible on the truck.

The suspension could also be bent to show a lower/ heavy loaded look. Of course there would also have to be bushes sticking out of every oriface of the truck possible to hide the moving vihicle from the mass of US air power.

That is very nice work, how did you know how wide the dirt road had to be ? Although this won't seem like a good idea, have you tried blowing smoke onto your diorama and then taking a photo ? This should give it a low level mist effect, which obviously won't last, and its just an idea. Nice diorama.

I like the look of it. The ground work and actual trail are nicely done. I'd like to see more pics of the grass - from the one photo it looks particularly well done.
Realizing that size dictates what you can show, there are a few pointers that would help make it a little more realisitc.
Ambushes are initiated by the most casualty producing weapon, which in this case appears to be the LAW. Normally there'd be more than one, but for a soft skin, especially at such a close range, one works. So, that LAW would already have been fired. That Zil comes with a motor. It'd look great with the hood blown open by the LAW.
Vehicle ambushes are best done in depressions in the road or ideally at bends. This keeps the vehicle from rolling out of the kill zone. Bends in the road lend themselves particularly well to "L" shaped ambushes, so you would have a support element (MG) firing at the truck from the front, in addition to the assault element along the flank. I know there's not enough room. but bullet holes from the front could indicate this.
Lastly, no one on the assualt element is going to be on the radio during the assault. The figure adds interest, but would be better used in a different dio.
Very nice overall though.

Nice work on the dio, what Chas said is a good idea!

Martyn

18Bravo,
Just a thought here, and not to hijack the post here Keenan, but with the LAW fired, wouldn't that whole front end be blown to a million piece at that range?

He's got a guy bailing out of the driver's side, which would be total mute if the LAW was alright fired. The driver would not be there. He'd be dust.

Besides from what little I know and have read about the LAW, it was one of the most unreliable weapons systems over there. Field reports stated that the damn thing only work less then half the time anyways.

Anyways, Good progress, Keenan. Chas and the rest of the gang have got some good idea's. I'd personally ditch the LAW. That's my opinion.
Sorry for the hijack.

I like it, some of the suggestions could work well. I would load the truck down more for sure.

Nice work!

really like the guy who's on teh ground next to the open door. is he supposed to be alive and just spilling out of the door? that would b a nice slightly comic aspect to the scene i think!! keep it up!

Hey every one youre suggestions and comments are very helpful. I will be able to use some of them. I had planned on some bullet holes and tree limbs for camo on the truck. Im not sure about a lot of battle damage i dont want to take a chance on ruining the Zil. I think I can make it a convincing ambush by removing the LAW gunner and adding bullet holes. I thought about some smoke coming from the radiator Ive used stretch cotton before and it was convincing. The size constraint makes it a challenge to place the figures.



Thanks for the ambush lesson 18bravo I will also have another VC firing in the direction of MG.

What would you suggest on the figure spilling out of the driver side looking at the pic if i reposition his hands it would look a little better.

Hi there Keenan

One thing I was thinking about is if you do have some more VC it would maybe be good to have a couple either shooting down from ontop of the load or just caught in the act of leaping off the load to get out of the hail of bullets. Especially if the load is full of explosives.

Get someone to take a few pics of yourself jumping from a wall with a stick in your hand as a gun and compare to see if you have any of the VC in similar poses that you could convert and pin on the load using the thinnest needle you can find to get a look as just starting the jump.

Nige

Looks good, just wondering what is the truck Type?

Thanks Nige, the truck is a Soviet Zil 157 6x6 truck. Its a really nice scale model made by Trumpeter.