Hi JBA !
GREAT JOB on the figure and the rest of the boat !!! I'll be looking forward to the next steps in your diorama. Have a good summer vacation ! Cheers !
Kenneth .

Thanks Juan, I hope you are also enjoying an excellent summer!

Ah, Kenneth friend watch this space I will be talking about your work below

So I had very nice hollidays thank you very much. One day i got to the local newspaper seller to see what they have to sell modelling wise. I fell on some lavishly illustrated mag called "l'Art du Modelisme" and was caught by a great article on some iron and wood effects on some Sturmovik..
But there was also one Sturmtiger in the paper, done by somebody obviously of some authority -can't remember the name.

Well, there was a pic of the said Sturm thing and near it a seagull.
If you compared the thickness of the legs of the seagull to anything on the stg those would have been thicker than the MG barrel!
I was absolutely astonished that a modeller using PE and obviously great reference would allow some grossly *inaccurate* bird standing near his handsome model! The worse being that the eye of the viewer was more attracted by the white spot of the seagull than to the grey (or something) monster.

Actually the problem with using birds -or any small animals in a diorama is twofold.

1/ the ones available in the shops are crap -for the main reason that you can't do wings thin enough with resin or legs of the right thickness.

2/ Anyone putting some birds in his diorama should be aware that it will steal the show as people will appreciate the *cuteness* of the bird before anything else.

... So what's the solution whenever you want to use birds?

1/ DIY birds

2/ the bird(s) must be the hotspot of the diorama, and for examples I know, what about Kenneth Yeo Chye Whatt 2 latest dioramas
One Aim 2 goals
and the elegiac BMW one.
or if you will Nico Cabaret Tsushima II (btw, you can congratulate the guy, he's on the cover of this month's issue of Czech Republic based mag Modelar)

1/ Well, here we are then, first folding some wire


2/ then, add some thickness with MS


3/ Some folds and bumps -the necks are not that obvious to do


4/ Feet done of Duro that are Pre-cut and sculpted

great work, very creative and fun to see come together. for custom head sculpting try Super Sculpey. it sculpts like clay and is dried/cured by cooking it in your oven. once hard it can be sanded and detailed as well. hope this helps, cheers, mh.

glad your holiday went well. Glad to see you back at it. I know what you mean by one small seemingly insignificant detail can detract from the overall subject. I think humans looking at any diorama (or indi subject) with an animal in it look first at the animal because of the 'juxtapostion' of a 'hard' subject with a 'soft' detail. It gets you 'into' the project more.

The birds look good so far.

This is one of the reasons why I call Armorama "Home", there is never a shortage of inspiration here! This is looking to be one very outstanding project when completed, keep up the great work Jean!

JB,
Glad you are back and no doubt revitalized following your holiday.
On with the show........

Complete package or not J-B I'm loving this for your creative thoughts alone.

Lovely touches all around. I agree with your views with animals overpowering scenes if not the intention. I have just sculpted a cat to be reclining on a tank I am building, but there is going to (hopefully) be enough else goings on to have the mog as something discovered after the initial viewing has been done...

The birds are going to look great, as your technique here is very sound.
Keep us posted!
Brad

Good to see you back at it Jean.

Now my favorite part the making of the birds this I will watch as we all need birds for something.
Thanks for sharing.

Cheers
Jeff

Thanks HellHound, I don't know Super Sculpey but I will certainly check the material

thanks Scott, nothing better than 5 weeks without modelling to get the head clear with new ideas, i just came out with 2 additional propositions to my 10 already done for better dioramas
11/ never loose time detailing stuff that nobody will see afterwards for you want to show a project in its globality
12/ never use anything out of the box, this being a product or a technical trick somebody else got.
13/ don't spend more money than you should for dioramas because you will be tempted to use stupid solutions straight from the box and keep your money for your kids

Juan, there will be *12* birds on that dio (*twelve*), 5 of them will fly

Thanks for the support Jeremy!

You're right Charles, the show must go on! Still 3 weeks to go I guess

Thanks Mr King of Mud Sir! I think you can get away with your cat if it's close enough to the hotspot. I see that at shows you know, people have a glance at the scene and suddenly they spot the bird the cat the whatever and they focus on it -and then go and see another diorama. look at what JW Turner does with his cows: they're at the centre of the whirlwind!

Sure we all need birds in our dio, they're fascinating for diorama work -if only because we just can't make them really fly ..

More birds
Wings! The 6 first seagulls will have their wings at rest. to make those I used some Duro, shaped with fingers and smoothed with a modeling knife



so okay here they are -the birds are really easy to handle when you bend the wire this way


Okay it's time to wipe out the base and to insert a small bit of electric wire for the legs which is mostly okay for the thickness, though I will cover them later with stuff like Mr Surfacer for them to gain a bit of extra thickess and also to perfect the joint with the legs..

tomorrow (perhaps) flying wings!

les oiseaux sont fantastique! here is an example of Super Sculpey, it's a head sculpt i made in 1/6th scale for a Dragon figure. it is an interesting material to work with.


look forward to your finished project. thanks for sharing. cheers, mh.

jba,
The new philosophies on modeling are fantastic additions. Great wisdom to model by.

I was so happy to see the one big wire replaced by two. I got worried at first when I saw the big wire. But I did not comment on it because I trust that you know what you're doing and one thick leg would be bad.
The shape of these gulls is good. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get your birds airborn.

Yo Jba,

Here come the birds I see There looking good...And there will be flying ones to...that will be interesting to follow.

Keep up.

Greetz Nico

JBA, my friend !
So glad to see you back on-line ! I'm really honoured that you deem my humble diorama efforts worthy of mention in your thread, thanks, my friend . Your seagulls look AWESOME !!! I'm currently working on another diorama that features some sea birds (including gulls) in white metaland a sea front pier from Romeo Models. After seeing your efforts, I think I'll just follow your style and make my own To be honest, the metal ones look a little "huge" to my eyes. Thanks for the inspiration, my friend; I owe you one ! One question, how do you scale the gulls ? looking forward to your reply, my friend, and the continuation of your inspirational diorama. Cheers !
Kenneth .

Thanks for this Hellhound -I am not crazy of German subjects but the face features are pretty striking!

Thanks Scott, actually the birds were done more than 6 months ago -and it looks I lost and mixed a few pics, the first pic I posted was the wire frame of a much bigger bird

thanks Juan, I'll keep on teaching them

Thanks Nico, I am also waiting for the conclusion of your latest dio!

Kenneth friend I happen to really like what you do.
Well this size question is indeed crucial -my colleague Jenseits had to do his albatross thrice because he couldn't get the right size.
Actually I found a picture with a seagull profile and scaled it in 1/35 after I found the right dimensions in Wikipedia. Then I printed the small seagull and made my wire frame according to the print.
Now I see them, I thing their main problem is that the wing span is not equal from one bird to another!
oh well..

So well, the trick with doing some open wings is to first build a number of Magic Sculp templates on which you will apply Duro on it.
You shape the Duro with your fingers around the template, cut it at the right dimension and size and finally sculpt big wings with a modelling knife.
The templates themselves must be done carefully, with one side with a big angle to show the bend of the wings, while the end of the wings (the place where are the big feathers) would show more a curve if you all see what I mean.



well and now there's a few pics missing, but basically I have been sculpting the underside of the wings and tying them with the body. I have been fixing the feet and the white you can see on the birds is the coats of tamiya mastic and Mr Surfacer for all the elements to blend smoothly!
I have only those pics but when I start painting them I will post more

Looking good on the birds.

Thanks for sharing

JBA, my friend !
BRILLANT work on the seagulls !!!!! Thanks for sharing how you got the dimensions. Do you happen to remember where on the Web you got the seagull profile from ? If not, what are the dimensions of the base model ? I really like the animation so far . You have inspired me to start sculpting my own seagulls for my upcoming seafront vignette. I assume a pelican will be about 2-3 times the size of a large seagull ? Any idea there ? Looking forward as always to the next steps. Cheers !
Kenneth .

Thanks Jeff! i hope I see somebody doing scratch gulls one day!

Speaking of which..
Well Kenneth friend, what I do is to Google Images for seagull and use any pic that would show some kind of profile like this one for instance

As for size, a small seagluu likle the one above is roughly
size: 37 - 43 cm
wingspan: 94 - 105 cm
Google for pelicans but yes I assume they are at least twice bigger than a seagull.
I actually sculpted those with having printing a good dozen of pics I found on the net showing seagulls from every angle. It's not that easy at first to really "understand" the shape of a bird.


Like I told 2 days ago, my 12th or so "proposition for better dioramas" is
Never use anything out of the box, especially a trick shown by another modeller

well, now one of the main aims of that dio was to try the tricks of da masters.
For reference I used that:
http://www.migproductionsforums.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3293 Some all stars sort of manual with explanation on the salt trick and the hairspray trick.

Yep let's do it my way.

First let's undercoat my elements with some rust sort of paint (various Vallejos)

My first difference is that I already used the direction of the light so that some parts -mainly in front of the thing for the anchor, one of the size of the cabins etc- with some lighter shade while the underside of the cabin and the "rear" of the hull is undercoated with a far darker shade.

Then let's airbrush a thin layer of water and put some big sized salt grains on the hull. of course those were so heavy that they didn't stayed in place on the anchor thing but then it could be useful for the base of the hull.



So same thing, several other coats of vallejo acrylics darker or lighter depending on the place I sprayed.

And then a third coat with this time some much finer salt mixed with broken big salt grains.


Okay one conclusion from now on:
- If you put too much water for the grains to stick, the salt tends to melt on the surface which is really very good because it gives some extra texture to the rust which would otherwise lack. (I usually apply pastels mixed with paints to do that texture).
When i found out that, I sprayed some thin coat of water ABOVE the salt and let it dry a bit BEFORE spraying some paint coats.

Ah well second conclusion, it really works might fine

Stop teasing us JB show us it with the salt washed off please.

Salut Jean Bernard,

Good to see you back from holiday and in full modeling spirit again

The open winged seagulls are superbe. This will be a very special dio again with those twelve birds (and i do not minimize all the other efforts you put in there)

Myself am very stressed modelingwise just three weeks from Euromilitaire. Being one of the "attractions" is really an honour and reward, but also brings some pressure to be worth it in the eyes of the spectators.

Salut

Claude

Hi JBA !
Thanks ever so much for your inputs on the "seagull" and "pelican" questions . I'll definitely give scratchbuilding the seagulls (and maybe a pelican) a shot and show the results here when I'm done. GREAT progress so far on the diorama, JBA !!! Cheers !
Kenneth .

Hi JB not been arond for a while but its great to drop in and see another one of your creations taking place, i will be following along my friend, nice work as usual on your ship section and your figure sculpting is definetely improving. Great work on the birds i like your variation in their poses with some static and others with wings expanded, very effective.

take care mate,

Steve

Sorry Pat I just couldn't as my pics were really too bad it would have looked like the whole of the work was not very convincing while it was -anyway you will see this at the bottom of the page

Thanks Claude! nice to see you back. Only 11 birds apparently, it looks like I miscounted them. Good luck for Euromilitaire, maybe we'll see each other at one of these shows when my kids are bigger eh..

DO THAT Kenneth friend, that's some work but that's really the only way if you want accurate seagulls in scale..

Hey Steve friend! long time no speak. thanks for the compliments for the figs, progresses are slow but I am slowly getting to the point where they are not an embarrassment anymore. I have been redoing a few folds here and there since I took the pics earlier.
take care you too

Well, here are the results with the salt effect, I am sort of sorry because the picture is both blurred and crap and the colours are false, it really looks good in truth


Well, time to use the hairspray trick, so I covered the boat with a VERY thick layer of hairspray (what an awful smell!!! Worth than Polyester resin, I feel so happy to have a wife that doesn't use that thing!). then I protected some areas and sprayed a coat of blue-grey where the sun doesn't shine, yellow grey when it does, a trick of the light if you will.

then let's scratch the surface so that there would be paint left only on some of the upper surfaces -the ones that would be partly above sea surface at high tide if you will.
It wasn't scratch stupidly, I scratched more at the places where some chains would have stroken/hit the metal.

And then sorry no pics, but my usual repainting with inks and diluted acrylics.
I made my "Pocket Mig" here as I didn't used any pastel.
On some high highlights of rust, i used a very thin coat of Mig prod's Rust Effect. So that it shines a bit (mostly on the upper corder of the cabin). Works fine, like inks in fact.
please notice that the rust colours I did are far darker than the ones I usually use -that's a whokle "changing process" I try to implement.

So what was my own twist to the hairspray effect? Well i read that the more hairspray you used the stronger the effect was, well I did just that, the coat was SO thick that the paint had some trouble to stick on the plastic and made some really weird crevices on the model -those I kept!

great the beauty the creativity is excellent , very beautiful.

adisak.