How would I go about depicting a dio at night time?

I would like the whole setting to be at night. I saw a dio with a backdrop of the moon and the stars, is that the way to go?

~Chip :-)

Hey Chip! A night dio would be very cool. I've often thought about how to convincingly depict this. At first I thought that maybe you could paint all the elements as they would appear at night (darker with a blue tint to indicate moonlight), but I don't think this would be very easy to pull off, and it might not come across the right way. The other way to do it is to include elements that suggest night time. Lit street lights, lights in windows, sleeping soldiers, etc. To have total control over the scene, you would be best suited to create a shadow box. That way you can control the light that is present in the scene, thereby keeping the area dark and letting the lighting elements do their work. I'f you have Shep Paine's book on Diorama building, you will see many fine examples of night time scenes in shadow boxes.
HTH.

John

I would go with a shadow box.

The shaodow box guys is the only way.Everything else is fake and not good looking . A shadow box with enough depth will be very fine and also small lighting elements as led lights for street lights , or house lights and stuff like that with a lot of work would be very fine .
some sleepy attitude of people and ...dogs perhaps will add tothe truth .It is interesting to fgo for it and maybe in the coming future could be an item for a campaign.
cheers

It depends on the situation that you want to depict. For a combat scene, build a shadow-box, and light it with parachute flares made from led's nested in fibre-glass balls. run the wires up through the parachute vent and out to the electronics control board that you use to very the light's intensity. You can use the same method to depict gun muzzle blasts and smoke if you're handy with a fine guage drill to plumb the wires with

I am glad that you brought that up, I was always looking at doing a small shadow box. Just for the hell of it! I have a pic to post of a night dio, I will do that tonight!

~Chip :-)

A couple of years ago at TamiyaCon a fellow brought a night scene of a river patrol boat attacking the shoreline of a VietCong held river bank. Great dio - EXCEPT you couldn't see it! I was so dark the Tamiya people brought out a flashlight so you could see through the glass front and the action.

So if you are planning a night-time dio it will need some light source or bring a flashlight so the people can see your work.
Regards,
GSP

I built a shadow box. Had four Germans in the sewers below Stalingrad. This shadow box had it all: Lit flashlights on the guys in the dio, done with fiber optic cable, grain of wheat lights along the sides of the massive sewer pipe, and 12 d cells in a huge block over the box. It was very cool, until all the batteries leaked all over everything. I always heard that you couldn't plug anything in at a contest so I just scrapped the whole deal. But man, it was cool while it lasted.

Shaun

i have a book that is very old, from FineScale Modeler... it was a series of works from a single artists, and he specialized in ShadowBox dioramas. To create night scenes, he would first build the scene at a strong angle, and then set this into the box. In the open corners, he would set up dark blue lights to give a night feel, and then use brighter "spot" lights to indicate areas that may have some artificial light, such as a lamp post, or lit window.... the effects were TERRIFFIC!

How about a night vision shadowbox dio?
Make the viewer look the dio through binocular-shaped hole and use only green lighting in the dio? It could be cool if you depict some "Special Ops" of some kind...

#:-) #:-) #:-)


Toni

its not a bad idea, though the night vision green light is strong enough and meybe difficult to achieve it in a box , but is good food for the mind.....

Hey, on Track-link.net, there is a dio that I am taking about. Its of a Wespe and a truck, at night in the fall, and the background is the moon and the stars! Someone find that, and you win a million dollars. Thats kind of how I want to do mine.

~Chip :-)

If there are figures in the diorama you need to pay special attention to posture. In the dark postures are different, you are more tense and hunched over and leaning forward when on manuvers. In a relaxed situation there isn't as much tenseness but there is more attention. Kinda depends on the scene.

Here is the dio its called (MOONSHINE) you see more at Doc Dios. I like the idea of the parachute lumination.

OOPS!!

Thats the one! THe exact one I was talking about!

Are there any tips or tricks to get that appearance? Or is it pretty straight forward?

Thanks so much!

~Chip :-)

Though maybe not specific to your question, I did a little article about a night time vignette I made over at Digital Dioramas. It's in issue four. Click on back issues and you'll find it. It might help with ideas for lighting and while I didn't mention it in the write up, I would recommend experimenting with a battery powered blacklight if you want to make a shadow box. You can find them as small as six inches long and now is probably a good time to shop for one before Halloween. The light is a neat way to simulate moonlight and if you use UV paints mixed with regular acrylics, you can really create a mood in your scene not possible with just ambient light.
Mike

Whoa! How about a night dio as seen through night vision? I think it would be cool.

You could even have the viewer look through the 'goggles' and see the strange green world. You could pull this off with colored gels.

Of course, this is modern armor were talking about here.

Steve

Great idea Sniper! How about you do it and keep us posted!

~Chip :-)

If forgot to add,

A black light? Wouldn't that make eveything light colored glow spectacularly?

~Chip :-)

I really like the idea of a night dio....I'll want to see the picture of your work
good luck with this dio
regards

Regarding blacklight and paint, the acrylics you'd normally use actually tend to go very dark in blacklight (there are exceptions). For instance, white will turn into a purple shade and green, blue, red for instance, will all look like the same black shade. It's when you use UV paints mixed with regular acrylics, you can acheive very subtle and striking effects. It takes some experimenting and practice like any other paint job. You'll need to paint under the same blacklight as the diorama is lit and that is sometimes problematic. And in the end, you still need to control the light in which the model is viewed but if you build it in a box, it's possible and the results are worth it.
Mike

Here is my theory,
When out at night things obviously become darker so the shadowbox is the answer to this.
But the colours don't just get darker they also take on a kind of bluey tint from the mmonlight, so do your shadowbox as normal and then fix a perspex sheet over the viewing port tinted a blue colour, then all the colours in the dio will all have the effects of the same blue vision which is probaly easier than trying to paint each colour a strange blue. Might also work for your night vision green.
Robbo

For a night dio, you would probably need a shadow box, and some lighting from a model train store. perhaps you could rig up the headlights of a vehicle ?? i've never tried any of this myself, i just read it in a shep Paine book...

In the book I mention, the author did shadow box night scenes by using dark blue bulbs - not "blacklights"... the blue lights gave a soft lit glow, but still cast a dark shadow in areas without altering colors of uniforms, etc. He "hihlighted" certain areas with a small orange bulb. I will see if I am allowed to scan the image and share with the group. The book was published in 1982, so the copyright may have expired... let me look when I get back in town.