[quote]Speaking of the contest, here are a few of the other entries I photographed. I was able to capture some with my Canon, but soon discovered that my SD card was full so I reverted to my backup camera called iPhone 4S.

Some are not as sharp as I would have liked but also the lighting was sorta poor and I didn't have a tripod either.

that's life sometimes...

Enjoy as I did.

Dave
Sci-Fi was well covered...



"Sci-Fi was well covered".... she on the other hand is not so well covered....

Sorry I really had made no attempt to be punny there... and hope that one photo is not such to offend anyone. I did not realize until you reposted it Easy8 that she is figured prominently in the shot! Now that time i meant the pun. Perhaps I will crop the photo a bit more...

But enough of the contest back to the "final" accounts of the diorama I have built.



Here you can see the strings I placed in the piano. I had to remake the top for it...it is probably in a pile of scrap plastic in one of the many containers that litter my office.

Here are 2 frontal views of the finished work...

a shot of the crane/hoist








I will try to take some better photos sometime in the next couple of days before I start to pack it all away for the move.

Have a good night everybody!

Dave

Well done on the expo Dave and congrats for the expo.

I must be honest here.

IMO, the dio as a whole does not do the quality of the church justice.
There is a lot of improvements possible, be it for figure painting, the tree and the grass area.You know that i think.

I would allow for the possibility to use this church later in an other dio, together with a second nice building perhaps, improved landscaping and so on. It would probably be worth it.

Claude

Thanks Claude I feel the same way for the most part. I will be taking some time over the next year or so to " finish" the weaker areas off, and will probably keep the content as is albeit with the upgraded painting etc. I hope to enter another competition with it in 2014. We shall see.

It has been a learning curve and a totally enjoyable build. Keep coming back as I upgrade!

Dave

I forgot, (well, in reality i did not notice it at first) , but one of the areas you may want to recheck is the painting of the walls inside the church. Look behind the piano player for example, you made so much work to detail the wall but then just applied one color, a pretty dull one.
You need some serious washing to bring out the details.
A Burnt Sienna for example (reddish) applied to the whole wood panels and removed slowly only from the flat surfaces would give this more depth . (test first)
You may even paint it straight away with oil colors, applying in a bit randomly as to give an irregular look. The shiny look of the oil color would give a special look to it to. (hide from dust until dry)

Even the stairs are very flat.

All of course IMO

Claude

For those who are following here are a few more pics of the crewman who is hidden from view in most of the pictures I have posted so far. He is a Verlinden mechanic with the obligatory Hornet head replacement.


And a couple slightly better ones of the Piano Man! This is the other mechanic with a Hornet head and arms from a Dragon figure, can't remember which one. I have like fifty kits of figures! I cut the right arm, drilled out the sleeve and repositioned the arm to give the impression he was about to strike a chord!




Keep it real everybody.

Dave

There's a lot going on in this one, very cool. You picked some little scenes that I've never seen in a dio before (piano man). I really like this, wherever it goes it's bound to win

-Conor

Dave: Still looking good. Now, hurry up and move so you can "finish" it!!

Happy Modeling, -zon

Thanks Conor. I will keep slaving away at this until it looks as good as it can. The minute it stops being fun will be the minute I truly will be done with it.

Zon we move a week from Friday. Moving this time should be much easier as it is only a five minute drive away from where we are now. I will get back to building very soon!

Dave

Well we are moved, more or less... just some odds & ends to finish moving over and some cleaning of the old place. Sadly my mother in law passed away on Friday and so the service is tomorrow (Tuesday ) and so the setup of the new hobby room will be postponed awhile longer. I will miss the old boot, she's been the only mom in my life for 22 years. I envy her though, no more sorrow no more pain. Just sharing in the Glory of Heaven!

More later.

Dave

Looks real good, liked the wip like it now!

Regards,

Thanks Vlad. I'm going to take some more pictures using my new tripod and my DSLR as soon as I unpack. Looking forward to getting a "room" set up downstairs soon...

Dave

Captains Log: Star Date earth's Julian calendar, February 19th, 2014.

It has been 19 months and 19 days since my last entry. I have just awakened from what has seemed like a nightmare of unending horror and pain, to find myself in a peculiar place. A strange world with strange customs and ways.

Much pain and horror, however not pain or horror in the physical sense, but in the emotional and mental sense.

This planet I have been stranded on seems vaguely familiar, however the memories are faded and distant, as if they occurred in another life or to someone else. And yet it is a place that feels as if it is home. I know it because I feel it is so.

The emotional torment i have suffered, sadly at my own hands is more than I could bare from time to time. The name of this affliction you ask?

A self imposed model building time out... yep.

19 months and 19 days which encompassed a move from one house to another only fifteen blocks away, and one move of just under 510 Kilometers.

A loss of a truly awesome mother in law ( yeah, Who'd a thunk it eh?) and all that entails. the stresses of life and the shortage of time.

3 jobs later and a daily commute to my new golf course of 62K one way, along with an ever present and energetic three year old who deservedly garners much of my slight free time, equals a very hectic year and a half or so.

All the while trying to make ends meet and get a foothold in the new reality which is our collective life has left me drained, but not defeated. bashed up, but not broken down.

but the good news is I have cleared off some room in the basement and unpacked a few boxes. A trip to the Habitat for Humanity Restore and fifty dollars later I have a new desk and a place to model. its not perfect, but it is a start. or a restart.

A mulligan... fitting.

stay tuned as I slowly begin to update this thread with the new build progress...

Dave

a few shots of the new mancave...



not much light, and poor at that, but a place to model nonetheless...



and the important thing is I am modeling again...

A fifty dollar desk from the Habitat for Humanity Restore and I'm back in business.


and some extra shelf space courtesy of my daughters air hockey table (she doesn't even know its hers, I bought it when she was 8 months old)

taken today.



0.4 degrees Celcius, and light snow, but the overcast is good for picture taking I think.

this thing is so big I have a hard time getting it all in the frame...




i will give a more detailed description of the upgrades and modifications as I get more images uploaded.

thanks for tuning in again..

Dave

Most of you will find the new stuff will be pretty easy to spot. A quick overview will follow shortly


oh, and FYI, (Claude and others) this is definitely a work back in progress, so please be patient with your comments as to its completeness. Oh and Claude, I am just kidding around. I am just getting started and wanted to tease you all a bit.

Dave
X8-)

it looks small when you see it just sitting on the deck, but try to get it all in one shot.

Yes!! Now I remember. I was wondering what happened to this one.
Really nice.
J

Thanks Jerry.

I'm hoping to do some serious reworking on some of the areas, such as the tree and the courtyard. Also the back end of the church and more finishing details, the small stuff that brings everything together in a neat package.

Additional items such as fuel drums and cans, more tools and such, a number of other figures and all their assorted paraphernalia.

And I'd like to learn how to get better pictures without it costing me an arm and a leg... so you the viewing audience can see what i see, not what I usually give you to make your own opinions of.

In short i've got some work ahead of me.

Better get back at it..

Dave

last night I worked on this guy, I'll call him Shadowman for now.


I took this pic the other day outside, but noticed when I was back in the mancave that he seemed off colored, so I dislodged him from his station of holding up the church and took a closer look...


sure enough I realized his jacket was an off brown, not dark grey or black, faded or otherwise. How disappointing to find yet another goof :-(



Yep, even though it looks kinda blue here, there color was a faded and blah shade of brown. Yech!

here seemed like a good place to start the renos.

I began with a wipe down of the figure as he had collected a fair bit of dust during the past 19 months and 19 days stuck on an extra washing machine in the basement.

Then I decided to give him a wash using Vallejo's Blue shad wash, thinking if he looked blue but was really brown maybe giving him a dark blue shade would make him look black?

Logical right?


Yeah, not so much. Just made him look blueish.


really blue.

so I got out a few paints and added some greys and blacks and tried to put some shadows and highlights in. I am not very good at painting figures...


but someday I hope to be. so I plug along.


then a coat of black wash and I was beginning to see an improvement and colors more like I had envisioned when i had painted him the first time so very long ago.


I also applied a wash of raw umber to his belt as well, and some brown shade to his hair which also wasn't quite right in my minds eye.

I will have to go to a hobby shop tomorrow and get me some dead flat varnish. Anyone got a good suggestion? Stick with Vallejo? try something else?

Then I shaded a few areas of his boots, and covered the lot of it with a flat finish also from Vallejo's line.


Thats when I began to see my next problem... can you see it?


if you haven't noticed yet you will in a second...


can you see?






yep, on closer inspection my Vallejo flat is actually Matte finish, fairly shiny. Not good for uniforms.

I will have to go to a hobby store tomorrow and get some dead flat varnish. Any suggestions as to which product to get fellas? Stick with Vallejo, or go a different route? Come on I need answers boys!