So here is the second part of my Fossil Triptych (out of 3 eh..).
The first one is on my own website and there is a complete video SBS on Youtube.

This is not very friendly stuff as this series is meant to work on colour schemes as well as basically burnt out bodies.

I would of course totally understand it if some moderator would find it a bit too much -though I suppose there is a lot worse on TV nowadays.

Anyway here is the story so far:

So I was giving a website course some 10 years ago and I had that girl saying to me at the pause with some weird voice just like she had some hair on the tongue "Well my boyfriend died in the mountian a few years back, they found his body only two years later and you know what? His Breitling was still in working condition!"

So Then I got in mind that guy's picture with a big wrist watch on his hand, poor fellow's body was totally burned and I asked myself if his watch was still in working condition.

First let's bend a bit of brass



Then let's cover the brass with a mix half half Duro/Magic Sculp.



to be followed

I am wondering how you will show a working watch!? LOL

Ok, i need to check part 1 on Youtube

Greets

Claude

I've read an article about your work on an Italian modeller's magazine lately.
Your jobs are always incredibly original, and I have to congrat with you because they are interesting indeed.

Your dios always deal with death. That it sounds like a sort of "obsession". Anyaway I really don't mind at all

I'll follow this thread for sure

cheers

I'm a big fan of your work Nicolas, I find it original and very interesting. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you do with this one.

hey Claude, long time no see! thanks for popping in. Here are the URLS of the videos
http://youtu.be/7SE6AVtSawE
&
http://youtu.be/XlckgmpIooE
The watch won't be working though that would be a nice thing to do

Thanks Mauro. Well death is not really an obsession, after all it has been 18 months since my last diorama, but you know I feel sometimes like I am the only modeller that sees war as being death whereas most of the others see war as being a machinery display first.

Thanks Karl, appreciated

Thanks to all of you my friends

So here we go with finishing the fig (including the watch)
Second day, I had to cover the whole of the body with Magic Sculp/Duro.



Like they say in the Lord of The Rings movie "What about their legs, they don't need those".
yep in my ref pic, the bones are sticking out like that, sorry for the details. I also put a picture of the face while i was sculpting it, I added the teeth with an X-Acto

When the whole was dried, I added some "dust" on the body -quuite a lot actually, i will have to complete the texture using pigments on the painting stage



The left picture shows the fig in the same position as the original -that is he got one hand in the other. i quite liked the "raised hand effect". I will further work on that on Part 3.

Nicolas- if I could be so bold as to post a link to a diorama I finished recently:

A Rendezvous With Death.

I don't believe you are the only modeller to see war as being, in some ways, about death. This is an idea I subscribe to and the diorama above is about death and the contemplation of it. I am also planning another about death whichI am still planning(and for which I have been gathering bits and pieces I need for it).

Apologies for kind of hijacking your thread for a minute!

The sculpt of the body is very interesting, the small details like the watch and the teeth are well conceived.

Well Karl, I like your diorama pretty much. You have been escaping one of the worst pitfalls I know in diorama making: the misery. No cries and thanks for this, rather the Hamlet thing you know, alone in front of the skull. The diorama is rather quite well made btw.

There is just a couple of things I don't subscribe to: the paraphernalia (knight cross, frankly categorized soldiers, stuff like that) and the Verlinden sense of the aftermarket mess (the rifle on the car is too much)

Ever thought of entering that one in a contest? you put a false moustache and you stay near and hear the comments, man that's fun.

btw, you have some guts to try Still Water, it's definitely not a product I would recommend at all

Yes, that's it, I think you're right. Few modellers seem not to remember that actually they depict machineries designed to execute massive killings. Probably for some of them that'ss a sort of an uncounscious exorcising. All in all the war at 1/35 scale look less terrifying

Well, I think I have to stom with my psychoanalytic crap now

Outstanding job so far, I really envy your sculpting skill

cheers

Thanks for the feedback Nicolas, it means a lot to hear your thoughts on the dio. And yes I am planning to enter it into a contest in a couple of weeks!

Yo Nicolas,

Your back on the forum tracks...good thing...and still building your favorite subjects...

Nice video's...nice to see how you works with the colors.

Keep up!
Greetz Nico

Nono Mauro don't stop the "psychoanalytic crap"! precisely because that's not crap at all. There is so few conscience as a whole in model making.
Thanks for the sculpting skills, I try very hard

Karl, you will tell

Nice to see you Nico and I hope you are very well indeed since last October. favourite subjects indeed, but i hope to be able to put a bit of variety in my skills in my nextish dioramas.


Here is the way now i am doing the bases for the Fossil series. first a plaster base -that's simple, I just pour plaster in a vague form done out of plasticard that i sand afterwards.


Then when cleaning my plaster dish, I put one the water with the plaster wash on some plastic surface that I leave to dry.


Then I break it with the hands and "glue" it on the plaster base using some ultra diluted plaster.
I just have to trim it and paint now.

So i have got the base and the figure, I now need accessories.

As usual less is more, but then on my reference pictre, the body was surrounded by a great number of entangled wires, so I decided to do these.

So I took an old electric cable, I wiped out the platsuic and soldered everty extremity of those. I alos soldered some of them together so I could get a big block

Then I sculpted a cylindracal shape out of some platsic bit from an old model adding some Duro/Magic sculp shapes on it to mimic torn metal
Please now notice the change of Camera (going from C2005 to C2012..) and here is the Magic Sculp with dangling wires. I added some MS on the top of it to make a distress look on the wires

And here are most of the elements ready for paint.

The tube like shape was also taken from the ref picture but I don't what it is. Could be landing gear but a bit small..

Okay, let's paint the plaster base.

Of course i never ever use any seal product on the plaster, now that's a very stupid thing to do as the plaster drinks the paint and the water in it, which means that if you are wise enough you can create some effects that you could only dream of when using some plastic (more on that perhaps another time)

Anyway, my bootiful Iwata sprays weird colours on my base, blues and red brown.. what the heck? that's no colours for a diorama base.

Well yes it is. I used some early 1980's pictures as a reference and you wouldn't believe how the colours faded since. I don't model what's true, I model what's left of the memory of those poor guys, the memory has got a blue-greenish hue and that's it..
So here is the first stage finished, the base colours are applied. I used several masks made of paper, the usual stuff.. excuse the low quality of the pictures, I don't dare using the good camera when i am doing dirty job!)Now is time for overpainting. I wet the plaster abit and I screen and screen again, darker hues in the recesses, tan on the tops and then some random colours. No method, just piling up the colours.

But now the interest of that special pictures is what i am doing with the placement of the wires. That's it, those will be casting some shadows on the ground, therefore I have to paint those (airbrush those).Here is a blurry picture of the mostly finished base
Except well.. pigments. Now I am a bit suspicious on those because overdoing the thing is very easy with pigments.

Whatever, I just applied some Vallejjo pigments fixer and pour some blue , brown pigments here and there.

I am never afraid of using colours! I have been using my SF Mig pigments as much as the regular ones

Very important statement here!

I think most beginners think to much about the colours to be used and are afraid to even start the paintng process at all.

You do of course at one point put a lot of thoughts into shadowing and highlighting and the effect of your colours, but for the begining a healthy dose of improvisation is certainly the way to go.
It is also the only method to get away with the standardized dio grounds.

Greets
Claude

Nicolas- that is a very interesting way to tackle the colors in the vignette and it gives it a great deal of visual interest. Fantastic.

You bet you are right Claude. I know a lot -even advanced modellers- that seems to be rather scared at diving into paint once they finished a model.


they are a shame eh? there are wagons of adverts for those in those very forums, most of the stuff make my eyes roll.

I remember talking about that at that big Dutch fair last year with some quite brainy guys who told me that the diorama was dying.
That people simply couldn't find the time any-more to do those. And here come all the Miniarts of this world (they ain't the worst) with their plastic or hydrocal buildings, their grass tufts, their things..
Dump your bloody TV I say and start working!

As for the colours, it seems that getting beyond brown green and Feldgrau seems to be beyond some.. ? Nevermind, we have our own path..

Thank you Karl! That was the point on that one, that in the end the diorama could look like a sort of jellyfish crawling at the bottom of the sea (that's true actually)

So here I am painting the wires with the stuff I use, some vallejo paints and pigments. The wires were pretty burnt out so I applied with pigments with an old brush on the top of the wet paint to make stuff like ashes

Same thing for the guy, I used more pigments and plenty of different colours

In the end the diorama was finished but there was lacking any hotspot! So i made some sort of orange /tan mix and applied it on some outlines of the arms, and here it is, this colour is great over the green blue tan hues of the base

Okay good pictures of the completed diorama to follow.
Fossil 3 here or not?

Ironically, it's beautiful, Nicolas. Strangely, although you're holding it horizontally, the fact that you are holding it emphasises that this is probably how it should be viewed, from above, while most conventional military modelling dioramas are intended to be viewed at kind of three-quarter angles, or at the eye level of any participating figures in the piece. So it resembles something that should be displayed on a wall rather than a table. In fact the grey colours and deathly subject matter make it like some carving on a sarcophagus.

Thanks Matthew 'ironically' is the word really.
very well seen indeed, this diorama is mostly to be appreciated fully as viewed from above. like some of my first dioramas, this one will end up displayed in a wooden case with a small glass on the top, you could indeed put it on a wall.
The idea behind my dioramas is actually as much doing "paint" dioramas as modelling dead people. I have those concepts ready since I turned 20 or so, but i needed the skills first before getting into those themes, I can save a lot of backlash this way

here are the pictures of the completed diorama

Impressive and beautyful

I really like it

Nicolas- you have depicted such a haunting and lasting scene here- the colors and the composition, but also the expertly crafted details, really hold the eye over the scene. A truly unique work of art!

Of course yes :-)

Thanks Mauro

Thanks Karl, art yes, in another life perhaps, but here you wait for Fossil 3, I will go crazy for the colours aha




Oh, one asking is enough for me - here we go then..