Hello All

I present to you some photos of a diorama I built around 2005 of US wheeled vehicles in WW2. I called it Rolling Thunder due to the nature of the vehicles.

The premise of the diorama is simple. An Armoured recovery vehicle (tamiya m26) is returning from the front lines with a recovered/damaged Long Tom (the 155mm AFV club kit), with an escort armoured car M20 (Tamiya). The bridge is a newly enginered one built using existing stone structures from the previous one. Waiting to cross is a Jeep (Tamiya).

The story or secondary subplot beyond the obvious recovery vehicle convoy, Has some trophy hunters guarding the bridge rummaging through the destroyed bridge defence position after it was over run. The crew of the M26 are excited by the trophy hunters discovery and are straining to see their bounty. One of the crew on the starport side though tries drawing their attention forward to the MP wanting to stop the vehicle - a small animal has wandered onto the bridge!

Thats the main stuff. Of course I researched the living bejeasus out of this and at the time there was next to no aftermarket stuff for m26 like now (such as resin tyres etc)

The river is a 2 part epoxy resin that I wanted to be slow moving / very flat. all the reeds are hand cut from paper by myself, and the ballrushes are the seed pod/stamens from a native plant here in australia (banksia). I went top many dark forest creeks and gullies to locate gravels and mosses to do the ground cover.

The bridge piers are all recasts of a single master I made from air drying clay. I made a latex mould and recast several piers and then scribed some extra brick to make each a little different. (and oriented them so it was was not obvious its the same casting). the bridge design borrows heavily from a verlinden railway bridge kit for the piers. The wooden brdge is made from model ship strip wood and is quite basic, but have several good photos of that design in use. At the time the Baily bridge kit was not available 9it came out within several months of me finishing this dio...)

I have entered in in my local and national comp and won a few great awards. It is also on the cover of a model magazine here in Australia.

The diorama has a couple of problems. firstly the water is too featureless and flat, no birdlife in the reeds and no debris in the water from the new construction (offcuts) or the old demolished one. The other issue is the story/ plot ALOT of people dont understand why the truck is going the wrong way (leaveing Germany according to the sign). I felt a recovery vehicle's job was to bring stuff back from the front. hence doping its thing was travelling away from the front. That little confusion cost me some titles and is the steep learning curve I recieved to having simple plots that are easy to understand.

The reason I not post these before is the photos sucvk hard. like real bad. I took terrible pics backl then and found them the other night and fiddled with them to try recover some good ones.

I hope you enjoy. I have much much info on each model and the modifications and the figures etc.

there are alot of pics some are duplicate but subtle changes that offer a great view or scope.

Adam















































will do a part 2 in another post

these pics are more about the lesser vehciles and items

















































Adam

Adam, Great work. Nice idea, I love the dragon wagon towing something other than a trailer.

Well done.

Paul

This is EPIC. I like that you managed to make a big dio but still nailed every tiny detail. Great stuff.

Now I want to build a M20...

Again, really great job here

-Conor

Yo dude,that is awesome. Every inch of the dio tells a bit of a story.
J

very nice work... especially the vegetation and water
The photo backdrop really sells it, nice idea... did you print on large format plotter.
Many congrats on a museum quality piece.

Cheers guys. The m26 was a gift and I liked the idea of a diorama showing it towing too. This was my first diorama in about 15 years and my first serious attempt to apply all the principles of a Shep Paine book.

Adamski

the background is a set of 3 "Faller" brand model train backdrops. each is a printed picture on paper approx 3 feet long. one of the reasons the pictures were so bad was where the backdrop was joined with tape had this massive light reflection along the seam and invariably it was always right behind the subject matter. The backdrops were givben to me, and are very very old, but I think modern versions are available.

Adam

And Shep will be proud of you when he sees this beauty!!

You are one of a minority who have highest skills in all the components, i.e terrain, vehicles and figures, plus a great sense for atmosphere and consistency.

A couple of minor "mistakes" show that you are human after all!

You are a real Inspiration Sir!!

Cheers

Romain

Very nice Adam. The quality stands the test of time, and looks good today as well, no matter what has developed since then. Love the M20 and all the stowage. Great scene.

Thankyou Frank, your opinion means much to me.

I do wish I had some of the aftermarket items available today though- perhaps there's an idea for a campaign? The do it again campaign? Built something again that you didn't have parts for to do it justice the first time ( or to demonstrate how far your skills have come )

Thanks

Adam

OUTSTANDING ! ! !

You are one of the few who actually went to the trouble of drilling the correct holes in the metal tubes that form the front legs of the A-frame towing structure! More Kudos!

As to the "Do it Again" comments: this would be a great place for a Bailey bridge!

Very Cool Dio...Well Done !

mil

Very, very impressive.

Adam you're to hard on yourself, your work is model master material,if you didn't win a bunch of trophies with that baby you had some stiff competition.
we struggling dioramists look to work like yours for inspiration,thanks for showing.
chris

thanks for the kind comments guys.

As for being too hard on myself... I have to be my own worst critic - I can see all the things that are wrong straight away. The longer you look the more issues reveal themselves. My biggest fear is having people tell me how good something is, to be outclassed by the fish in the bigger pond so to speak.. if that makes sense?

I model for competition. And the scariest part is I can spend 2 years building a dio and think I have done all I can to make it as good as possible with no compromises, turn up to a comp and someone else has done 5 years or more on some super masterpiece... and mine looks second rate! (it has happened). Therefore the standard has to be "world class". I dont have access to muiltiple other modeller's works - we are very isolated in model community here in Australia. I get to our local comp which is held once a year, has usually 600 - 800 entries, and maybe 30 - 50 armour entries, and maybe at best 10 - 12 dioramas. I am sad to say the quality of some (dioramas) is very poor and need alot of work to be competitive. There are some that are just exquisite, but usually from the traders that travel to the shows and bring their prize winning dios from other comps etc.. About every 3 or so years I manage to travel to the biggest comp in Australia in Melbourne. About 800 kilometers away over some pretty ordinary roads. It is risky travelling anywhere by car with a fragile diorama.. My operation catalyst dio was built with that trip in mind and extra glue and support was added to the buildings and details to be sure it would survive the trip.

The Melbourne comp quality and quantity is extraordinary. Also the judging is of different standard -from memory it is an IPMS schdule? not sure... Anyways it takes me a couple years to build something worth showing.

So I aspire to the standard I can see in magazines. This is now my habit as I have developed. I have about 30- 40 Verlinden magazines, and all of his diorama how to books, plus a few other specials. Cost me a fortune to collect, but here is the thing. In a million years I probably wont ever equal his standard. So that is the benchmark I set for quality. If I can ever equal what he does, I will be ecstatic! it does not matter who comes along after him, or how much better they are - why aspire to their level ? its not like I'm going to leapfrog Verlindens stuff in quality just because I aimed higher. I see his standard as achieveable. We have the advantage of pigments, powders, better paints, techniques, aftermarket (story opportunities) supplies and the internet to guide us as we build. So why cant we try to match him as average modellers ? few people in my opinion do. Yet so many seem to dislike the Verlinden name as if it has some stigma attached to it? I am certain Shep Paine credits Verlinden with developing drybrushing, a technique that raised the bar very very high indeed! He would have to be the most prolific producer of modelling literature dedicated to advancing the average modellers skills. LOL even I chuckle at how every diorama is a opportunity to sell a new product, but does'nt change how nice the finished products are to look at. It's about basics. Always remember the basics (Shep Paine is a Genius - because he wrote the basics in a way the average modeller if they just read and apply what is said can achieve a Verlinden standard of diorama, and I wonder why people try to beat those basics?)

If I am hard on myself it is because I fantasise about taking my dios to an international competition - in Europe or USA where people will of course admire the product, but will be more technical in their appreciations and criticisms. So although I would never get there (how on earth do you transport a large fragile heavy diorama overseas?) I like the idea of trying to build to standard that would be internationally competitive. That's a high benchmark and to be honest, I think in technical judging of a diorama (not just how it looks) I havent reached that standard yet by a long shot.

Hope that offers an insight to some of my diorama philosophy.

Adam

Great, or better still fantastic work Adam.

This is awesome. I was thinking Verlinden while looking at your dio especially the flak gun area. The shep Paine influence in the soldiers trying on hats. Great to know modern art. Keep striving!

Hi Adam, meant to answer you thread a week ago but other discussions pushed it back a bit.

I think I remember that dio from somewhere, did you show it back then on ML perhaps?
Anyway, this is very well done and I especially love the vegetation work in the water.
Interesting explanation of your situation at home regarding comps and so. I think twice to go on a expo 100 km from me and you guys drive 10x more! Respect for your dedication!

Greets
Claude