Hello Dave, truly appreciate your comments my bro & your continued interest on this ongoing project.

The mosque journey begins - finally!!!

She brings many fine jewelry items to make this grand mosque colorful & beautiful. Let's take a look...


She will have beautiful mosaic color patterns...





But she displays scars from many years of battle...


The carnage from savage BBIED fragmentation explosions stains the walls with blood and body matter...


This is where she lives...


This is how it begins... Draw it up, size it, cut it, dry fit it, design it...








More to come!

JGphins

Comming along very nice. Keep up the good work.

Thanks Marco!

Good evening everyone, for tonight's update I wanted to share how I give blue-foam some plaster-character!

Apply a thin layer of ordinary house hold plaster



Sand lightly, repeat as needed






Initial floor tile cuts...


Thanks for looking!

JGphins

I LOVE WORK THAT IS BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE! The only bad thing is, that if you happen to enter it in a contest, the judges would say it is all wrong! LOL!!!!!!!!! GOOD WORK BROTHER!

Thank you Pete for your comment, it's appreciated. This labor of love will at some point be donated to my brothers at the reserve center where I served 2007-2016.

After my last mod to Iraq in support of OND in 2011, a few of my brothers suggested that I build a diorama in remembrance of our tour.

No specific location/building will be modeled here the intent is to model daily clearing efforts of High Value Target(HVT) operations conducted In Vicinity Of (IVO) Mosul, Iraq around the 2007 timeline. My work consist of many random visions of what those hellish days felt like to our nation's bravest men and women whom proudly and honorably served and many paid the ultimate sacrifice. The filthy dirty streets, the heavy loads of trash everywhere, the endless street side vendors/markets, the smell, the flies, and even the creepy sounds of their call to prayer music in the distance...

As a 35G Geospatial Analyst, it was my upmost honor and duty to serve as my brothers "Eyes in the Sky". Many soldiers were provided with a cleared route to their destination but many others were not cleared in time by our drones or QRFs assets...

And so, those are the moments and hectic scenes that I will attempt to capture and display on this project. The ambush, the VBIEDs, the casualties, the cordon and search, the rubble, and the tons of sand everywhere!

No judge can judge that.

Hoping I do it justice !

JGphins

J.
I never got to do models for any of my units. I built some for Vets and of course the models I have built and are building for the 3rd ID Museum.
I remember those damn smells and DAMN FLIES when is was in Saudi and Iraq. You would look out to the distance and think your seeing a pool of water on the ground, but it would be those DAMN FLIES!!!!!!!! Getting woken up while your where snug in your bunk by that DAMN prayer music, and not to mention SCUD alerts!!!!!! argh! You guys had/have mortar attacks/alerts, we had SCUD alerts/attacks.

P.
SCUD alerts!!!!!! argh!

Those nasty latrines !!!!!

Those suspicious looking LOCAL contractors, especially the COOKS!!!!

I don't miss a beat - but - will never forget the cost!

Hell J, I still try to tell the VA something is wrong with me because one night, while I was on guard duty of our ammo point, they came a sprayed "pesticides that where harmless to us." All of a sudden, I have that Vetaligo disease and no one in my family has had it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And speaking of latrines, I will just say this, Battalion Commander catching something going on in a latrine!!!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! GROSS!

Here's a new one...

So I went to the VA for pain meds to deal with my ARMY Standard Issued L4-5 herniated disc & the freaking student therapist ended up herniating me A NEW one S-1 !!!!

WTF - these guys just cant get RIGHT !

Ah, our "friends" at the VA the gift that keeps on giving... You have to love it when they break you worse than you were when you first came to them for treatment .

Joaquin, I'm loving what you're doing with the mosque, the scratchbuilt portion ties in seamlessly - if you weren't familiar with the Verlinden ruin you'd think it was meant to be that size. Great work, Brother! Straight up doing right by your brothers and sisters, man.

Thank you John, appreciate ya stopping by and comments.

The jointing section of the trimmed foam board to the verliden kit provided a few challenges to tie them in seamlessly. The mosque foundation base has a few steps in height and the elevation was hard to cut due to odd shape of base.

However, with time, all is possible. I once again got side tracked from my set work plan but progress is progress. I will try to focus the next few days in setting the final foundation work to the second city block. Once the plaster sets, the diorama will take on it's final look of what she was meant to look like. Then I will need to scratchbuilt a new building 18"L X 3"D to fill the gap between the market and mosque walled fence perimeter. After that, the fun part begins... The painting, weathering, and detailing of many items such as trash and brick rubble additions. Making both sections come together as one huge scene!

LOL - I'll try to finish before I turn 80.

JGphins

Hi folks, I figured this would be a great time to bring back some of my previous progress pictures that got removed due to the photo-bucket issues...

I've selected a few Work in Progress (WIP) items to demonstrate a brief start to current progress status...

City block 1 of 2:




MRAP:






Mosque gate:




Mosque window frame:



The Corner Market:





Some of my favorites - but still WIP...




All work shown still represents the very early stages of the entire building process required. I estimate that it's at perhaps 20% completion rate currently (Apr 2018).

However, many images shown here I believe truly begin to represent what I envisioned many years ago. It's been an amazing fun and challenging project thus far but I am happy to share my work here with everyone from the beginners to the advanced modelers.

Thanks for looking & happy modeling!

JGphins

Update:

Prime, Paint, Stage...





Amazing what just a little color does for the visual effect!

JGphins

Hi JG - thanks for reposting the "lost" WIP! And the new work with color looks great - keep building!

Cheers
Nick

Hey Nick, thanks!

Decided to stage a couple pictures since block 2 has begun to take progress.

The Over-head view:


The layout of buildings, streets, and sidewalks currently at 80% complete.

The pending 20% represents the need to design a new building 18'L x 3"D to cover the backdrop street level view.

The ambush...


By covering the middle section of the backdrop with an additional foreground structure the viewer's eye automatically captures various up-close, mid-range, and far distance objects...



Much more to come!

JGphins

Wow no words you are a master builder

Thanks Oliver! Appreciate your compliment my brother. I think am far from being a master builder!!! There are many here who are far better and I study their work to improve my craft whenever time permits.

My goal is to create a frozen moment in time depicting a dramatic urban battle scene. It's important for me to try and capture as many real-world aspects as possible to make this frozen story seem real.

I'm currently working on various layers related to the visual effect of backdrop vs foreground objects. An example of this is shown on a few of the pictures above and below... the positioning of the street light pole is a good example. I am attempting to blend-in the utility poles in the backdrop with the utility pole in the foreground. Once ALL possible objects are tied in one can develop countless ways to create a vivid 3D effect - excited to try this technique when its time to simulating a ..... FRAG - OUT - Explosion effect!!!





Working on plastering the roof of the mosque expansion. Used a new technique to simulate battle damaged concrete... Not sure if it's going to work but progress pics soon to come!

JGphins

Don't know how I missed this over 3 years, but been gone doing 1/6 scale, that is some nice work there.
A large undertaking indeed,looks damn good so far.
Glad I did not have to go to that place as was out in 83.
Not the same military I was in , that is for sure.
I would of got myself in trouble I think with those kind of folks.

Great job man , for sure!
Moreno

Thank you Jeff and Moreno, I appreciate both your comments and I'm glad you like the diorama's progress.

Today's update: Mosque Roof

I am attempting to scratch built a wicked 3D BBIED (Body Borne Improvised Explosive Device) explosion inside the mosque.

Story time boys & girls:

This is a Unclassified Mission briefing soldier:

Location, Mosul, Iraq - Summer 2007.

United State Army forces are conducting HVT capture or kill operations in search of the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - leader of the Islamic State of Iraq.

The US Forces are making daily progress in clearing huge urban sectors and pushing the enemy back but our friendly forces are taking heavy causalities.

The sectarian violence is at it's deadliest point ever in the summer of 2007. Various religious factions continue to clash as they violently kill as many as they can by detonating explosives strapped to their body.

BREAK---------------

That's were the explosion in the mosque came from just in case you were wondering...

Story to be continued...

Anyways, here's a few pictures of the roof section's build. This is a WIP at about 50% complete. I am on step 10 of 25 to achieve my desired look.

The cut:


The plastering:


Some detailing:


Initial painting:


Some detailing:




More to come folks!!! Time for the other 15 steps which include loads of metal rebar framing and rubble.

JGphins

Joaquin - staggering…that this passed me by for so long, but more importantly a staggering project. So much detail – seriously, that mosque window frame alone! I’m taking notes on your backdrop techniques, they look excellent - although your final April 26 image shows exactly my concern for Anthropoid, power-pole shadows on the backdrop. Do you plan to forklift this outdoors to photograph in natural light? Whatever, I expect to remain duly staggered for some time – awesome work

JPhins great work my brother, love you're efforts in gaining more realism to this frozen moment in time.

I know you started w/ HO Mod. RR way back when and your use of the backdrop really helps to tell the story here. Great overall scene.
Ok so you say you are not a Master but this looks perfect!

Cheers
Dave

Thank you Tim for such positive feedback, glad you like the ongoing work progress, very appreciated.

It's been such an awesome experience doing this ambitious project even though it has provided some challenges, expenses, and time away from the MRS as well !

That mosque window was some work to deal with - hoping I can repeat the same outcome for the other 4 remaining!!!

The lighting, needs work but not too concerned at this early point. The display splits in two parts and they can be hand carried out side for natural light. Perhaps soon I'll stage it out there for a picture or two...

Happy to share any technique, got to pay it forward.


JGphins

Dave thanks a lot my brother for the super positive feedback and your continued interest.

Yes sir, all of my techniques in display here were gained from HO scale modeling. It's a bit more challenging creating a lot more details due to larger scale but it also provides greater visual effects so it's a win, win situation.

Thanks for looking!

JGphins

JG,
Hope your keeping good notes on paper and of course pictures. I've seen lots of big projects like this end up lost on the internet. I am pretty sure, your work could or would be published in a stand alone issue of a magazine or something like that.

I live in a house with a two car garage, but we are renting. If I had my own house, I would defiantly do a project like yours!!!!!