Hey,

Finished my dio ("The Last of the Muzzle-Loaders") yesterday, quite proud of it. Only my third dio to date and my largest as well. The Figures (except the driver) and 81mm Mortar are from Tamiya's US Mortar and Gun set. The Jeep is Tamiya as well, it is the 35219 one.
The Jeep was a pleasant build, the driver had a large gap between his hand and the wheel, thus the folded up map.The figures fit was bad, with large hollows where the arms joint.

The French flag was made from paper, the weapon next to the french flag is a MAS 36, the idea was to show that one of the crewman had been soveniour collecting in France. The base was built up of florists foam which worked nicely and was light, a great improvement compared to heavy plaster of paris bases.

Thanks for all the help in the various related forums to this dio, I really enjoyed this one. I was afraid I would not finish in time but alas still one week to go.

So tell me what you think (honestly), I can only get better (I hope).

More photos of the jeep at http://put.url.here

Erik












sorry if the pics took long

Very cool. I like the trench setup. I would like to see it from overhead.
From my opinion, it looks like the figures might need a wash. (useing the radio operator's mouth as an example.)
Marc

yes i agree with Petro.
u should give a over head pic.
the dio over all is done well the sand bags are well placed.
the figues are done well also

Good construction and layout.
The figures could use some shading and highlighting to liven them up and give a bit more definition, especially at the cuffs and bretwwen the fingers. Dry brushing the uniforms with a lightened base color will give more depth as well.

I agree with everything everyone else has said here and beleive that otherwise it is an excellent diorama. Great composition, positioning of the figures, etc. Outstanding!
Kyle

hey there Congratulations on completing ( i am still trying to !!). You ve done a nice job there and i like very much your trench construction and setup. Some notices to help besides whats already said (which i agree)
1)The area near the mortar crew is a lil empty of thrown stuff that the soldiers would have in there especially if living for some days (shells, equipment, etc)
2) The sanbags though very fine i think they look brand new and miss some sag or irregularity to make em more real. and also i think that just one row of bags could not give much protect so in these points 2-3 rows at least should be needed.
3) The french flag seems really unused especially if its taken as a souvenir and needs some weathering dirtying i think
4) The operators grip on the handset could be lil more tight
5)Some more weathering could occur on the jeep as they were treated really bad!!!
6) The rifle of the jeep driver could be by his side cause as there is no codriver , he rifle could get away on high speed driving.
I hope i gave some lil help.
Nice neat work

Hi Erik,
This is a good diorama.Willys is good built and painted,figures are old but good painted. They all need some shading and weathering. The diobase is very well,I like th trench so much. Thinking this is the cover up campaign,your dio is a 100% well done work. ....but but but :-) next time you should build your own sandbags,own build sand bags are always more realistic and please add gun and helmet straps to your figures.

Tried to find something like milliput to handbuild the sandbags, but alas none. Tried to build some with Das Pronto but that looked terrible.

For the flag, me thinks i should have used toiletpaper instead of paper.

the only problem with hindsight is that it is to late!!

Thanks for your comments

Don't use toilet paper for doing flags as tp is designed to breakdown in water.....all you'd eand up with is a whole lot of mush.....use kleenex nose tissue instead.

Nice job Bren really like the way you have it layed out. My first dio I used the figures.

thanks dioman, read about the toilet paper, the author made it sound like the "stuff"

thanks

Erik