Trees are lookin the part Tim , nicely done !!

Trees company. ... I could not resist that one!🤣
Looking fantastic!🍺
—mike

Tanks yew tree & top o’ da mornin t’ya begorrah…no offence intended I’ve got some Irish blood too…explains a lot eh? Hey Ski maybe you could use some parsley for your amazing big-scale courtyard with the hog I can’t recall ever seeing finished (?)

Hey Bro, both times they got finished, but numero uno was found under boot! Bahahahaaaaaaa. Actually, they are delicate kits and the first got far beyond repair, but the second is done and ready for the big dio. I'll get the thread going and start off from the beginning. Keep er rollin Bro, looking good!!

Shouldn't it be Tim O'Martin then?

Thanks Ski welcome back & hey Erwin if my maternal grandmother (and mother) had kept her Irish maiden name then I’d be DioraGoggins baby! But hey it’s enough that I make Clooney look like Elephant Man…what kinda Irish name’s that anyway, O’lephantman?

So where am I - well apart from clearly delusional it became harder to see the wood for the trees - I started this garden thinking it would be difficult, for a while it looked like um a walk in the park, then it got more difficulter by the hour. The hairspray was a bust, worse than the contact adhesive so back to the latter & I blew an entire 2nd can to fix the 13 trees. The chives were a bust mainly because they stank, the whole apartment smelled like an onion & garlic processing factory so back to the parsley.

One bright moment was the discovery (in our recently unpacked kitchen boxes) of this piece of essential diorama equipment…



…like bringing a flamethrower to a knife fight, pruning in a quarter of the time. Depending on the weather I’ll post some outdoor photos tomorrow or Monday

Tim, Nice repurposing.✂️ Somehow the beak of a Kookaburra comes to mind! 😂

Cheers!🍺
—mike

Superb attention to details on display 10 fold! Thoroughly enjoyed during my morning cup of Joe. The foliage turned out great too. Thanks for sharing brother, stay safe!

JG

Cheers guys, as promised…























Not done yet, all I see are faults. There shouldn’t be any daylight coming through along the stretch where the car’s parked so a 14th tree & maybe a bush required to fill those gaps. I swear this stuff’s growing on its own, the uber-pruner’s required again because some foliage is still too close to the pillars. The unintended bare emerald green gauze really jars when the sun catches it, I’m reluctant to spray because the odds against nailing the right green(s) are too high so another parsley blizzard’s preferable. I gave up on central conifers - too difficult & too unimportant.

Other issues – I’ll be trashing the car’s tilt (folded roof) and making a better one soon, meanwhile driver Klein’s on half-rations for failing to dust the Merc yet again. Maybe you can add to the list.

Me super-critical? Nah…the shadows are perfect

That is inspiring stuff there and spectacular work. Some of the outdoor black and whites pass for reality and I would not know they weren't if viewed at another source somewhere. Brilliant!
J

I love the way your trees turn out. I also thought at first they looked too dense. You herb scissors does miracles...


A pity that you decided not to add the conifers... They would have broken the colours and shapes of the other trees...

Woof!! The B&W pics are spooky real Tim, love it. Only the creator can see the boofs, cause I don't see em, lol. One thing I did notice is the pesky dust on the trunk, but in a test shot they are always there.

This beast is really coming along "museum quality"!

Hi Tim,

Damn, that's some amazing work, and some great photorealistic images, especially the non-colour ones.

Cheers, ,

G

Very cool Tim , the b/w's are awesome !!

at first, i thought b&w photos where reference.....
incredible work!
ciao
edo

Thanks so much for the reassurance guys, I’m sure you all know how easy it is to get too close to see the overall impression as others see it & I’m no exception. Agreed the mono shots do work pretty well, maybe because I slightly tweaked the brightness & contrast to fade the common unrealistic sharpness of close-up photography. Of all the 30-odd photos taken in that session I think the most successful is perhaps the most boring - the 3rd mono shot. Hard to define what makes it look more realistic than, for example, the 4th mono shot but there seems to be a big difference - is it just a fractionally different camera height? Or a less obviously plastic figure due to distance?

If anyone’s considering trying this tree-method I belatedly offer the most important tip of all, if it wasn’t already obvious from those colour photos. I didn’t thin out the green gauze material (Micro-Mark Poly fiber #84922) enough. I did use a small bristle brush to tease it out almost to single strands in places before snagging it onto the branches, but I left far too many denser blobs which is what shows through when the “leaves” don’t completely cover them.

Incidentally the other reason the trees must be removable (apart from for storage) is so I can take photos of the action in any direction as if standing on the curving sidewalk i.e. the camera has to be located in the park. Which means some of the very fragile railings will also need to be detachable, something I’ve only just realised…maybe hinging (? that doesn’t look right…hingeing?) putting hinges on them at one end so they glide open like gates might reduce the risk of irretrievably bending the PE out of shape

Slipped into neutral for a while after dealing with some maintenance issues & further modifying the trees…





The gauze-green’s still shows in a few places but I’m not chasing it down any more. Apart from here…



I knew I needed a break after my first attempt at the long fence - here’s the corrected 2nd attempt, apologies for blur but maybe you might still guess what I did wrong first time…



Yep glued the posts @ 90° to the footing. This is one half (68 cms) of the (SLOPING) straight…



Seems they don’t do black veils in diamond-pattern chain-link so I settled for this (bridal or funereal? I said No to the Dress anyhow) as it’s just about to scale…



Maybe he’s got odd socks on too. The House had its own steps up to the road…







Sure getting my money’s worth from the Tram kits’ spare street-furniture sprues. The metal gate’s not secured yet which is why it ain’t straight between the posts. A tad more weathering needed plus weeds & these will be the perches for some of MiniArt’s funky pigeons. The 3rd post goes further along the other half of that side & the chain-link continues all the way beyond it, becoming more dilapidated...



There’s still plenty of room for a moose...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE

Hi Tim,

Looking great, the fence and gate will look impressive once installed.

Also the view taken down in the gardens looking towards the underpass gives a wonderfully atmospheric feel to the build, .

Cheers, ,

G

Tim,

I've been following your project, and wonder whether you've come across a fascinating book on the subject ... 'The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich - The True Story of Operation Anthrapoid'' by Callum Macdonald. It's published by Berlinn Ltd (yes, the spelling is correct). ISBN 978 84341 036 2. Certainly worth a read, as it covers both the June 1942 event, and the historical background to Heydrich's reign of terror in Czechoslovakia. I'm in the UK, and picked up my copy in a local book retailer, 'The Works'.

Paul

Trees are lookin good yep. Nice start on the chain link as well. Really coming along and a nice overall Tim "fix" for me this morning.
J

Tim,

I've said it before - magisterial!

The photos - especially the black & white ones - seem to create a very real, slightly chilling, atmosphere. I almost feel you should be producing some Gestapo figures as a sot of "after the event" scenario, but I'm sure the last thing you need is more tasking(!)

'Love it.

Brian

Well, I didn't catch your boof, but I do see more progress, so I'm calling it all good.

Ruck Over Bby!

Beauty work Tim , excellent repurposing of parts !!

You can find moose figures on ebay ........

Cheers JR, Ski & G here’s hoping! Thanks Brian sure when the dust’s settled I couldn’t really walk away from all this without trying to replicate those forensics photos too. I see Uniforms research in my future…those guys seen in some of the crime-scene pics would presumably have been SS and/or military Police – was there an actual “Gestapo” uniform apart from the regulation leather trench-coat? (P.S. I’m in no immediate hurry for an answer!) Thanks Glenn I was beginning to think no moose was good moose.

And thanks Paul for following this madness although looks like maybe you missed the early stages – see near foot of page 4 (April 2018), that excellent book’s been my prime text ever since, so much so it’s beginning to fall apart…rather like its owner. Superb background-setting although there were some errors describing the Event, as though MacDonald hadn’t read Pannewitz’s “crime scene” report although it’s listed in the bibliography.

One example was the misidentification (or mistranslation) of the agents’ side-arms as “revolvers”. Another was a somewhat confusing account of where the three agents assembled/loitered & where they parked their bicycles. Also there was no mention that when Heydrich pulled out the Walther from his door pocket, with Gabcik only a few metres away, he found it wasn’t loaded (Pannewitz). So there was no Wild West exchange of fire between them as MacDonald claimed, it was pure Keystone Cops gun-play firstly between driver Klein & Kubis, then Klein & Gabcik during the pursuit…once Klein put the accidentally ejected clip back in his pistol.

Also, I’m not aware of any corroboration (from Pannewitz or other) that the grenade’s blast launched Heydrich’s SS dress uniform, laid out on the back seat, up onto the overhead tramlines…but it’s such a great image it’ll be hard to resist. Even so MacDonald’s overall depth of research has been invaluable & as long as you’re not making a diorama about it, I’d recommend it without reservation

Trying to nail every detail can prove taxing, but that's the fun of the build, the beauty of this "Sport". Every now and then ya gotta go with your gut feeling on some things, the naysayers will always attempt to smack you for it. But remember, they ain't building it, you are. Armchair qtrbacks are a dime a dozen, especially in todays world, lol.

Throw that coat over the tram lines, that would add artistic license and add visual interest to the incredible scene.