Hi again all, I have more pics of my latest dio, which I finished on Sunday night. I call it Attempt At Arnhem, and it features Dragon's Red Devils figures, Tamiya's OLD 251 semitrack, and Verlinden's house ruin kit & base. My dio of the PaK is actually a couple months old, and our club photographer got me the pics of this dio a month early, so it's not like I did the two dios real quick! :-)
Ok, a bit of a background on the dio. The 251 is of course filled with flaws in the kit, and did not have the back rest seats, but I normally build OOTB anyways, plus funds were lacking to really go nuts on upgrades, but oh well, I like to see what I can do with what I've got.
All washes were artist oils, followed by drybrushing, and mig's brick dust here and there. I wanted to portray the scene as the semitrack has been disabled, and Jerry has severely hot-footed it out of Dodge, leaving some supplies behind, and the Red Devils figures are engaged in a skirmish. This was my first attempt at a wrecked vehicle, so I did not go too nuts on damage, just had the running gear damaged, so the vehicle's out of commission.

Again, it is in my Gallery, and the Title is "Attempt At Arnhem". Comments/Critisms welcome as always.
Enjoy,
Kelly

Another great diorama KellyZak. Love the whole layout, the action, the figures ... all actually! The only thing that Id pick out, is the tracks on the 251. Where its damaged the top run is sitting un-naturally. Not much you can do with the kit tracks ...they are rumored to be the single worst thing about this kit.
I suppose one could also say that if a vehicle was dissabled, all the stowage would be taken also. Maybe if the Jerrys had to leave quickly they would have come under fire ... how do you show this? Maybe a body??
Just rambling now.
Overall this is an excellent dio. Good use of your resources. Its great to see a nice dio with a basic kit and figures. Looking forward to seeing more of your stuff!

I like the way you positioned the wheels where the halftrack was hit

Once again antoher very nicely done dio. I like the layout and weathering, I agree with Plastic Battle, there isnt much you can do with those tamiya tracks. I cant wait to see your future efforts I am impressed with what you have shown so far. Cheers Kevin

Hey Kelly, another goodie from you! I'd only pick up a couple of points - the jerry can doesn't appear to be secured in any way, and slings on the figures weapons; other than that nice work mate.
Allied figures from Kelly - you'll be doing an Brit tank next!! LOL

very ncie dio Kelly. i liked the damage on the 251 so much and the painting of building is great.
congrats

well thats a very nice work there. Lots of good painting bits and the damaged truck seems like have been given a lot of work

BRAVO

Hi Kelly , one minor point on the Denison jacket , the pockets and sleeves are made from seperate pieces of cloth . So the camoflage pattern should not match up . it should end as a seperate piece sewn on . if you want a scan of the actual pattern , contact me at [email protected] title it Denison and I will send it out cheers ian

Wonderful diorama. The story is solid, the layout supports everything about it.
From the bottom up, all techniques are strong.
If I were to improve on anything it would simply be to add a bit more smoke damage at the impact point on the 251. By the way Tamiya's 251 is hands down the worst Tamiya kit I have built. The tracks do leave A Lot to be desired.

Hi gang, sorry for the late reply, I got free tickets to the new Metallica movie last night so I was stuck in a severely hot theatre with no AC for 2.5 hours! :-)
Thanks for the comments, the 251 was really getting to me during assembly, yes it is a horrible kit to build! Dave, the jerrycan is actually resting on a hook that I had to make out of some PE strips left over from another project, it's just a little hard to see in the pics. I don't know about doing those Brit tanks yet, though Dave...ha ha ha I know that I'd forgotten to add straps to the guns, I did one for the kneeling guy whose got the Bren gun...
Ian, thanks for the info on the pockets on the dennison, I'll contact you about the color pattern, because over the weekend I managed to score the new SAS figure set from Dragon, so it will help when I eventually get around to doing them.
I would've liked to put a body into the scene, but alas, I didn't have one handy, and our hobby store doesn't have any in stock. I could've went online and ordered one, but I couldn't wait a few weeks for delivery!

I may switch genres here for a bit, I've been itching to get started on my Tamiya Nissan Xanavi Skyline kit now for a couple of months...

Great diorama,

being an "Arnhem enthousiast" myself, I know to appreciate this effort. Good quality modeling on all fronts.

If I was allowed to nitpick on a thing or two, I would like to suggest to try to improve the faces of the figures a bit...they are quite good, but improving them just a bit more would really add more quality to the overall scene.

Second, and last, I would change the camouflage on the helmet. This looks to be a bit too flat. Perhaps a thick tissue can do the trick...

But like I said....this is nitpicking. I know what I like and this is definately what I like !!

Yeah, faces are not my strong points, I've tried doing all of the blending things with both acryllics and oils, and no luck... :-) All I do is paint a flesh tone, some light grey for the eyeballs, and take a 005 black pen for the iris. Paint hair color, and then ad a burnt umber wash.

Well, perhaps my step-by-step series on how to make a diorama can help you a bit.

with two weeks the second part will be published. After that there will be a part that covers the painting of a face in acrylics. Since I'm a beginner at that too, it won't be too hard to tune in on that

Just follow the steps in the article and who knows.....

Great dio KellyZak