G'day Guys
well in my most latest diorama, the 1/72 Somme-1916, i made alot of shell craters, now i was fairly pleased with them, but not 100% satisfied, not the actual "hole" but the piled up dirt around the rim.
so can someone who has done this, please tell me how to make them look a bit more realistic.
cheers

This is how I would do it.
1. Lay down the ground work in styrofoam.
2. Cut out basic hole shapes.
3. add a rolled 'snake' of milliput around the outter edge of each hole. Get a bit random and flatten it out here and there or make it 'out of round' too. This is just a support for more stuff
4. Cover the entire thing with spackle as a base coat, normal ground smooth and thin
5. let it dry
6. make a mix of fine sand and spackle and spread it over the holes and rims. This will give you a more natural texture to the 'dirt' that has just been ripped open.
7. As the spackle is trying you can also take a wire brush and 'dapple' (poke) extra texture into the mixture.
8. Also take some small clean kitty litter or pebbles and push them into the drying mix.

G'day Scott, thats basically what i did, except for the part where u suggested to use milliput for the basis of the rim, might give that a try, it would work alot better than broken off bits of foam!
cheers mate thanks

This is the progress on my latest and first dio, it has a shell hole in it. heres the pic






any comments I would like.

G'day Harrison.
that looks great, how did you do it?
cheers

i took styrofoam and cut a hole into it with my dremel. then i took the foam putty i was using and made the rims and inside. I used the foam putty for the regular ground also.

Tsunami,

Good looking shellhole, but I would make the build up of the edge a little lower. The size compared to the Stug looks a bit out of scale.

Henk

Thanks Henk, I didnt realise it was so unrealistic till you told me that. Do you have any idea how I can trim this off?

It's not unrealistic, and with some groundwork (like sand etc) and paint it will look fine. If you want you could try to make the edges flow into the groundwork at less steep an angle. A shell impact tends to spread the earth over a wider area, but in the compact space of a diorama you sometimes need to emphasize things to give them impact. Just keep it in mind with your next shell hole.

Henk

thank you henk very much.

Hello,
1st Like Henk said, you could flatten it out a bit.
2nd Sorry I have never made craters before, cannot help.

Komet

I love the pic of the crater very nice... I am working on a smaller crater (1:144) like a mortar hit on cobblestone-yes, I figured I will try it after seeing a 1:72 premade dio set up like that.

I use Plaster of Paris all the way... first make a tamplet or Master for the dio display-as a whole or in pieces-make the cast. I then use my exacto knife to carve out the crater... takes some time and is quite messy but the one benefit is that after I am done... if I just scoop out the powder left over, the broken chunks and so on I can move them to build a ridge around the crater... the dirt buildup etc.. it also provides with an excelent texture for loose dirt and dust.

actually thats a 1/35th

Just a little help (in 1/72nd scale shell craters)

If you come around a Matchbox M3 Stuart, you can see that the Diorama pieces included as a Shell crater it looks very authentic...

The angle of the pireced ground are more open than the one that you made, but remember that craters depend on the type of shell, ground and weather!

Hope I could help,

Skipper