hey, im new to the forums and to the diorama building world also, anyway, i am interested in starting construction on a scene depicting the assault of the 47 ronin on Kira's home. i have no i dea where to start, where to get the figures, landscape, or materials for the house, any help would be much appreciated

Ola Cabong!

First of all welcome to the site :-)

Im also a bit in progress with that scene so i guess i can help you just a bit.

here is the link with some interesting ideas and photos:
http://www.117.ne.jp/~akorosi/english/emaindex.htm

The lanscape and the house its best to scratchbuild (some of modelers here are good at that and i guess they will give you more pointers there)

The figures will be the problem, if we are talking about 1:35 scale, only awailable sets will be old sets from Tamiya which are a bit hard to find theese days, but they contain realistic figures of some of the most important characters from 47 samurais.

I have a 1:35 fig (thanks Envar!) of samurai Jujiro Hazama (the one with the spear, the guy who actually killed lord Kira) and i have the same figure in 1:16 so im planing a vignette with only one figure and the front gate becouse i dont have any more figs.


After 2 hours of the raid,Hazama Jujiro found out Kira Kozukenosuke who was hiden in a charcoal house.


If you wanna bleed you eyes out with 1:72 scale i suggest converting the figures from latest Zvezda kits of samurai armies.

For any more questions or help pls ask here or pm me :-)

cheers
Mirko

Good question. I have to admit, I know nothing of the subject. I do know diorama's though.

I would start with as much research as possible, library, museums, internet, this forum and others.

The idea is to get enough information to be able to visualize the scene. Then plan it out, do some rough scetches on paper to get an idea of what parts you want to include in the dio. Do you want the whole house, just the door, the approach,......

Then start to gather more specific information about each component, uniforms, architecture etc. At this point you can branch out from item specific research. Do general architecture research.

As far as materials go, oriental figures are pretty common on ebay, they may get pricey.

As you go through the planning stage try and moch up as much as possible to get a better feel for how things will fit. Use paper or cardboard for this and you don't need a lot of detail here.
There are a few samari dioramas here so you will get answers.