A diorama (or vignette?) about a Finnish artillery Sgt at training camp is finishing very soon! Only things missing here are the gun display and some accessories.
Here´s a couple of lo-res teaser pics, also featuring a blinding flash effect.
Just wait. If there is fog coming early in the next morning as today, I´ll take some pics just before the sunrise...That´s the time of the day this is supposed to be happening.
There is always at least one guy at the gun, and when the gun display starts beeping, shooting coordinates will follow instantly. The guarding sgt is trying to wake up the boys at the tent...mood is the main thing here! First snow and everything...












Toni

Toni,
From what I can see it looks great! Not sure about the cloudy Finnish sky though.

Keep up the good work (and take more pics when it's sunny out! -- or cloudy with more light). hehe

Jim

Toni you vignette (or Dio) builder...

you did it once again. Another beautiful dio has been added to your collection!!

Please keep up this good work !! Just love to see your dio's.

About the mood....the atmosphere......it's there ! you also succeeded on that part !

Hehe. I will not torture you with ugly pics from the actual case, but this is pretty much how those pics came up--taken 5.20 A.M.
This is the effect I´m after, in reality those conditions are not always so good for photographing!
I´m still thinking about wiring the gun display with red led to show the coordinates, it would really be something! I´m just not sure how to do it yet...
It´s funny, somehow I end up painting the base plate light grey when there is snow involved in the dio. At least it gives the terrain a feel of more detail and contrast! It´s like framing a painting...



Toni

Nice work!
How was the gun kit to work with? Is it the Pit Road kit or the Skif (ICM?) kit?
Your early am pics really capture the mood.
Might be difficult to get the coordinates to show up in a 1/35th display, unless you make a full sized display as part of the dio base...

Mike

It´s the Skif kit. It builds up ok except the wheel axels that were misaligned. The "PE" set (that looks like copper) is thick but gives a few nice handles. The instructions are messy and take a while to study. I had to do some stages three times over again because I wasn´t following the order shown in the instructions And all of this because I wanted to make painting easier...
I also scratchbuilt the muzzle cleaning rod parts and straps for those. Usually I don´t care too much about being over-accurate but this time it´s personal...
But it was cheap and the only one I could get my hands in to. Good quality for seven euros!


Well, I´m not trying to do the numbers visible, just some clear parts in the display to let the light thru. The whole display is something like 15x17 mm in 1:35 scale...

Thanks for the comments!

Toni

Toni--This is really great. My favorite picture is actually the one taken outside with the cloudy background. The bluish tint really gives it the atmosphere I think you were looking for. I love the snow/frost. How did you do it (or did you explain this in another post)?

Nic

The snow/frost is good ol´ hair spray & food soda recipe. Just sprayed over the whole thing from straight above and threw the soda on that. I figured if I want the snow to sit naturally, I have to apply it from above.. :o ...wow. What an idea. For some parts I first applied the soda, blew away any excess and carefully brushed over it with a big soft brush. Only the bottom "frost-like" layer stayed attached. The soda is to my eye very good for this scale. Sometimes it may look a bit coarse but frost does different patterns in nature and the soda blinks nicely when light hits it.
The terrain was treated with soda also.

The muddy weathering of the gun was made using only pastel chalks with a little drop of water so that some of the powder formed chunks and no extra grain was needed. Even the colour of the mud matches with my references .

Toni

A few pictures more...
I think even Jim can see the action now!







Just noticed when I took these photos...there are several handles missing, including the trigger lever...I dropped this thing in the paper bin and some parts fell off. I thought I found them all but apparently I didn´t.

Toni

Toni,

Missing parts or not, new pictures = new admiration from this side of Europe.... Just look at the middle picture... the beauty of the colours in that pics...just amazing.

Besides modeling, you do quite some good photography too !! You MUST write this book we've been talking about some posts ago..

The pics...made with a digicam or a SLR camera ?

Danny, the camera I used for these is the Sony DSC-F505V. A very good camera despite of its age, capable for 1856x1392 pixels. Good optics as the camera is built around the objective.
The bad thing is that it belongs to my father .
Ok I can use it every once in a while.. :-) :-) :-)

Toni

Toni, great work... The groundwork is amazing; snow and frost on the gun, too... One thing about "soda snow", though. I've tried using soda for snow and it sure looks good, but over the time my "soda snow" turned yellowish.. I don't know if it happens regularly with soda, or is it just my experience...

Mario M.

Maki, I heard about that thing before. However, the only thing that turned yellowish in my White Death vignette was the white glue. I think it´s about the agent you use to attach the soda more than the soda itself. If you apply a new layer of hair spray over soda, it tends to go yellowish. But if you manage to do it with one layer, I haven´t noticed that to happen. If you want to be sure it stays white, one solution could be to use some thinned white latex paint to attach the soda.
I´ve also seen great snow in dioramas made of baby powder.



Toni

I've heard great things about Microbaloons... Many big-shot dioramists are using that stuff and claim it is by far the best thing for simulating snow.

Mario M.

Phew! Awesome pics, I've to say. Looks very, very, very authentic. Even too much cause this reminds me of my artillerycamp back in lapland too.. oh the times me "played" with 122 H 63! Keep up the good work!

Marko N.