Hello all

I have a little story for you all.
After I finished my contestdio "DISTRACTION" I decided to go on to the next project. It was a quite big project The church of St. Mere Eglise with the Paratrooper hangin` in it. I was planning to make it of the same foam where I made "DISTRACTION" in but it wasn`t efficient for every 1 cm thick foamplate I spoiled almost 2 cm foam from the blocks I use. I know this because I tried. I was a bit dissapointed and am still searching for either a efficient way to cut the foam or a other thickness of foam in wich I almost got a breakthrough.
But back to what I really want to say. I had some foamplates left from my tryout about one cm thick and decided to make a building out of it. Now I got the big lines of the building and guess what, I got struck by a carpetbombardement of Modellingblues and I don`t know what to do with it any more. I know exactly how the building is going to look like from the outside but I want to make a dio with it. Here comes the problem: Due to my modellingblues I can`t figure out a story for my dio. Don`t know in wich city/country don`t know what the function of it was (is it a hotel or the house of a very important person). Is it occupied by soldiers If yes what kind (it has to be a ww2 dio) What will be inside the house what outside.
I don`t know therefor I need your help.
Everybody that got a great Idea and please post it and I will see what I can do with it
I got a base with the measurements of 35cm by 28cm
the large wall of the building is 24cm the short wall is 8cm
here are the pictures





these are the pictures The fallschirmjager is just to show the size of the building
Ok please help me out let`s make this dio together

One subject that I find missing from a majority of dioramas is the civilian aspect of the war. I just finished reading a book titled "Dresden 1945", about the fire-bombing of that city. Upon seeing your ruined building it immediately brought to mind some pictures in the book of hundreds of buildings from the city that look just like yours. These pictures were able to convey the massive amount of damage done by the air attacks against and almost entirely civilian population.

Custom Dioramics is starting to make some great civilian figures. Perhaps you could use these and your building to model the intense destruction wrought upon everyday people during WW II.

Just a suggestion of course.

Have you tried hotwire for cutting the foam?
http://www.dxmarket.com/micromark/products/82104.html

well M1 garand

teh problem is that the hotwire is too narrow the blocks of foam that I are 30cm by 30cm and about 10cm thick I never needed plates that were bigger then about 15 Cm and that I did with an ordinary saw but I then cut a block in half
Thanks for the tip anyway

And StukeSowle I like your civillian thing Thats really something to think of

i have a question 4 ya mate, is foam hard to work with, like, does it crumble up into little bits? cheers

Lest

The foam that I use will definitely not crumble into little pieces. I`m not using the variant with the little balls (mostly white) I use the blue variant and it`s really one solid piece of foam with a big density. So big that you can let it drop without the problem that it breaks

And for anybody else: If you have ideas for my dio please tell me for me counts in this case there is no stupid suggestion

hi Faust,

this is my idea.

british para's in arnhem lying (liggen) voor gebouw.
the set of dragons will fit in here.

maybe a civilian who want to huss away the para's?

greets Sander

sounds good to me sander but I am a little bit thinking of a lovely peace/rest scene
but still haven`t got a clue for a scenario

The "Arnhem Operation" as part of Market Garden had a fighting pause for a couple of hours. During that pause the Germans let them take their wounded into Hospitals and MASHes. During that phase of the operation a lot of the remaining para's sat down before buildings just staring into the distance.... they suffered from battle fatigue (G.U.P. = gevechts uitputting ). Maybe this is an idea for that dio..... it sure shows the madness war can be....

Nice building... how bout civilians salvaging posessions and trying to put them in the street? You could have a pile of furniture, office equipment, etc on the street... people inside are digging through the debris, and folks outside are loading the goods up into a wagon while a soldier or MP looks on....

1) There's no better (AND EASIER) way to make a perfect WWII building, than to use pictures of WWII or pictures of buildings that were already there in WWII for reference. You can try to invent buildings as much as you can, they'll never look as real as a real building.
2) Careful drawings are the backbone of a good building. Make sure all lines that must be parallel are EXACTLY parallel. Not almost, but perfectly. You may fool yourself by using shortcuts, but you can't fool your public.
3) Be precise. If windos sills are 3 mm at one window, you don't want to make them 5mm at another. If there's an arch above your window, make sure it is symmetrical. Make sure your woodwork (doors and windows) isn't sloppy. Make sure your bricks (if you make them visible) are EQUAL. In many dios, you see that one layer of bricks is clearly thicker than the next, some are not perfectly horizontal, etc. Patience pays off here. Scratchbuilding is never a speed contest, it is a game of patience and detail.
4) The quality of a dio is judged by its weakest element. No use to spent two months of scratchbuilding if your paintjob is sloppy, and no use to handpaint the sistine chapel in Rome when the doors of the chapel can be recognized as toothpicks glued together or the content of a book of matches.
Those are my 2 ct (that's only 0.5 ct per item!).

Thanks guys for all the response

Keith I like your idea of the salvaging civilians. maybe I could do something with that
And I like your idea too Eagle.
The combat fatigue is a very good idea. I can picture that. A group of british paratroopers that have been in a heavy fight and have a break sitting against the walls and the rubble of a destructed building. having the thousand mile stare try to relax but with the knowledge that they will be fighting in a couple of hours.
Some get some sleep others drink coffee and under the sound of a cracking record played on a very old recordplayer the wounded get carried away or are helped on spot so they could possibly fight again with their comrads.
This is also a good idea because I have never did something with british soldiers (on dio ground I mean. I have built several british vehicles) and I have never built something from the campaign in holland.

Maybe there is a story in this I`ll start drawing immediately

Hmm, I did do some things with Brittish soldiers, though these were female soldiers!

How about a improvised field hospital by the Tommies? Maybe with a converted Jeep with stretchers?

Faust,

I see you caught the idea I launched !

You descibe it the same way I ment it !!

Looking forward to whatever you decide to build !!