I have been asked to build the Emhar MkIV Male for a friends birthday and would like to build a small vignette of the tank traversing a trench.

I normally model aircraft and have never tackled a tank/armour before so would love a little help. Anyone know of any existing dioramas of this type I could look to for inspiration?

TIA for any help folks!

to smell some WW1 atmosphere

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqaVIcUafgE&mode=related&search=

and I know there's a brilliant WW1 dio somewhere on the net, I guess it was a Dutch modeler.

greetz Tha Pit

Hi Charlie,
The dio that Pit was talking about can be seen on this link here W.W.1 Diorama .I've seen this at various shows and it's a brilliantly detailed dio.I'm currently in the progress of planning a similar dio,so if you are after W.W.1 figure links for your dio PM me.Asides from that,in theFeedback
forum there is another member besides me building a Emhar tank,worth checking out for some extra ideas/info.
Cheers,Shay

http://ipmsstockholm.org/galleries/ipms%5Fopen%5F2006/military_1/target33.htm

http://ipmsstockholm.org/galleries/ipms%5Fopen%5F2006/military_1/target29.htm

Not WW1, but might give you some ideas
http://ipmsstockholm.org/galleries/ipms%5Fopen%5F2006/diorama/target10.htm

Some tips for the base. Decide what your trench will be ... both sides or just one, as shown in the images above (maybe more dramatic this way). What will the walls of the tench be made up with ... just dug out, timber walls, sand bagged walls, bits of everything, etc! Build the actual trench first, and then fill in behind the wall (polystyrene packing?) when its painted, as it wont be easy getting into paint it if you model each side. When making the ground work, place the tank into the ground work .... these were heavy and didn´t float. Add some WW1 litter (personal gear from figures) and coils of barbed wire! Add atmosphere into the ground work ...dark, torn up earth, explosion craters, not much signs of life, puddles, etc!
Good luck with the build!

As frank said, be sure not to forget the trash, and the litter. Rusty helmets look great, along with just about any other piece of gear, but remeber to think about what you throw out there. Canteens tend to be well secured, so don't dump them. Gas mask carriers are also always held in a ready position, and aren't easily dropped. In fact, the more I think about it, everything but helmets, trash, and rifles could be found commonplace in no mans land. For trash. I would research the particular army you plan on depicting, and research the disposable things that were thrown over the parapet. Don't shirk away from putting craters either, WWI battlefields usually (not always) looked like moonscapes. Research the battlefield itself too, find out where that tank was fighting. Different battlefields many times had different trench construction.

One think that I think would be important too would be to put the occasional dead body. No mans land was a hellish wasteland, and bodies can depict the true horror of it accurately. The trick here though, is not to do it distastefully, but that is a whole other argument.

hey charly19 just google for german trench or german fortifications
there is also a very nice ww1 dio called "hun in the sun"
on the internet
bazooka

Wow!! Those pics are amazing!! And that trench dio with the figure is awesome!! Just what I had in mind!

Thankyou all for your valuable input.

Just one other thing-can you recommend base colours etc to use for the tank?

OH gosh...that's a debate that will never end. In short, nobody REALLY knows what colours British tanks of WWI were. People seem to be divided between OD and brown. I personally like the brown best, but there are also alot of really neat camouflage schemes too...

You can also do a captured tank and portray the cool camouflage those had...the big maltese crosses are also neat looking.

I am also getting ready to start a World War I Dio. Looking forward to seeing your finish dio!