Barry Gazso shares with us his experiance of building a frozen moment in time in this dynamic diorama, many thanks barry.

A dash for cover

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

At first I looked at this piece and said, this is the ugliest tree I've ever seen in my life. But then enlightenment receded upon me. Now that I know what's going on I aplaud the idea as well as the execution. Great piece!!!

Some modellers are able craftsmen, but looking at this - wow! - you are artist! The composition, it´s telling a story, no need to explain! rd

Absolutely fantastic, Barry!!! What a great idea and very well executed. Maybe more of us should "break the rules." Well done. it's an inspiration for me.
Lou

I don't want to bash your dio or anything, but sincerly the first thought I had was: "now that's a weird looking tree!".

great idea, and thanks for adding some variety, but this is a difficult subject to model.

What an idea to make an exploding bomb, this is something new and as the other modellers said : well executed ! Not an easy job that's for sure !
Congrats from Guy(gantic).

I applaud your trying something new. It really conveys the sense of terror with the explosion towering over the running soldiers. Keep up the good work!

Dont be so hard on yourself man, that was fantastic!

Cool idea and very well done. New idea are always welcome !

Cheers
Claude

Very emotional - mission accomplished! No need for any backstory here. One view - one story. Well done.

I actually really appreciate the section on 'breaking the rules'. Rules for projects in modeling are more like guidelines and as you expertly state and show - they can successfully be broken and still have a great piece come out.

I love the continuity of the ground under the grass line as it continues through the explosion.

Well done.

Very good, the diorama world needs more people like you

I also admit that at first I thought that was the most ugly tree ever conveyed!
After reading your story though, I can onlyadmire your courage to create such a out of the way subject!
I have one comment though: the crater of the previous explosion looks too clean to me: no scorched grass or strewn soil around it! Maybe you can add this to a further splendid dio.

Another really nice one Barry. You are truly a 'cutting edge' thinker when it comes to dios and vignettes. Kudos

Cheers,
Charles

Hi guys,

Well, this kind of thing is pretty difficult to tackle for obvious reasons, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I sctually had some advice on the shell hole from a guy who looks at them for a living (!) and decided to take his advice on how to show the darn thing, but maybe should have taken some license on that?

Appreciate the supprt.
Barry

wow. quite inspiring!

Amazing! Actually, kind of good timing too. I was just wondering to myself how you would pull something like this off convincingly. There was a thread on Naval shell splases fairly recently, and I was wondering if it could be done for an artillery explosion. Thanks for proving it can work, and telling us how you did it.

Hi Barry! I liked your diorama...it is very vell looked,anything superfluous on it is not present!

I dont want to be rude,Barry--I love your stuff...buut I think that the explosion could have been improved by adding some clumps of grass,especially at the base and some up higher in the blast. There could have been "cracks" in the sod radiating outward from the blast itself. The previous crater needs some remnants of the explosion that created it,like clumps of dirt and sod,rocks,etc. To me,its too "clean". Maybe the guys could have had some dirt on their shoulders,etc. Like I said I dont want to be rude and you have way more talent then I do, but I am being honest.

Hi Mike,

Nothing rude about your comments. When trying something like this, which is attempting to freeze a very ephemeral moment, it's not hard to miss the mark. I knew that going in, and figured there would be one of two reactions - "huh?", or "oh, I get it". I asked questions about stuff like dirt being thrown, and what a fresh shell crater would look like and so forth, and tried to incorporate what prople who knew a lot more about it told me, but in the end, even if it's "correct", if it doesn't look right, well....

Hey, it's just modeling, right? I'll just move on to the next idea, play my horn some, finish the book I'm reading, work on the yard, wax my car, etc.

Regards,
Barry

Barry,

Outstanding! I can almost feel the concussion! Well done!

Fantastic! I have had the same idea but neer knew how to execute it. You did what I was never able to figure out how to do. Great job

Barry,
Your "Dash for Cover" is very impresive. Trying to show an explosion - a very transitory event - in a frozen form was not easy. My observations of explosions has been that they are a good deal more "explosive."
By that I mean there is dirt and smoke moving very rapidly away from the core. This leaves gaps where the dirt/smoke is almost transparent. If I were to try to do one, I think perhaps using cotton on some sort of armature for holding the shape, then airbrushed and maybe some dirt or other debris added would reduce the problem of looking like some sort of tree (which was my first impression also).
Congratulations for trying something out of the ordinary!

Geezer34

Nice Job, I like the thinking behind this project and the bomb blast is super.