mini-bart gaming site

Display diorama

This diorama is made to fit in the display cabinet I have in my living room. I wanted to make a nice backdrop to display my mini's. Now that it is finished I'm very proud of it, I think it looks pretty good. The diorama is 12 inches wide and 7 inches high, witch fits exactly in the cabinet. It has two levels for placing mini's and has lights behind the windows. The lights are not so clearly visible in the pictures, but in real life they look pretty convincing, see picture 4 and picture 5 for an idea of how it looks in the evening. It took about 5 evenings spread out over 2 weeks to make it, not counting the time it took to cast the blocks and to plan the design. I don't have plans on paper, because my design proces works something like this: I get an idea, i mull it over a while in my head for a few weeks and then try out different designs by laying out the pieces and see of it works, usualy the original design changes a lot in this proces. The original design had 3 of the large gothic arches per side, but that became to big to fit. The blocks are made with Hirst Arts molds. I used the tomb, gothic church, bell tower, prison tower (stairs), Dragon's Teeth mold and pieces from other molds I have. The back of the diorama is made of 5mm thick foamcore to save weigth and blocks. Picture 6 and picture 7 show the first stage completed. I made a type of box-frame of the foamcore to bare the weigth of the second level. A tip, if you have something to paint on the inside, do it before you glue on the roof, trust me, it's a lot easier. Picture 8, picture 9 and picture 10 show several stages of the building of the second level, the back of the wall is not visible in the diorama so I could save a few blocks. The top wall is between 1 and 3/4 of an inch thick because of the large gothic arches and the platforms for the statues, wich are old Games Workshop plastic High Elfs. Picture 12 shows the building stage allmost complete, only the back of the diorama and the windows are missing. The windows are made printed on a overhead sheet with a color printer, the window tracery was printed on heavy paper, cut out and painted grey. The design of the windows I got from the Hirst Arts site, on one of the tips and tricks pages. The lights are 3 volt "wire lights" I got from a model rairoad shop. Picture 13 shows my "high-tech" (ahum) wireing: 4 battery's, a switch and some wires left over from my model railroad days and lots of tape. But who cares, it works and it is all on the inside so nobody sees it :-). I used house-hold aluminum folie behind the lights to boost the lights because they are a bit week. I kept the paintjob pretty simple, starting with a medium grey basecoat for the walls, dry-brushed with a light grey and finally white. The flagstone floor was painted dark-brown with 2 dry-brushes with lighter browns. I originally planned to paint the statues in bronze, but I thought they would stand out to much, so I painted them the same as the walls.