"You shall not pass" - Slideshow of the Finished Diorama

It´s done although video editing took some time again. In this slideshow I take you on a tour to have a detailed look on the features of my second showcase.

 

Next I will update the galary with some pictures of the miniatures in the diorama which conludes this kind of reviews about the projects I did in the past. I am very excited that I can finally begin to show you what I am working on right now.

"There is one dwarf yet in Moria" - Work-in-Progress

Okay, enough with design and planing. I started drawing the templates to the styrofoam boards. At the time I used the bubbly type of styrofoam because it had no other available. Working with a hot wire cutter this material can easily be processed although I would recommend the non-bubbly type. I will cover both foam boards types and hot wire cutters in a tutorial later.

I stacked the main foundation using toothpick to secure them in place before glue is applied. I glued both sides individually but didn't glue them together yet to be more flexible during flocking and painting. The bridge was glued just to one side of the chasm. On the left side I arranged the pillars and some rubble around the collapsed one. Fissures and cracks were carved into the rock formations. I didn't mind gaps at this point as multiple coats of structure paint will cover these on a later stage.  At last I cut some groves for the wiring of the LEDs.

On the right side of the bridge I used almost 20 layers of 5mm thick foam board for the staircase. If you take a look at the templates of the stairs you can see that each layer is just one step shorter than the one underneath. This way I achieved a very accurate appearance because each step has exactly the same height. I put some rubble an rocks around the stairs so that they fit into the natural stone. Again, gaps will be filled up later.

I placed both sides onto the wooden board and took a look from the top view. Compared to the miniature size the chasm is already pretty deep but I planned to further enhance this effect.

First I needed to paint both sides. I coated the whole diorama in several layers of structure paint to hide the edges of the foam boards and build up a rock like texture. After the model was dry I painted it in brown and grey colours. For the next step I had the help of a friend with a DSLR camera and some photoshop skills. He took pictures from the steep walls an both sides. In Photoshop he combined the pictures, added a top view perspective and faded them to an endless black abyss. I had to print this several times before we got the colours right to match the colours of the walls. When I placed the models on top of the picture it created the illusion of an even deeper pit. Worked out fantastic, thanks to Felix.

Lighting the scene was the last step to finish the showcase. I wired the LEDs with appropriate resistors and hid all electronic below the surface. I created the flames with transparent window colours and yellow and red inks. Now the fiery glow of the balrog illuminates the sunless halls of Moria.

I am preparing a commented slide show for a close-up look on the showcase.

"The flame of Udûn" - Designing the showcase

Again this update took its time. I had a busy half year but now I hope for updates more regularly. This is the second part of the review of "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" diorama.

As the idea for the showcase took shape in my mind thanks to the inspiration from the movies and artworks, I started with a rough CAD model to visualise my plan. This method provides a great opportunity to try out things before cutting any pieces of foam board. With the given space in the vitrine I experimented with different depth for the chasm using varying heights of foam boards. After getting this right I created the staircase to get an impression if the angles and step sizes would scale properly to the diorama. As the balrog is a centre piece of this showcase which is very large because of its tail and wings I represented him with a few tubes and bars on a base. I chose a position in front of the bridge to threaten Gandalf and turned him a little to face a potential viewer of the showcase. Here is what the CAD model looked like.

The dwarven craftsmanship for stone cutting had never been better represented as in the mighty stone pillars of moria. I had to include these for sure but the original design from the movie felt to "heavy and massive" for the diorama so I sculpted a design myself. (© Dave Townsend; Source: davetownsend.org)

The dwarves would of course have aligned the pillars precisely. As two pillars would block the view on the balrog I decided that one pillar would have crumbled and partly collapsed into the chasm.

The last thing I thought about was creating light using LED circuits. I wanted to incorporated 8 LEDs evenly distributed over the diorama. Four would be positioned on the left side below the balrog's wings. They will be modelled into flames and give the balrog and its wings a fiery glow. The remaining lights will be made torches on the walls of the staircase.

 

Finally I rechecked dimensions and proportions of the model and started by generating templates and printing them on paper. I transferred them onto the foam board and cut out the pieces.

 I am going to release some work-in-progress pictures later.

"The dwarves delved too deep" - Inspiration on The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm

Hey everyone, it took me quite some time to get ready to share my second project with you. This diorama features one of the most dramatic scenes from the first Lord of the rings movie: Gandalf confronts the balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm crossing an endless chasm in moria.

I started this project almost five years ago after watching the first movie yet another time. I really loved the scenes where the balrog approaches in this very subtle way when you just see his lights glowing through the columns of moria. I knew I had to do this when the balrog bursts in flames clenching his fiery blade against gandalf´s magic barrier. (© Lukealgonda; Source: DeviantArt)

  
The next day I ordered the GW miniatures, assembled and painted Gandalf and the Balrog as soon as they arrived. This wasn´t probably my best paintjob but I was content at the time with my miniatures.

 Shortly after I started planing the diorama. Two elements I found most important: the contrast of the dark mood of the dwarven mines with the fiery glow of the balrog and the illusion of depth. Both were difficult to achieve in a showcase which size was determined by the vitrine it should fit into. I started with the expierence I gathered on the Siege of helms deep and some resources from the web. (© Flavio Hoffe; Source: www.flaviohoffe.com)

First I did a few sketches and a rough 3D model I made using CAD Tools, which I will cover in the next update.

New splendor for the blog

As you probably noticed I have spent some time to touch up the visual appearance of the blog. I took one of the shots of the bridge of Khazad-dum diorama and made a banner for the page. Thanks to my brother for helping me with photoshop.

Tomorrow I will finish the second video on the mentioned bridge diorama. Stay tuned.

"Ten thousand strong at least" - a commented slideshow of the finished Diorama

Finally I finished the very first video. This is a slideshow of the finished diorama. Took me quite some time (again) because I couldn´t do the voiceover due to a cold.

I hope you like it. Feel free to leave comments here or on the youtube channel. Next in line is the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm Diorama, my first diorama incorporating LED lights.

"So it begins" - Work in progress of The Siege of Helm's Deep

I finished the showcase of Helm's Deep a while ago. To explain some basic techniques and materials I used I will show you some work in progress pictures. First off I have to apologise for the quality of these photos. At the time I did not intend to show these pictures to anyone rather than myself but today I hope they are sufficient to illustrate my work.

After gathering material and inspiration I usually begin my work with sketches visualising my ideas. These sketches are rough and not to scale or perspective but you have to start somewhere. As the next step I build up a 3D scale model with a CAD Engine. This is quite unusual for a wargaming hobbyist because it takes some time but I learnt how to do this in college and it grants me two valuable benefits:

1. A 3D model gives you an idea of scale and proportions. For instance you can estimate if a door is big enough that a model could walk through, if a staircase is too steep or if a miniature can be seen from a specific viewpoint. I can arrange the miniatures and other elements on the diorama until I am content with everything without ever reworking the building materials.
2. When I build stuff that is not rectangular I use templates to create the shape of the foam board, wood or other materials. With a 3D model I can easily generate these templates and print them on a sheet of paper. Templates are always handy especially when building elements that should be very similar to each other like columns or arcs.

The model does not have to be very detailed. I work things out to the point where I can use the details for some templates. And to be honest I like modelling in the 3D CAD environment. Here is a picture of diorama.

After printing the templates I started to build up the structures with expanded Styrofoam (I will explain the different types of Styrofoam and its properties in a tutorial in the future. Stay tuned!). This material is cheap and fairly workable with a hot wire cutter (which I will show you in a later tutorial as well). I glued the basic structure onto an MDF board stiffening it with toothpicks.

To get a rocklike surface I could have carved some lines into the foam but I used another very simple technique here and glued rectangles of cardboard to it with PVA glue. This is a very easy way to resemble masonry and it adds some depth and texture to the surface. I used some tape to cover the biggest gaps between the pieces before applying the cardboard.

I left some areas blank where I wanted the mason work to be heavily eroded. The cardboard and Styrofoam surface will be coveredwith texture paint at a later stage .

On a diorama I like to merge my miniatures as seamlessly as possible into the terrain without cutting them from their bases. Therefore I lower them just a little into the ground so that the edge of the base aligns with the surface.

 After that I work out the last details and filled the remaining gaps with a filler. One or two layers of texture paint were applied to all stone structures to cover the paperlike texture of the cardboard and bubbly structure of the expanded Styrofoam. Small rocks and stones were added with PVA glue to the ground followed by coarse and fine sand to coverup everything.

After that I primed the whole showcase in black acrylic paint and used mainly drybrushing techniques to add some color to it. As I wanted the soil to be muddy and trampled by the uruk-hai I added only a little flock and static gras here and there.

Next up will be a slideshow of the finished showcase and some shots of the miniatures that are display in the showcase.