The Ship Model Forum

So sorry for not reading through, I never realised you'd actually finished your diorama, now that I've spent time picking my chin off the floor because its gobsmacking beautiful, the water effect is what I would love to do, but just no matter how hard I tried, simply couldn't get it right, this is knock out stuff.

Hey John, I bet that pissed you off!
Seriously though, I hope you will be able to get it to Telford this year,very worthy of recognition.

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I was depressed last night, so I rang lifeline. Got a call centre in
Afghanistan and told them I was suicidal.

They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Thanks for the kind comments Kym, there are worse people to be mistaken for

As for Telford, you never know albeit I'm not that convinced that it's good enough to go alongside a lot of the stuff that other guys do (Mr Baumann, I'm looking at you )

John

may i ask why is the water so red?

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http://katsflyby.blogspot.gr/

It's actually a lot more brown in reality that it appears in the photos, it's supposed to represent muddy water...

John

I did one visit to Shanghai aboard ship. The Yellow Sea and Huang Pu Kiang (river) struck me as looking precisely like coffee with a good dose of milk or cream.

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No Quarter Asked - None Given

Interesting.May i suggest one thing i discovered with the help of my friend (who is more advanced in photography than me).If you are using a digital camera, you may need -every time the lighting conditions change- to change the white balance so it can reproduce the colors as faithfully as possible given the light conditions.I don't know if you could do this in simple cameras but if you have an SLR model is worth looking it up in the manual.

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http://katsflyby.blogspot.gr/

Well you, know, so many IJN diaramas out there..............

Sorry, John. DOesn;t take away from your excellent work, though.

Thanks again for all the comments guys:

aleccap - this is my first attempt and doing water this way as well, it's not as hard as it might appear...

angeleyes - the camera is a simple compact digital so I may well be stuck with the 'red' water although I may be able to do something about it in Paint Shop Pro or similar.

Dan K - as I mentioned, there are worse people to be mistaken for

I'm going to see if I can get the crane done this weekend as, come Saturday, I've got my step daughter and 3 grandchildren moving in for at least 1 and possibly 2 months so modelling time is going to be severely restricted

John

Hello John, I have used my 1-350 sailors as a marker for doors to buildings, saying they were 6' tall, and the buildings still don't look right, all in the dustbin now, I was wondering what my chances were, of you sending me those mesurements of a building, door hight, and total hight of apex, I was building the 1-350 Yorktown, but that's a very long a sad story, I like the idea of dioramas, only wish I could master that darn sea effect, I have read through Jim B's notes and just about everything else I can lay my hands on, and still no sea effect that I am happy with, they either turn out flat, waves too large, or simply don't look right, if you can spare me a few moments, that would be great as I know your diorama has taken off and like myself there will be loads of people wanting favours on this subject, and how to do. Many thanks John.

Alec, building measurements are as follows:

All Doors - 8mm high and 4mm wide
In the buliding on the right, the two openings for lorries are 20mm high and 20 mm wide with the peak of the roof at the back being 40mm
The building in the middle has roof peak of 40mm high and that on the left has a peak of 45mm. For the windows at the front building in the middle, the tops of the windows are 8mm high and the bottom is 4mm.

One thing I did do for all the buliding was tape a sheet of 2mm square graph paper to the plastic sheet I was using - this makes it very easy to get accurate lengths, heights and right angles when cutting the sheet.

Whilst not visible in the photos, the buildings in the middle and the right have interiors...

As for the water, I described my technique earlier in the post although it is really only suitable for calm water.

Hope this helps.

John

No John, this actually helps a lot, thank you very much for your time, deeply appreciated.

As the dio gets ever closer to completion, here's a couple of photos from new angles:

If you look closely at the first pic, you can see the interior of the building though the window...







And a final one that has been manipulated to give an 'old' look to it...



Hope you like,

John

I like!

Terrific work, John!

Bob

Well, after FAR too long, I'm finally calling this one finished with a addition of another 30 or so figures. It's been so long since I started, I look at it now and see lots of things that could be improved but, overall, I'm very happy with the result.









And my favourite view of the dio given an 'aged' feel:



John

Outstanding work and a very realistic dio. Congratulations

Gilbert

Did you design the crane yourself, or was it researched? (Sorry if you posted it, I don't like to read much.)

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Current builds:
Hobby Boss 1/700 Type VIIC U-Boat for my AH

Planned builds:
3 more 1/700 AH submarines

That is one fantastic piece of work....excellent stuff

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Chief of the Boat

Thanks for the comments guys, much appreciated.

Sr. Gopher, the crane was very loosely based on one in the background on a photo of a Japanese harbour.

Jimbuna - I see you live only around 10 miles away from me.

John

This probably won't sound right. The black and white old world looking photo's are top notch, not over keen on the colour one's as they make the diorama look errrr um like a model, this is one of those darn statements where I know what I mean, what I am trying to say. Simply can't put the words into script, the overall effect is 1st class, real good job, a little clean looking here and there, nevertheless a great piece of work, what does it for me, as you're probably guess by now is the B/W photo's.