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Its been a while since I have posted anything that I have actually worked on. I have taken to carrying around a little notebook that I can jot down my thoughts in so I don't forget them. This has been working out fairly well and today I decided to see if one of my ideas was going to work or not. I had this vision of a little sci/fi diorama featuring British troops from the Colonial Period (Zulu War kind of feeling) trying to ambush a "patrol" of aliens. All the minis are going to come right out of the Reaper Miniatures Chronoscope line and I had them already in the pile of unpainted lead.

I grabbed my favorite material for creating a mock up and off I went.

Matt Board, Ruler, Mechanical Pencil, some Titebond Glue sitting where I won't spill it.

The Sketchbook I have been carrying around

Deep into construction at this point

Coming together

"The Interior", I think I'm going to work in two windows instead of one.

The interior with a floor now!

On the outside the stairs in the alley

Street side which mostly features the sidewalk and a bit of the street

I think this will be the main viewing angle

So how the miniatures in the alley might fit. Some conversion work is going to be required

Two in the alley and one inside

The aliens make their appearance. You can see the alien shadows on the wall. When I paint this I'm going to try out a lower light coming from directly down the street so that the aliens will be casing shadows in front of them. That's what the British officer will be watching, timing his moment to strike.

Another view with all the minis in the scene

At the moment I'm pretty happy with how things worked out with this mockup. I can see some places I will need to make adjustments and where some conversion work will be required. I think its going to work out pretty good. The story seems pretty solid at this point.

I was messing around with the camera tonight and took some street scenes of the Shopping diorama and then de-saturated the photos to get that gritty reporter on the scene look.

I have worked on the is particular diorama for well over a year at this point (although to be honest there is probably a 12 month stretch where it just lived in its box). It was mostly finished and entered at ReaperCon 2011 where it took a silver medal. I decided to try again at Tacticon 2012 with it. I added the glass to the window and tried to bring the highlights up on the girls and darken up the rest of the diorama. So I pulled all of that off although the bullet holes in the glass didn't come out very well but after three attempts I was willing to go with it. After the contest we were thinking that maybe the Vallejo Crackle Medium would have gotten me closer to the effect I was looking for. Anyway so I pulled off a second silver with this one. I need to figure out what to do for February.

The three Hasslefree Miniatures are: Debra (HFA048), McKenzie (b) (HFA054) and Ashlee (b) (HFA057)

Hasslefree is a great little company and people don't come much better than Sally and Kev White.
HassleFree Miniatures

A few WIPs before the final entry photos:


And the final result:

This is the last installment of the diorama base. I have blended in all the hand carved elements last night and touched up the paint and added some ground cover. I'm very happy with this, wish I could enter it without miniatures! The minis are almost ready to go on it and I'm looking forward to wrapping this one up. Although its perfectly within the rules to post pictures of it prior to the competition, I just don't do that. ReaperCon is next week so if you aren't there in person to see it I'll get the pictures posted when I get back.

The vines may need to be trimmed back a bit at this point. I'll make that decision when I'm ready to place the miniatures. Oh and I think the title is going to be Hasty Exit (despite the title of the post).

I had something of a disaster tonight. I was working on the "hero" for the diorama and she literally broke in half when I went after a mold line that I missed. Literally broke in half across the stomach. I tried to glue her back together but was only partially successful. So my choice is to start over or give her one hell of a scar across her stomach. If I can find another one locally I'm going to start over on her, I'm just not sure I can pull the scar off.

So instead of painting the miniatures I opted to get the base as close to finished as I could tonight. Here are some pictures of tonight's progress. This has come a long way from what I showed the other day. I would say that its really about 90% complete at the moment. I'm leaving one wall loose so I can position the minis inside the hall correctly, then I'll seal the whole think up. I'm please with the claustrophobic effect its giving off right now.
So a shot from the last time.
And how it looks now, without the wall.



 And with the wall in place