Creating - That's the real joy
The great thing about a well sketched concept is, the building phase can be started without fear glueing something wrong.
But since I didn’t have much experience with all those materials at that time, it was a fear of missing crafting skills.
Again I have to thank Thorixx_painting for amazing support and his effort to build my own little diorama and stream the process. That’s how I learned that the little brick stones are an amazing looking material - but you need to take the time and puzzle, puzzle, puzzle….
Structure first
So where to start? I always advice to begin with the general shape of the environment and structures - everything aligns to the walls.
Brick work and the sewer
The sewer walls and ground were made of cork, and air drying clay from “DAS” has been tried as a covering kind of putty. Credits to Vince Venturella who brought that to mind in his amazing “hobby cheating” clips. The stuff is cheap, easy to handle, is not too hard when dried ( plaster like) and can be reactivated a bit with water, which can be good depending on your use case. Quick tip: don’t use it for your plinth sides. The overall finish will be “Meh” and it can’t be sanded that fine, so you’ll always see the transition to other materials like wood.
The top layer, respectively the upper ground, has been postponed, cause there was hell of a brickwork to do. and these fiddly little beasts make a great effect, but you’ll need tweezers and a steady hand - so any distraction should be avoided. Although it cost tons of nerves, I still love the effect it created - the brick wall really sells. It received a final thin cover of PVA - that seals the DAS clay and assures no birck will ever fall off.
With that, there was sufficient “stable mass” to sketch the upper level, but let’s first talk about some first important details - Well, there was plenty of time to think while building the bricks.
For the sewers rinse, I found a nice 40k bit as a gate to give it some more atmosphere. More important things happen about felicity.
If she lives in a sewers niche - How did she get there - the hole in the wall must somehow have been created, right? Probably destroyed intentionally from one side - So the rubble should be focused on one side. And as there was space needed for felicities sleeping back I chose the rubble to be on the zombies side.
Next question, How does she get out there? Probably she needs a little walk over the rinse and an exit and a ladder - or stairs ( laters done with stapler pins )? These little bitz and pieces are important for the second look at the diorama. They don’t make the main story, but will drag the viewer’s mind deeper in it. And even more important - it avoids overcrowding the scene with unnecessary pieces. It’s easy to spill a base in skulls and tufts - but less and more well thought details, that support the story, will make a difference.
In that context I also ordered a sewers lit, sleeping bag and some beverage packages. That’s where thoughts came up to buy a 3D - printer. Basing bitz are quite expensive.
Upper Level
Ok - now to the upper level - There is not much to present - just a destroyed world with the pieces in the boxes. A city scene with a boardwalk ( makes sense with sewers ) was easily done with the concrete plates and wall from juweela.
The concrete walls are an amazing tool - it’s a metal wire in kind of plaster and so it can be destroyed and damaged to the desired form and will look amazing.
But I’m most proud of the broken fence. I wanted it to look authentically destroyed. Thus I built the fence from plastic card profiles and metal wire, glued it, and afterwards took a piece of metal and placed it where a later steel girder would be placed. Also these things make a way more authentic scene than placing arbitrary destroyed bitz.
A final look - and the den of felicity seemed very empty. I thought it would make a great terminal compartment - maybe for traffic lights?. Makes sense in the underground. So I built a fuse box, pipes. Finnaly scratched the tile shapes into the ground and called it a day.
Completely build diorama
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