This idea is probably the first that I actually feel genuine enthusiasm towards.  As I may have mentioned, I feel that a lot of the recent diorama’s that have won at Golden Demon have been small and don’t have much in the way of ‘battle’ in them – they are however brilliant on technical and painting levels.  The category allows you to use a 1 ft cube (or 30cm for those who prefer metric) and I personally think that it’s a shame not to use every available bit of this.

So whilst I’ve been looking on the internet, I’ve always had in the back of my mind that it would be nice to have something suitable for this maximum sized cube – and I now think I’ve got it.  Basically it’s a Tomb King dungeon scene, where a party of intreped adventurers have broken into a tomb complex, battled their way past various traps and found that the treasures are actually protected by all manner of undead gribblies.

The concept is that the piece will be a two-level cross-section.  The walls will be embossed in some manner, allowing for all of the various Tomb King murals to be incorporated into the piece.  Painting the environment will be pretty straight forward as all of the sandstone can be done using an airbrush, which should create quite a bit of depth and atmosphere.  There will be an upper level that will contain the ‘outside frontage’, which will lead into a small chamber via a hallway (including devilish traps), at the end of the chamber will be a spiral staircase (because all good dungeons have one) which will then lead down into the lower level and then into a final large chamber with Tomb King and sarcophagus.  One thing that I want to do is to make the last chamber appear untouched by the ravages of time as if preserved by some magical statis field – hopefully I can incorporate water fountains in this as well.  The top level needs to look decrepit, plaster falling off the walls, cobwebs, long dead bodies etc – similar to how ancient egyptian tombs look now (well without bodies).

I will need to investigate a good way of making realistic sand as real sand is too coarse to just glue on and expect it to look right.  I have had some thoughts about the walls as well.  If I get a piece of plasticard and glue on thin wire in the shape of the required embossing (sealing the edges with PVA glue or putty), I could then pour a thin layer of super fine plaster of paris over it.  When this has set I can then grease patches where I want the plaster to fall off (poking a hole through so I know where to bash) and then pour a layer of regular plaster.  Finally once set sand the back off and fix to some plasticard or similar to make a solid wall.  I can poke and gouge the areas that are greased which should flop off as it it had in real life.  I also think that I could get a mini sand blaster and spray the outer layer to weather it (you can get one for around £30).

I think that this could be ‘the one’, in which case I’ll start planning out the construction.  In principal, two 1ft squares of mdf and four corner spacers will be the starting point.

Userful Links:

Inner Lower Chamber
Outside Idea 1
Outside Idea 2
Chamber Idea 2

I may be mad, but I’ve had a bit of a thought for a GD2010 project – a scratch build Thunderhawk Gunship.  Although you can actually purchase a Forgeworld model and GW have produced a metal one in the past (yes I remember that one – it came in a velvet lined oak box), it is still a fantastically impressive piece.  I’d likely make it in some kind of diorama carrying some vehicles or dropping off troops.

One of the really nice things about what is in essence a Space Marine vehicle is that it doesn’t need billions of rivets like a Imperial Guard vehicle would.  Although it would be a large project, the most complicated pieces are the two jet engines.  All of the weapons can be purchased from existing plastic kits.

Useful Links
http://www.grafstar.com/wh40k/resources.html – Contains some very rough plans (useful for scale)
http://www.ironhands.com/thawk.htm – A 2001 home grown one, using various plastic toys

A couple more possibilities to add into the melting pot in regards to some kind of diorama.

First off is a Warhammer Quest dungeon scene, but using modern models.  A bit like the one Mike McVey did years back where the whole thing is split into a number of micro-dioramas with different monsters and party members.  For the barbarian I think it would be possible to convert a Chaos Knight into a much more ‘Conan’ style character, Wizard would be the new empire wizard box, Elf could be one of the wood elf range and Dwarf could be converted from any number of Dwarf models.

Whilst searching (the wonders of Google Images) I also came across a number of pretty cool Tomb King landscapes (mostly from Warhammer Online), which would make a quite refreshing backdrop to a diorama as it would use light sandy colours and rich Turquoise and gold’s, plus you could create some pretty cool ‘sand effects’ with things bursting out of the sand 😀

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Having flicked through the Warhammer Online collectors edition art book, I think that I’ve come up with a potential concept for my Golden Demon entry next year.  Within the book (and indeed the game), there is a Tzeentch bridge, simply put it has a path leading upto and out of what can only be described as an upturned pyramid, which is floating in the air.  At the top of this structure is a large Tzeentch eyeball, surveying all that come and go.

What strikes me about this as a project is that it’s going to be pretty unique.  It’s a massive modelling project in it’s own right and lends itself to a significant portion being airbrushed.  For me it’s quite cool as I enjoyed and spent far more time on the modeling element of my Dreadnought than I did on the painting element.  One of the pretty cool things about Tzeentch is that the structure has to look impossible, unstable and slightly disturbed.    The pyramid is in essence composed of ‘layers’ in a similar design to a flower’s petals.  What I’d love to do, is to have parts of the model floating with the use of magnets (a bit like those levitating pens you can buy).  Some kind of movement would also be pretty cool, but would have to think about both of these items as it could add unecessary weight onto the floating element.

I need to sketch out some sizes, but it would be good to be able to have the paths able to take three or four mounted miniatures – i.e. 4 inches across.  This would likely make the eyeball huge – at least 3 inches in diameter – providing I can paint it well it will make a fantastic feature centre piece of the model.  Once I’ve done a sketch or two, I’ll create a mock out of card and artboard to see what it looks like and it I’ll carry on with it.  I’ll also add some miniatures onto it – probably chaos warriors as they can be painted in the purple hues of the actual structure.  What would be really cool would be to sculpt the bridge over a valley and somehow model false perspective to make it seem like the valley bottom is far away.  In addition to the large eye on the top of the structure, there are also two eye like spheres set in the walls of structure (on either side).  What I want to do is to try and paint them so that they appear to follow you within a relativly wide arc.  If you’ve not already guessed I have plans to make the whole model slightly disturbing, but equally fascinating at the same time.  Now obviously I actually need to work out how and indeed if some of these ideas are actually possible within a modelled world, but fingers crossed and this will become a reality 🙂

Useful Links: http://img.war-europe.com/syndic_img/news/maymnl/TheBridge.jpg

My first post of various musings.

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