A Gift for a friend!!
My first serious display base.
I wanted to do something special for friend. He is a very active member of the local war gaming club “Tin Soldiers of Antwerp”. He is always busy organizing events for others. And not just one or two events, he organizes maybe 5 to 8 events a year in his spare time.
He is a hardcore 9th age fantasy battles player and a very serious 40k ork Warboss/ Big Mek. His always coming up with great and weird ork builds.
And one of the running gags ad our gaming club is that he once bought an ork army in trashbacks. I know crazy right!?
Because of the above, we decided to collect a trashcan full of bits, models, … to fuel his everlasting need for ork converting.
And on top we went out to find an old metal lord Kroak for is old school lizardmen fantasy army.
I went out on the internet and found one person who was interested in selling it for +- 100 euros.
After a few back and forth message he decided he wasn’t ready to sell the model. I guess it had been sitting in his collection for a while, forgot he had it. And then rediscovered it.
Something I’m more familiar with then I care to admit! J
Luckily someone from the gaming club found one his collection as well. And was willing to gift it to him for free. Because of that we had some cash leftover, that’s when we decided to paint lord Kroak and build a display base for it.
Don’t tell my wife, but this is the reason I finally decided to buy a 3d resin printer.
I was to build and paint the diorama. And another member (with serious painting skills) of our club was to paint lord kroak himself. You can check his work on Instagram
The Build
In this part I will take you through the thought process and building of the diorama.
I started out with what I always do for project like this, inspiration. I started googling jungle themed miniature dioramas, …
Once I had a feel for the setting, I started thinking of the composition. I don’t have a formal background in art, so I do all of this on feeling. Both the structural composition and the colour composition. I knew I wanted to give the feeling of the denseness and lushness of the jungle. Not just two jungle plants on a rocky base. That why I decided to work with the crazy awesome plant designs from Epicbasing.com, they offer both physical prints and stl files.
There was one restriction on the design. I had to integrate a gaming base into the piece, because the birthday boy is more of a war gamer then a miniature painter.
For this reason I decided to just create my own display with a gaming base integrated.
Here is where the first mistakes and complications started. I had never designed anything 3d related on a computer, let alone a file that would be printed. On the diorama base itself problems the print didn’t come out as planned. Specifically the front was bent. It hadn’t printed properly, although I had packed a serious amount of supports on to it.
Instead of reprinting the piece, I just cut of the front 2cm and glued a piece of plasticard add the bottom. I guess I’ll be doing some water effects. J
I had printed the Diorama base hollow, so I was left with a huge gaping hole on the front. This let me to sculpting a wall of boulders in front of it. This would both break up the green of the jungle floor and give me some more variety in the materials.
The second problem was the background, it was just a disaster. So again, plasticard to the rescue!
After that, I had to start terraforming my jungle floor. I knew, that I would create several heights.
The lowest would be the front, under water part. The highest would be the background and trees in the back.
I started out with one tree, I made this of a twig with some branches I made out of wire and miliput. Then I started creating height with some cork. I clued it down with some superglue. Once it was dry, I started sculpting some of the jungle floor with miliput, I used a sh*t ton of miliput on this project.
I wanted to get a sense of the density and height of the jungleplants. So I glued some in place in the front. The way I glued them, is the following. I placed some coconut fiber as the jungle floor, I then did a dollop of thin CA glue on. And then held the plant in place with twizers. After two or three seconds, there is a reaction between the glue and the fiber. You see some white smoke come up. And the part where CA glue is, becomes hot. I recommend wearing a respirator or doing this in a well ventilated area. Thanks to this quick reaction, I was able to place close to a hundred plants in a short amount of time.
I also glued sand between the river rocks. To make sure there were no gaps, where resin could pour out of. I added some small plants between them as well, to continue the sense of lushness in the water.
I felt the piece was missing something, there was a large gap on the right side of the diorama. So in order to bring in a bit more balance I decided to add a second tree.
However, to keep things varied, I decided to sculpt one myself. I also bulked out the bottom of the other tree to give more density and interest to the backside of the diorama.
I realized the middle, where the model would be, was left very low. So I added a pile of rocks on the gaming base. This to lift the model above the canopy of jungle plants and to create a vocal point on the diorama to look add.
Later I realized that when the model is of its base, it is the backdrop and a few other little things that pull the attention towards them.
As the last part of the build, I added even more jungle plants.
The backdrop
I Primed the whole diorama in a warm dark brown. I used a mix of a brown Vallejo primer and some black ink. As a commission painter I found that using colored primers, I got a better result and was able to work even quicker.
I’ve never painted a background before. So I felt a little intimidated. But I found a really great resource for painting a jungle background.
Liam from Phoenix miniature art has made a video tutorial series about a beautiful diorama he made. I followed his tutorial for a large part. I just added in a few different branches, etc.
I didn’t come close to the quality Liam pulls of, but I’m happy with the result. And I’m definitely painting a backdrop again. It’s so much fun and so freeing to have a blank canvas to paint on.
I’m not going to go into much detail, just because Liam’s video tutorial is really well put together.
If you’re interested in painting a backdrop, just go check out his video series. And most importantly start experimenting!!
painting the jungle
I didn’t put highlights on the darkbrown junglefloor, simply because there wouldn’t be much visible and because I felt I didn’t want to take the attention away from the rest of the piece. For the jungle plants I mixed up a few different greens and added in an of yellow or beige to highlight them up.
In this picture you see I went for a blueish green on the Monstera plants. Seeing as there is no other blue tones in the background or even in the rest of the piece, they felt really out of place. So in the end I went for a more classic green.
I highlighted the plants that where near the center and the front of the diorama the most. Just to create a clear focal point towards the backdrop and miniature.
In order to give a bit of variation to the stones. I mixed up a classic grey, and a more warm grey with hints of red and pink. I then painted on random spots of green to simulate growth of on the stones Later I added a lot of my moss mix to give even more of a lush and overgrown feeling to the piece.
I added this moss mix to the threes as well. I once saw this trick on a blog, but I can’t remember which blog it was.
You take a fine turf and add a varnish to it. I decided to use two different colors, just to give yet again some more variation. And then I put it where I want it. After its dry, I just highlight it. And it’s ready.
The terrible resin pour
I painted up two fishes and added them to where the water was going to be. I did this by gluing them on to a paperclip and then drilling a hole in to the river bed.
If you’re interested in the fish or the bird in the tree, these are part of the jungle animal set of the fantastic sculpture and painter Oliver Spaeth. You can see his work on Instagram. Or buy his sculpts on his Myminifactoryshop.
https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Honourguard%20Miniatures
When everything was ready, I used some clear plastic from packaging to create a border around where the river was going to be. Then I used some uv resin to close the borders between the diorama and the plastic. And then I got a bit impatient and started filling the whole thing with the uv resin. The problem is that is more gel then liquid. So I started getting some bubbels. So I decided to try and use another water product. Which was another big mistake. I waited for more than 24u to get it to dry. And it kind of did, at least the top part. So again my impatient mind came up with the genius idea to put some more uv resin on top.
I removed the plastic border and was met with a disaster. The layer of the other product hadn’t dried at all. So I had to remove it from between the 2 layers of uv resin. And then fil in the void with more UV resin. It was still visible, but it was dry.
But then came the next problem, I had a lot of unevenness do to the disaster. So I had to sand all sides and the top. And I couldn’t get it as clear as before.
Luckily someone in my community came with the great idea to add a real thin layer of uv resin.
And it worked out great!!
The display case was one from the brand HMF, they have a large range of display cases for miniatures. I bought it through an amazon shop.
The Finished result
I had so much fun creating and painting this piece, and the recipient of the diorama was so happy with it! I’m already planning a few different fun dioramas!