For the "Stars of the VVS"-campaign, I decided to do a special "seasons' greetings" diorama. Since this can hopefully be of some inspiration to you (it is a lot more fun than most Christmas ornaments), I thought I'd write a seperate article.
The scene consists of two Polikarov I-16:s and an airfield starter AS-2 (scratch built) on GAZ AAA chassis. The scale is 1/285. In other words, it is small!!!
This is the boxart picture that inspired me.
I've used models from a company called GHQ, who makes models primarilly for wargaming. The detail is awesome for this scale. Here is the Gaz AAA truck that I used as base for my airfield starter. I've just tried some wash and dry-brushing to highlight the details.
I then used streched sprue and plasticard to modify the truck into an AS-2 starter.
The numbers for the aircraft were taken form the fine print from other decal sheets! I belive the word i fiddely?
I worked pretty hard on these I-16:s to make them nice The red stars from GHQ were pretty bad, so I had to enhance the red with a razor point pen. It bled a little, but I will fix that. Besides, I don't think that will show in the final model, since it is going to be inside a globe...
The pine tree will cover up the water filler hole (and hopefully add a little christmas spirit!).
Here is the diorama on the outside...
...and here it is inside the globe! I'm pretty sure that snow will fall soon!
Given the theme of the campaign ("Stars of the VVS"), I decided to add a flag pole with the VVS flag waiving, before sealing the golbe shut.
And finally the winter arrived at the little airfield outside of Leningrad, and heavy snow started to fall!
I used the products of Eberhard Faber for snow and water claryfier. PLease note that it doesn't take much snow in order to get at nice effect! I think I might have added a tad to much! We got a real snow storm going!!! But hey, it's very eye-catching
Shake it, baby!
Most of my ideas seemed to have worked out! The VVS-flag, however, has already started to go pale and I'm afraid that it's soon going to turn into a white flag! Too bad for the battle hungry I-16 pilots. One may, perhaps, look at it as a sign of Christmas? Another big worry is that I made the ground from regular clay (that dries by itself). It looks as if the field is going to be very muddy!! Where's the permafrost when you need it?!?
Anyhow, this was a really fun experiment, and hopefully I've learned something from my mistakes - next time the ground will be made of fimo-clay that is burned in the oven! I have two more snow globes planned before the holidays!
And since Christmas is around the corner, I wish for all of you to get a lot of plastic in your stockings!
Cheers!
