I just watched a marvellous diorama on Armorama of a tank blown to pieces.

AFV builders seem to have so much more options to bring life to their models than aircraft builders.

Although an aircraft modeller "to the bone" I feel a bit jealous

With the question: any brilliant idea's how we could portray our work in a realistic setting?

depending on the scale you are building in, a dio may or may not be practical. Ive started one for my 1:144th planes:

in 144 you can build a decent portion of an airport on a 20x30 foam core board. Lots of trucks, trees etc, mostly from the N scale railroading world.

Tarmac, concrete,grass and dirt feilds are pretty easy to portray and it all depends on the scale.

When it is easy, why do we see so few aircraft diorama's on aeroscale?

I love aircraft dioramas. I just wish I had the time (and the skills) to put together something really nice.

Here's one that I particularly like, from ModelArt Australia, December 2005 issue. It's a 1/32 Arii Zero with 1/35 figures (sorry for the poor quality) . . . . .







One of my club mates also put together a monster dio a couple of years back with 3(yep, 3) 1/32 Beaufighters. There are a few pictures HERE

I am slowly getting underway on my first dio adventure, you can follow my capers HERE on the P-47 SIG site.

Cheers, D

There have been a few posted here and there.

With the right placement of 1/35 figures/vehicles,and 1/32 aircraft you can put together a nice dio.
Plus as well there are so meany figures/vehicles out in 1/48 now that would also go well with your aircraft kits.

Back in the 1970s, Monogram had a deal with Sheperd Paine to do dioramas of their 1/48 scale kits. The diorama and step-by-step descriptions were included as a full-colour leaflet in the box. I was fascinated by how he did his magic.

I tried it once to conclude that the difference between 1/35 and 1/32 is giving a distorted view. A real life figure of 180 cm tall is 5.625 cm in 1/32 scale and 5.1 cm in 1/35 scale. This becomes quite apparent and certainly for vehicles 1/35 and 1/32 don't mix that easily.

Just a shame that no standardiation took place making it all 1/35 or 1/32

I only wish I knew why it is so difficult to get aircraft modelers to do dios.Armor and cars guys have been doing them for years.

Shep was and is an inspiration to all modelers of dioramas including me back in the 70's.

Basically I have the same question:

I guess the main reason is that it is a lot more difficult to make a diorama with an aircraft than with cars/AFV

Vehicles are easy to portray in their natural environment in a very attractive way. the natural environment of a plane is to simply put it ona bleu sheet of paper, which is not really an interesting job to do.

Airplanes can futher be shown on the ground as a wreck, or as a plane undergoing maintenance, or as a plane simply standing there (which most planes are doing 90% of their time anyway).

So basically we are lacking idea's and where we have them, we are confronted with a total lack of the necessary attributes. there are very few of the vehicles, people, equipment, anti aircraft guns... available in the popular aircraft scales

so the question becomes how much difference does scale really make?
In the N scale railroad world, the British use 1:148th, Japan uses 1:150 and North America and Europe use 1:160. Perhaps Im a complete phillistine, but I have no problem mixing Japanese and British accessories into my N scale scenes. It's pretty common practice actually I have no problem at all placing 1:160 vehicles in scenes with my 1:144 airplanes. Anyone who is offended by this need not listen to my advice.

In the case of 1:72, the British OO scale is 1:76, and there is an endless world of scenery, buildings, figures and vehicles built to that scale. If you really think your 1:72 aircraft look gigantic next to 1:76 trucks and figures, I guess you are out of luck.
1:48 is American O gauge. A rare perfect match! Again, there is a whole industry built to serve the O scale scenic modeller.

A poster above objected to the difference between 1:35 and 1:32 which is about 9% difference. Similar to the N scale and OO scale divergence. It may be that the larger the scale the more noticeable the difference.

A 1/35 scale figure which would in real life be 1.80 m tall used in a 1/32 scale diorama would be 1.64 m tall.

A 1/32 scale figure of 1.80 m tall would on a 1/35 scale diorama appear to be 1.97 m tall.

Of course there are plenty of people which are 1.97 or 1.64 m tall and there is nothing wrong with it as such, but it isn't the average what you would expect

Another take on the subject. If using 1/32 scale aircraft and 1/35 & 1/32 scale figures, place the figures at a bit of a distance away to minumize the scale differance. Same with vehicals. The problem comes when the figures need to be within the plane or vehical. People working on or under a plane will be seen as figures working and the size differance will not be that noticable. As people come in a variety of sizes, it works out fine. As far as plane dio's go, they are rarer to find as the choice of dio is limited, such as on the ground (tarmac, cement, grass field, p.s.p. or carrier deck), in flyable shape or repair, preped for take off or recovery from battle damage ( on the ground or water), or even crated up for shipment or in delivery mode. Flying is harder to portray without the use of clear rods and such. I know that many build for a collection and the base doe's not matter. Some just can't be bothered with the extra work and are happy with the plane on a shelf. So depending on YOUR choice of display, is what you'll end up with. I have several 1/32 planes and 1/35 helo's, and they will end up on dio's because that's what I like. Interacting as they should as far as I am concerned. The base for a dio is what holds the story together. It ties in the supporting actors, people or vehicals, to the story star, the plane. There was a dio here a month or so ago showing a Japponese bomber under repair on a dirt strip with the surrounding jungle growth and the maintanance crew going about what they do and the supporting vehicals to help them. By itself, the plane would be a winner, but with the figures, vehicals and with the groundwork, it is exceptional. Another problem with large scale aircraft is the size of the base needed to put together a story. Covering it with a plastic case can be expensive and cabnets can be beyond the reach of most modelers and then again, the space to put them. I want to buy that large B17 and B25, but where to put them and the base have made the desision for me, unfortunatly no can do. So, with all that in mind (and I love dio's) I end up building mostly vignetts, because of space limits. Heck, I don't know yet where the R/R dio I am building is going to end up. The comander in chief say's not in her living room or she will call in an air strike. So if you like planes, what are you going to do. Build a 12 inch by 12 inch dio for one or two planes in 1/72 or 1/48, or have space for five planes. You have to make a choice one way or the other. In the end, I think it comes down to how much space you have to work with. Nothing worse for me than to build a nice dio and have to keep it in a cabnit or plastic container unseen by anyone.

there seems to be some interest here for diorama's, so why not have a campaign?

john could lead the whole thing with his experiance and we could all learn off each other???

i would be in as i have been collecting parts for an idea from ww1.

paul

I like the idea of an aircraft dio campaign. I'd be there.

Would this campaign be in any scale and period? I'd be interested depending on campaign rules and timing...

Mikael (who has a few plane diorama ideas ratling about in my head)

A diorama campaign would be excellent. But considering tha large amount of wrok, and that it is a first, it may be useful to spread it ovr a year instead of the ususal 6 months.

I would be interested to join but I am very poor at delivering on time

just yesterday Ludwig113 began recruiting for a Aircraft Dio Campaign[. See you there...