In the twilight days of WWII, Japanese aircraft manufacturer Kyushu Hikoki K.K. completed two prototypes of a remarkable interceptor called the Shinden. Featuring swept wings, a six-bladed pusher propeller and canards on the forward fuselage, this innovative design held great promise as a deterrent to the B-29 bombers which had begun high altitude bombing of Japan. However, the Shinden wasn’t put into production in time to fulfill its intended role.
This forced perspective diorama presents a ‘what if’ scenario based on the Shinden entering service sooner and changing the course of the war in the Pacific. A lone Shinden prepares to pounce on Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber tasked with dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
Returning from a treacherous sortie in North Africa, a battle-weary Junkers JU-88 pilot sees something . . . someone . . . in the desert. She looks like a girl he once knew. He briefly considers asking a fellow crew member to confirm, but decides against it. It can’t be her.
Mirage is an exploration of how far the eye can be pushed to accept forced perspective. Ordinarily, forced perspective dioramas contain larger scale elements at the front and smaller scale elements at the rear. Here, the differently scaled elements are equidistant from the viewer when looking at the diorama head-on. The illusion of perspective is strongest when viewing the diorama from the girl’s side, as in the photograph.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
The Death Star trench, as seen in the climactic battle of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, is a unique visual which sets the sequence apart from all other dogfights in cinema. The trench is one long blur for the most part, looming dangerously close to Rebel X-wings and Y-Wings as they conduct their attack runs. It gains even more menace as Darth Vader’s squadron moves in to intercept. How do you translate this into a static model?
Well, you could build a very long miniature set, like the special effects crew did for the movie. Or just model a short section of the trench, which Bandai offers in kit form. But that doesn’t do justice to its limitless length, or capture the photographic motion blur which smooths over the intricate details of the trench on film.
I decided to use forced perspective to convey the vast length of this architectural marvel. Scratchbuilt trench walls recede in scale to a vanishing point in the distance. To give the impression of motion blur, I made simple ‘streaks’ with no details. Vader’s ship is a Revell kit and the two slightly smaller scaled TIE fighters are from Bandai. The total length of the trench is 38cm (15”).
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
In this scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Rebel X-Wings and Y-Wings fly past the planet Yavin on their way to intercept the approaching Death Star. Here we see the Rebel attack force assembled together for the first time, and anticipate the thrills of the coming battle. So important was this shot to George Lucas that he revised it for the 1997 re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy to take advantage of the latest advances in computer generated special effects.
This is a forced perspective diorama using vehicles scaled from 1:72 to 1:270. I decided to show the X-Wings with their S-foils in attack position—the definitive look for the X-Wing.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
The Batmobile is back. This is the same 1:35 Bandai kit which I used in Batmobile Winterscape, a large tabletop diorama featured in Diorama Design. Now repurposed for a more compact wall-mounted display.
A white metal Batman figure joins the Batmobile against a forced perspective backdrop. LEDs were used for lighting. The case is acrylic and birch wood.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
Greenwood Military Aviation Museum (GMAM) in Nova Scotia, Canada, has curated my diorama Arctic Rescue for its Search and Rescue themed display area. GMAM is celebrating its 25th anniversary and features an air park of finely restored aircraft dating back to WWII, as well as numerous interior displays and artifacts.
GMAM is a stone’s throw from Canadian Forces Base Greenwood which began as an RAF station in 1942 and was home to iconic warbirds like the Lancaster and Mosquito. CFB Greenwood has grown to become the largest operational airbase in Atlantic Canada.
Art is meant to be shared. The satisfaction of completing a creative project is certainly a reward in itself, but most artists appreciate the opportunity to be able to display their work publicly. I’m delighted that the CH-149 Cormorant miniature in Arctic Rescue can now be seen in the company of its full-size rotary-wing cousins like the museum’s Labrador and H44. And if you visit, you may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the full-size Cormorant at nearby CFB Greenwood, where it’s currently operational.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
Low level flying has a visceral thrill for both pilot and observer, since the speed of the aircraft is emphasized by the proximity of the ground. Here, a Spitfire Mk.IXc buzzes a castle in the English countryside. Buzzing is what pilots call a low level pass, especially when it’s directed at a specific person or place.
I used forced perspective to fit everything into a compact box diorama format. The Spitfire is a 1:72 Eduard ProfiPACK kit, and the 3D-printed castle is around 1:500 scale.
This diorama is the second half of a matched pair which I built concurrently (Evening Kill being the other half). Buzzing the Castle was originally going to be a daytime scene with no lighting, but when I put it next to Evening Kill, it didn’t quite match. So now it’s a moonlit scene.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my new book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
The logbook for Erich Hartmann, greatest fighter ace of all time, shows that a few of his kills took place very late in the day, after 19:00. This diorama depicts what it might have looked like.
The box diorama format gives plenty of control over lighting, which was important in achieving the right ambience for this scene. The sunset effect was created with tinted acrylic strips back-lit by an orange LED.
Forced perspective was used to increase the apparent distance between the aircraft. The Messerschmitt Bf109G is 1:72 scale and the Yak-9 is 1:144.
The Black Tulip is a masterstroke of aviation graphics and is especially effective when paired with the winter camouflage scheme on this late model 109. I wonder who designed the Black Tulip . . . was it Hartmann himself, one of his trusty mechanics, or someone else?
This diorama is the first of a pair which I’ve been working on concurrently. The second will feature another legendary fighter aircraft of WWII: the Spitfire.
If you like to build dioramas and want to learn more about how to optimize the visual impact of your work, you might like my new book, Diorama Design. It’s available in both ebook and print formats at Amazon.
This is a follow-up to my original post on SHADO Yards from May 24, 2016. This diorama features moving parts, so I’ve decided to show what it looks like in motion. It was inspired by the 1970s TV series UFO.
SHADO Yards is half diorama, half model railroad. I had long thought about building a model railroad. But I realized I wouldn’t be satisfied with a conventional layout using off-the-shelf rolling stock, and decided I wanted to go with a science fiction theme instead. So the “train” in this diorama became a launch pad, which carries a factory fresh Interceptor from the assembly building to its launch position. I realized it would be less expensive to use an electric motor with a chain and sprocket drive, rather than a DC or DCC equipped locomotive, which would require an expensive controller. As you can see from the video, the transport mechanism moves at a constant speed.
The video also shows off the lighting to good effect. The sound effects were added in post production.
The Phoenix is an original design I came up with for a teaser promoting a feature length screenplay I had written called Test Pilot. Although the screenplay was never made into a film, it won a Toronto International Film Festival screenwriters’ competition.
The Phoenix is a lifting body design inspired by experimental NASA craft such as Northrop’s HL-10 and M2-F2. If you remember the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man, one of these craft was featured in a spectacular crash landing in the show’s title sequence.
Lifting body spaceplanes were developed to demonstrate the feasibility of unpowered re-entry from space using a piloted craft which could land like a conventional aircraft. These craft were never put into operational use, but they paved the way for NASA’s Space Shuttle, which utilized unpowered re-entry. The Space Shuttle had a career spanning 30 years, from 1981 to 2011. It was originally to have been replaced by the Lockheed Martin X-33, but that program was cancelled due to technical problems. The latest potential replacement for the Space Shuttle is Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser, a diminutive lifting body vehicle which could fit into the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay if the wings were folded. Time will tell if the Dream Chaser program will prove successful.
Using sheet styrene to build the Phoenix resulted in an origami style design with lots of sharp corners. If I were to do it all over again, I’d add some sculpting clay to smooth out the shape. The canopy glazing was frosted to eliminate the need to detail the cockpit interior. You can just make out the pilot’s white helmet if you look closely.
The rear landing gear feature solid rubber wheels (radio control aircraft parts) and the front landing gear wheels are from a 1:32 MIG-21 plastic kit. The engine is also made up of pieces from the spares box. The Phoenix is quite heavy due to a solid block of wood in the interior which was the attachment point for the support rod used to position it during filming. The model appeared in three shots in the video teaser: a static hangar shot, an in-flight shot showing the ship in a flat spin, and a lift-off shot which used a dry chemical fire extinguisher to simulate the exhaust blast.
Since the ship is designed to operate in the Earth’s atmosphere, it has to be streamlined to minimize friction. This means no Star Wars-style detailing like you’d see on a Y-Wing or Millennium Falcon. I applied a two-tone orange paint scheme to add some visual interest to the wide expanse of flat surface, and weathered the nose and underside of the ship to suggest scarring from the intense heat generated during re-entry.
Like many designs, the Phoenix looks better from some angles than others. The rear three-quarter view is probably the best, as it shows the massive engine bell with surrounding detail and the rear landing gear.
