Delaque Diorama Breakdown #PaintedEncounters
It was nearing the end of September and upon realising that I had too many projects on the go I resolved to not start anything new and focus on finishing things off. However, I had been binge-watching Goobertown Hobbies' YouTube video archive while working on my last project and in this video specifically he talks about being in the moment and doing the project that you're currently inspired by, and not flagellating yourself under a pile of previous commitments, because there's no joy in that and that's not what the hobby is about.
So at the start of October a Patreon I'm part of released these modular figures (above), and I remembered Mark Gibbon's artwork from the Necromunda rulebook (below), I felt that spark of wanting to give it a go. Even better, there was a competition run by the Patreon that I could take part in, so that would give me a definite deadline to work towards and stop the project from dragging out indefinitely.
I imported the character component stl files into Tinkercad, roughly assembled him, then designed and scaled the scenery to fit inside an Ikea Bell Jar for display as I have done with a previous piece. I printed character and base reclining at about 30 degrees, a compromise that I thought would show the best detail along all axes. Fortunately my print was very clean and I did very little clean-up beyond removing raft and supports, though I did hit part of the cloak and the bald head with some 600 grit sandpaper to hide the worst of the layer lines.
The Base
The base took a handful of iterations. Originally I hadn't intended to include any lights, but my step-son Jack suggested an explosion, and the idea caught my imagination so I looked at ways of making it happen. I found YouTube tutorials on making explosion effects with cotton balls and tea lights, and my biggest mistake with this piece was adapting that idea without first looking at my own skill set and the long-term practicability. I got caught up in taking a single photo rather than having a shelf display piece, and so I used modified tealight LED's and batteries when really I should have stuck to my usual schtick of USB powered LEDS. I think I could have made the lighting better overall if I hadn't been caught up in the idea of a deadline.
After spray priming the base black I tried coats of brown and orange to add depth to the effect, but the coat of silver pretty much hid all of that. Instead I turned to good old fashioned black, brown, and orange washes for the rust/weathered effects. The spraypaint turned out to be amazingly hydrophobic, which added some nice texturing effects. A new technique I tried for this pieces was to use glazes as well, to add a subtle tint to different components, a tip that I picked up from Miniac to imply different materials and textures. I used red on the I-beams around the windows, most obviously green on the hatch, but also blue on the floor grates. I made sure to only use colours that already existed on the character to help tie everything together, and also that the colours I used were more muted so as to not draw to distract from it. I made a particular effort to black ink between the separate details for maximum contrast.
Glass: This took a fair bit of thought and trail and error. I couldn't find anything useful on YouTube by way of tutorials for broken glass, what there was seemed to be focused on model train scale and the consensus seemed to be to break actual glass slips that are used in microscope slide preparation. Clearly not suitable for my case. Initially I had thought to use clear thin hard blister packet plastic from packaging as the window, and to have bits of plastic flying through the air, but it didn't really work. I ended up finding a clear cd case and realised that the thickness was what I needed. I cut out a full-size pane, I had intended to cut it up, but it turned out very difficult to cut accurately. I looked at reference pictures and noted the "spider web" pattern in broken windows. I had been going to do diamonds and shards, but the reference pictures helped to realise that circles and triangles were the order of the day. I broke up the rest of the case and lay an approximate equal amount on top of the intact pane to make sure I used the right amount. I put larger pieces at the top of the window and the smaller pieces at the bottom, consistent with the reference material that bigger pieces were further from point of impact, and I imagine that this window had been kicked out. I glued the pieces with PVA on account of it drying clear and not needing much strength, but once in place things didn't look quite right. I removed some of the pieces from the ground, but I eventually put my finger on that the glass looked extremely dull compared to the hyper-highlighted colours everywhere else. So I found that drybrushing the edges of the transparent plastic with pure white really helped it fit in better.
Explosion: The explosion worked almost textbook as per the YouTube tutorial. I used food dye on cotton balls, and most of the dye was wrung out with the water, but enough remained for the effect. The cotton balls also let through less light than I initially expected, so I was forced to stretch them out and thin them down as thinly as possible. Spray painting took a bit of finessing too. My initial coats with red and black were too light. I progressed cautiously as I wouldn't have time to re-dye another batch. In the end I hit upon a method I liked, a medium coat of red a 90 degrees to the light source, and a heavy coat of black from above in the zenithal technique.
The Character
I took this as my second serious attempt at experimenting using a wet palette, and to be honest I consider the wet palette itself to be a massive failure still. I must be using the wrong kind of baking paper, or possibly my 20 year old Citadel paints that have almost completely dried up are the problem. But no matter, the gripe about equipment aside, I used wet-blending and every bit of advice from Miniac and Goobertown on highlighting, and contrast, and colour choice I could remember and have produced one of my absolute best paint-jobs to date. In terms of colour choice I was fairly constrained in that I wanted this to be a tribute to the Necromunda models I used in the 90's. But back then the colours I had used had been lifted straight from the 'Eavy Metal Painting Team anyway, so they're probably not horrible. I am particularly happy with the transitions I achieved on the cloak and head, much better than my old technique of just drybrushing everything. And I love the effect I got on the guns by using a green wash over a silver basecoat.
Initially I was very unhappy with the character's mouth as it was just a black hole into oblivion, so I spent a bit of time on rectifying that. I hadn't expected the model to have teeth (let alone my printer sensitive enough to print details that small) but when I tentatively dabbed in some white paint the teeth shape came delightfully easily and it made such an improvement to the head. Suspending the character was relatively easy. A bit of wire coathanger cut down and bent, inserted into a hole in the base behind the window and another in the character's backwards facing foot. I painted it black, and most of it is hidden in the explosion cloud so it is very difficult to spot from most angles.
Back in the day I had a dual-autopistol wielding Juve that went by the name of Shakes. I imagine this is him when he's all grown up.
Photography:
Photographing the diorama presented a bit of a challenge as I still consider photography a bit of a personal weak point. I watched some YouTube videos on how to photograph miniatures and took as much to heart as possible. Turn off flash, photography at the eye level of the miniature, use diffused daylight as lighting. I dug out a small lightbox that I used many years ago and set it up in there. Most of the photos I took with the regular iPhone camera, but for the dramatic explosion shot at the top of the page I used the Adobe Lightroom app. I'm not really happy with the result, the photo is very grainy, but I think that might be a result of any low-light photography. More experimenting is required.
Materials List:
Base and figure printed on an Ender 3 Pro in black/grey eSun PLA+
Base designed in Tinkercad.
3x Tea light from $2 store
3x Hot glue gun sticks (as light diffusers)
Cotton Balls
Coathanger
Hard clear cd case
Spray and pit paints
Ikea Bell Jar
Credits:
Character model: October release Umbra Ganger from Monstrous Encounters
Explosion Effects: Eric's Hobby Workshop
Painting Tips and inspirations:
Goobertown Hobbies, Miniac, Squidmar Miniatures