The diorama side of the business has grown from clients wanting to show off their models at their best, whether it be one I've built for them or one they already own.
They look great in a cabinet or a shelf....but they look even better in a contemporary setting.
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And the possibilities are endless. A U-Boat hunting in a cruel sea, A dogfight at 30,000 feet, or simply an aircraft at rest on a grassy field.
Below are two of my recent diorama builds to display models I've built.
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My client here wanted the iconic picture of Guy Gibson and the crew of ED932 just as they embarked on the famous Dam buster raid in 1943.
He had a set of Britain models already and asked me to build the aircraft in 1:32 scale and a suitable diorama to recreate the shot.
I think we got pretty close......
But then on this build of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Spitfire Mk.IXe MK356 all we wanted was a worn grassy field and an aircraft being serviced prior to getting the D-Day black and white invasion stripes and heading off to patrol the skies on 6th June 1944.
The dioramas are all entirely hand built from scratch with the same passion and care I put into the models themselves. As a result, each one is unique.
It can be designed to your exact requirements. Any additional vehicles or figures required will usually be based on kits that are available on the market or scratch built if necessary. You can leave all that side of it to me prior to construction.
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The dioramas are built around one main construction method.
They're built around a wooden frame with a foam board insert, which can be made to your exact size requirements, and there are also many options as to the type of wood effect and colouring.
I start with a 25mm thick dense polystyrene foam board of the type used for insulation. This forms the basis for the actual diorama.
If the scene is to be anything other than completely flat, I then use plaster to create the surface contours, which is then painted and the appropriate modelling materials used to create the surface effects, be they grass, mud, concrete, tarmac, sand or whatever has been agreed.
Here's how it works...
Firstly we need to discuss your requirements. There are a number of ways to do this.
Some customers provide a photo of a historical setting and ask for that to be used as the basis, some will describe what their idea is and I will turn it into a design.
Of course if there are space restrictions where you want to display the diorama, these will be taken in to account, I can produce bases of pretty much any exact size.
Once the layout and size is agreed, I will provide you with a fixed price for the build. There are some diorama pricing guidelines on the pricing page, but these are at best guidelines and assume the very simplest of dioramas. I am sure you will appreciate that the more complexity is added the more the diorama will cost to produce. Apart from the cost of the basic raw materials (i.e. the wooden frame, the board, plaster, vegetation etc) if you need additional vehicles, figures and hardware these will need to be purchased and/or constructed and painted as well. And the more labour involved the higher the cost, naturally.
If you're happy with everything, I'll send you an order document confirming the price and I'll need a deposit (usually the cost of all raw materials as a minimum)
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Head over to the Pricing Guide to get an idea of total cost of a base
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