Inspiration
This little project has been something I’ve been meaning to do for a long while now. I first got inspiration for it when seeing a tutorial on the Tested Youtube Channel. Further research led me to the original creator who made some of the first dioramas. You can find them here and here. Looking at the process gave me the impression that the project would be a great entry point for trying out weathering techniques for models.
Geocraper
The basis of the project is around the Geocraper miniature cityscape sets. These cool little modular urban dioramas can be bought online or at various hobby stores. I found mine at the Yodobashi Camera store in Kyoto.
The sets are quite small (1:2500) but a perfect base to work off of.
Applying Damage:
This part of the weathering process is pretty straightforward. I applied damage to the buildings using a combination of a blade, saw, and file. Most of the damage included scoring the sides and filing some of the edges. I used my saw to cut through one of the high-rises to have it toppled against an adjacent building.
Weathering:
Weathering began with a couple applications of dull coat. This was done with matte clear spray paint from Mr. Color. I then did some light passes of greys and blacks as well to knock down the color. Weathering for both piece mainly utilized a variety of Mr. Weathering Color. Different colors were added in passes and washes. The nice thing about the Mr. Weathering Color is that the application of the pigment can be easily varied just by adding in the accompanying thinner. This allowed me to do darker, more localized spots, as well as more generalized applications. I then followed up on this with Tamiya Weathering Master pigments. These were dusted and brushed onto the model after the washes. This allowed me to add some highlights and more nuanced motifs to the dioramas. The whole thing was then locked in with one more pass of dull coat.
Adding Foliage:
Foliage for the dioramas largely consisted of model railroading foliage. Stuff like Kato and Noch greenery as well as some other no-name brands I found on Amazon. Applying the foliage foam to the models mostly used a combination of plastic cement for particular pieces, and scenic glue for the rest. I used a variety of similar colored foliage foam to add dimension to the greenery in the scenes.
Creating the Water Feature:
The second diorama I made included a water feature that had the bottom of the high-rises submerged. To achieve this, I used clear two-part resin and some blue and yellow pigment to color the water. The process to doing this involved creating a retaining wall around the diorama to hold the resin in. This was done with leftover styrene sheets from another project and hot glue. Next, the two part resin was mixed and pigment added. After that, it was a matter of pouring and waiting, and keeping leaks in check. The resin was left to cure for about 24 hours.
Final Product and Thoughts:
This little project was very fun and the results were quite satisfying. Because of their small scale and relative simplicity in execution, this foray into weathering and resin casting was a great way to get introduced to the process. I’ve already planned and started some other projects that expand on these principals that I hope to show in the near future! In the meantime though, if you’re interested in trying something like this out yourself, I would highly recommend it.
