Global Scale Modeller

My latest project is a diorama showing an Sd.Kfz. 222 and two cavalry men with their horses in France during the western campaign 1940.
I'd like to share the building process with you here and most of all, I'd really like to encourage everybody to put in your two cents on this .
If you have already built the same kits and/or have any advice for me whatsoever, please share.

So here's how the Tamiya Sd. Kfz. 222 looks so far: I just started airbrushing the inside of the model the other day and I have to say that I probably set my new personal record for the most piss-poor paintjob ever... My cheap-o no-name airbrush just kept on spitting and blobbing. Well, I guess I should have listened to my dad when he said that you never save money when you buy cheap. In the end you will not see much of the inside of the vehicle and there isn't any detail anyway, but it was quite frustrating nevertheless. About the kit I have a question to all you more experienced modellers out there:
Do you really just need the PE parts for the mesh cover of the turret? The instructions say that I don't need the plastic frames (parts 26 and 27). Is that correct? The PE parts look so flimsy and I'm wondering if the mesh cover on the real vehicle looked like that too...

The second kit I want to use for the dio is the Dragon German cavalry division Florian Geyer: It's almost done and the horses and soldiers look very good, but I have to say that building them was an extremely challenging task for me. As you can see in the pictures there was quite some filling to do, especially around the necks of the horses. Figuring out where exactly to put the gear of the soldiers was another difficult task. Furthermore the kit doesn't include any reins, so I'll have to scratchbuild them. Does anybody have any ideas how to do this? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

And this is my rough idea for the layout of the diorama: I've included the Italeri fountain, and I'm planning to use some Miniart cobblestone for the road. The cardboard wall in the back will of course be replaced by a resin wall section that I bought at a jumble sale. Do you like the layout, or would you change something? Feel free to comment.

Yeah man you don't need the plastic frames I think those are for the older version that came with a piece of mesh you cut and put over the plastic bit You just use the two PE bits

For the riens you could use a strip of tape but I really have no idea

Cool looking dio planned too man good luck on it!

Alright, Panzermeister. Thanks a lot for your kind comment and your help with the Tamiya kit! I'll just use the PE parts for the mesh cover then.

A very cool looking dio indeed. The mounted troops are super and look great with the armoured car

Well thanks, Rob. Yeah, I thought it might be kinda nice to have two generations of recon in one diorama.

Looking good, I will be keeping up with this dio.

Unfortunately I'm totally swamped with work and could hardly find the time to do some modelling lately...
Anyway, today I finally made some (very small and minor) progress: I built the wall for the background of the dio. It's made from a piece of resin wall that I cut into three parts and some plastic profile I bought at the local hardware store. Let me know what you think. Oh, and I painted the fountain. The actual colors are a bit different from what the photo shows... Anyway. That's it for today. I really hope I'll have more time for my hobby in the near future... It's always the same problem, right?!

Looks great. Good storyline.

Nice Dio mate, really like the look of this one. Keep up the good work..!

Martin

Thanks Gustav, thanks Martin! I appreciate your kind feedback. I can't wait to continue with this project... Summer holidays are coming up. Yee-haw!

This look interesting, will watch this one to see how it turns out!

Dear fellow modellers!

It's been quite some time: Finally a brief update on my project. I'm really glad I could get some work done over the last couple of days (summer holidays... yeee-haw!!!).
The Sd.Kfz. 222 is almost ready for painting the outside. I base-coated the cavalry figures and the wall for the background. As you can see, the horses now have reins. I'm thinking about adding a street lamp and a park bench. Still quite some modelling work left to do, but at least I've made some progress. The pictures should give you a clearer idea of what I'm heading for in the dio. As always, I'd appreciate your constructive criticism and comments.

Have a good one.

Looks great. I love your idea of combining both mounted and armoured scouts in the early part of the war.

Enjoy the holidays.

That's a nice dio!!!

Very Nice Diorama !!!

Like a lot your idea , Cavalry Recon wiht Motor Recon , and the display of the figures and kit is great !

To follow for sure

Coming along really well, looks great

Looking great so far, can't wait to see it completed!



Cheers,

Martin

Thank you guys for your encouraging comments! I like that you like the idea for my dio
So here we go, another update:
I've glued the sidewalk tiles and the cobblestone street on. The material I made the tiles with is really awesome. It's air-drying, but after it dried you can still cut it with a hobby knife and sand it. The stuff is called "creall do and dry". Then I built a frame using balsa wood (nice material, you can cut it with a hobby knife too). Primed the whole shebang in black. It looked like a burned out street (napalm?). Or, as a friend of mine said when he saw it: "Paris at night..."

And today I started painting the dio. I've used a variety of colors and to be honest I'm not quite satisfied with the result, but then again, that's absolutely normal for me when I'm putting a dio together. So I'm gonna call this an interim state. Not so happy with the colors yet. What I want to avoid is that the wall, the sidewalk and the street have the same grey tone and therefore look too monocrome. On the other hand I want it to look natural and not all wildly colored... Hm, difficult to find the right balance... If you have any suggestions for me, please share! Apart from the color issues, I like the layout of the dio so far and I'm pretty positive about it. I think it's gonna turn out good in the end. Let me know what you think. Have a good one and see you soon!

I really like it so far. Keep the good work up. Don't see horses modelled. I got a master box set which is a cart with wounded soldiers and two horses in it. Dreading trying to paint them.

AAAAAwesome!!

Nige99 wrote:I really like it so far. Keep the good work up. Don't see horses modelled. I got a master box set which is a cart with wounded soldiers and two horses in it. Dreading trying to paint them.

Thanks, Nige! I finished painting one of the horses last night. It was in fact a lot of fun. I used the lifecolor flesh paint set, started with the darkest tone and then applied thin layers of lighter tones as highlights. I can absolutely recommend this set to paint horses. To make the eyes look more vivid, I added a small drop of glossy finish to them. The reins look ok to me, but they could have been a bit thinner and after studying Osprey's "Axis Cavalry in WWII" I figured that I should have used bridle bits with double reins... Ah well, hindsight is 20/20. Considering that this is the first horse I have ever painted, I'm pretty happy with the result.

Great work on the horse mate, looks the business!


Martin

Great work, this dio get together quite nicely.

As you asked for suggestions couple of posts earlier regarding the stone wall color, did few minutes Google search to get some samples you may like to see.

As can only attach 3 pictures per post I will follow up with couple more on the same topic.

These first 3 are for the color variation of natural stone.

It is not unusual to fill some gaps with regular bricks. As such if you like to have some red accents on your retaining wall you can do so. However those should be sparse, no more than 5-10%.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Hi again,

First picture shows some mold growth, typically at the bottom of the stone walls, usually up to the knee height, due to ground water raising through capillarity.
As I see you have earth behind so it would be likely to have this kind of growth even on higher places on the all.
So if you like to have some green on it you can

I put the last couple of pictures only for the corners of the stone walls, to illustrate the typical corner stonework. Weather the corner stones are raised or recessed from the face of the wall both are common occurrences for these types of stonework.
Provided that is not to late in the build or too hard you may like to adjust a bit the corner piece. Possibly using the same material you used for the pavement?

Hope to find these useful and once again, great work with this dio

Cheers!

Fantastic work painting the horse. Excellent tip for painting them.

Nige99 wrote:Fantastic work painting the horse. Excellent tip for painting them.

Agree with Nige99. That horse is a work of art.

Thanks for the great tips regarding how to paint the wall. The pictures are very helpful. I probably won't be able to change the corner stone without risking to seriously damage the dio, so I guess I'll leave it as it is, but the pictures give me a good idea for my next project.
Thanks for your kind comments on the horse, Nige and Willem!

The Diorama is very nice , agree with you for the 'monotony' but looking at it and imagine the figures and the vehicle , in the end it would be a very nice dio and that wouldn't be important , my opinion, , and the dio is very nice painted , we will see a great Diorama here !
About the Horse , Great paint job and great tips on how to paint them . And that eye detail , it is very vivid and real ! Very Good ! In my opinion we have a winner here !

Fabulous job on that Horse mate!

You have brought life to those horses, they are amazing

Thank you, guys! I've got some updates for you:
I took cantara's advice ( ) and painted some cobblestones, sidewalk tiles and stones in the wall in different colors. I mainly used colors of the ak interactive set "German War Colors 1937-44" and I found it pretty useful for this. I'm pretty happy with the look of the surfaces now, as they look quite realistic to me. I've also finished the park bench (miniart, painted with Revell 361 olive green silk matt), added some chipping and gave it a brown wash (mig brown wash for German dark yellow). I also added some tufts of grass and flowers (Fredericus Rex). Additionally, the stone wall was treated with slate grey pigments (Vallejo) and green pigments (some stuff from the artists' supply store, I can't remember which brand). Again, the pics Cantara has posted earlier in this thread were very helpful.

...and I've finished the first mounted soldier. I'm not quite an expert when it comes to painting faces, but oh well... I'm happy with what I've achieved. Painting all the details on the figure wasn't easy and maybe next time I'd first paint the horse and the soldier individually and THEN glue them together. I've added a few uniform insignia decals from Tamiya.

I really have to say that painting the horse was a lot of fun and I can only recommend to you to try it yourselves. It's a nice change to the regular tanks and soldiers. Alright, I'm off to the work bench now. Cheers!

The wall, pavement and cobblestones look amazing. Very realistic.

Awesome work, mate....this is beginning to take shape nicely!

The cobblestones bench and walls are incredibly detailed and realistic. Congratulations buddy

Thanks a lot for your praise guys! That really keeps me motivated.
Meanwhile I've finished the Sd.Kfz. 222. I used a mix of white glue, water and sieved earth for the weathering this time. I applied it with a brush, and I also sprayed it on with my airbrush by dipping a brush into the mix and then blow it onto the model with the airflow of the airbrush gun. It looked awful at first , but when it dried it looked pretty realistic to me... I finished the model with a very fine layer of Tamiya buff (XF-57). As you can see in this pic, I added some stowage too (Tamiya Allied vehicles accessory set and Academy Allied and German tank supplies set). For the first time I used a Fliegersichttuch on the vehicle. I used a very simple method: Googled the flag, printed it out (two times on the same sheet), dipped it in a mix of white glue and water and let it dry on the model. Before that I covered the model with aluminum foil so the wet flag wouldn't ruin it.
Since it is illegal to show the swastica flag in Germany and many other countries, I folded it so you can't see the full evil symbol. Now, I'm not an expert on legal issues, so maybe one of you can help me: Is it ok like this or can I get in trouble if I make a slideshow of the model and publish it e.g. on YouTube?

I glued the first mounted soldier on the dio... ...and started painting the other one. I didn't quite like the head of the figure in the Tamiya kit, so I decapitated the fella and gave him a Hornet head. That's it for today. Leave me a comment, if you like. I'll keep you updated.

That's absolutely stunning work, mate....I'd display that in my lounge for everyone to see and to be proud of!

Regarding displaying the Swastika: I hope it isn't illegal on YouTube, because I just posted my "Junkers Ju87B Stuka" video on there and I added after market swastikas to the tail, because Airfix don't supply them. And, because it is my latest build, I used a photo of it as my YouTube Channel header photo?!

Keep up the brilliant work mate....I've really enjoyed watching this thread so far

Thank you very much for your highly motivating feedback. As for the swastica: I think that every country has it's own policy about it, so maybe as an Englishman in the States you'll be fine... To me this whole swastica paranoia in some countries doesn't make sense anyway. We're modellers and not fascists or anything like that at all.

Wow ! Fantastic work mate . I look forward to finish .

Oh I'm waiting to see this one complete !

The Dio is so real ! You did a great paint job on the walls and the Sd.Kfz is very well painted and weathered !

Looking awesome mate! Frankenstein looks good too

heard a tip about reins and that is soak some paper in glue and when dry cut to the desired width and length

Thanks everybody for your kind comments! That idea about the reins sounds quite easy and convincing. I think I might try that on the next horses that I'll build. Right now I'm working on "Frankenstein's" face ... I hope I have some picture updates soon.

amazing work here! super realistic! I have that same fountain and can't figure out what to do with it. are you planning on filling it with 'water'? or creating 'running water' from the spout?

Hm, I've never worked with any water effects so far and haven't thought of it yet... Good idea though... Could add a nice touch to the fountain. I'll give it a thought.
To be honest I'm not too much of a fan of that fountain (there are far better and more realistic looking ones from other companies), but I got it really cheap at eBay so I thought "Ah, what the heck...". I still think it looks alright in the dio.

Cheers!

localjedi wrote: Hm, I've never worked with any water effects so far and haven't thought of it yet... Good idea though... Could add a nice touch to the fountain. I'll give it a thought.
To be honest I'm not too much of a fan of that fountain (there are far better and more realistic looking ones from other companies), but I got it really cheap at eBay so I thought "Ah, what the heck...". I still think it looks alright in the dio.

Cheers!

Woodland Scenics makes a great water product. Ya, I got the fountain for $5 CAD, can't complain. I've used the Ultimate Concrete wash on one in the past, looked gorgeous