It has been two weeks since I last worked on the GM diorama project. Real life just got in the way of everything. But the guys collaborating on this project gathered at my house over the long weekend and we spent some time refining the foam structure of our “hdden Zeonic base” mesa thingy. Also, the recently neutered Latte came over to visit his big brother.
The foam blocks are just the basic structure for the diorama. Once we have the basic structure, we overlay this with plaster cloth which conforms to the shape of the foam structure and creates as seamless surface from which we will continue to build upon. For my section, I cut away some excess foam and then added in my door from the kotobukia chain base series. More foam was added around the door to help blend it in with the mesa. We were gluing the foam, but Angel suggested we pin the foam with toothpicks which worked out better since we already had the basic structure. Once the extra foam pieces were in place, I added the plaster cloth and wrapped my section up. The last picture is Brandon’s adjoining piece that hasn’t been wrapped.
As a group, we cut and add foam to get everything matched up as closely as possible. The dioramas are going to be individual sections that will come together to form a bigger story. So a good amount of team work is necessary, and hopefully we’ll pull this off.
Funaka works on planning out his section with some stand in kits. Satisfied with the set up, he wraps his section with plaster cloth.
Brandon gets to finalizing his section with foam, then goes to wrap it with the plaster cloth. Plaster cloth can be found at any model railroad shop or model shop that sells woodland scenics products. Funaka also discovered that Michael’s arts and crafts stores carry plaster cloth. We ended up hitting up the local Michael’s to replenish our supply of plaster cloth. Once wrapped, we placed out adjacent pieces together to make sure we match up well.
With enough plaster cloth, we got most of the base parts wrapped. There are a few spots that were missed, but I’ll take care of those areas this week. Once wrapped, the thing looks a little more like the mesa idea we’re going for. At least better than a bunch of stacked foam blocks of varying shapes and sizes.
The plaster cloth dries fairly quickly, and after about half an hour of dry time, we mix up some celluclay, a dry paper mache mixture with water and some elmers glue. And apply the mixed paper mache mixture to the plaster cloth surface. This will give us a basic rock like surface for the diorama. Once this dries – it’ll take a few days depending on how thick a layer is placed; we can add more textures and such with more celluclay. We also made some rocks to add some dynamic to the plain ground.
In other news, Nathan brought Latte over. At one point, we had 8 dogs in the house, 5 of them corgis. Latte is currently 11 lbs while Kenken is at least 15. The two boys spent quite a bit of time playing with one another, with Duke also joining the fun. Angel and Nicky brought over Ty’s bed for which Hugo and Beanie took turns enjoying. Hugo then discovered the joys of a faux leather chair where he can lay his head on the arm rest and have no restrictions on paw placement, not that his short little legs need that much room, but the little bugger has been spending quite a bit of time in that chair this weekend. Kenken is starting to pick up little quirks from Hugo, like Hugo’s fondness of laying under things – chairs, tables, etc.
Kenken with mom
looking nice!