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The Diotribe
Diorama building tips, techniques, and custom 3D printing.
Tired of staring at those white walls, I decided it was time to add some color. I thought the comic shop would look good in red, while Monk’s needed a more sedate gray. While the paint dried, I started work on the comic shop’s sign. Cool & Collected is one of my long-running websites, so …
Last night, I added some detail to the buildings by gluing strips of wood trim around the doors and windows. One of my goals for this diorama was to create and 3D print as many pieces as possible. Here is the door of the future comic book shop. I left a large opening for “glass” …
I’m in the final stages of designing a 1:12 scale fire escape/balcony. I’m planning to sell these as a kit, so the pieces need to be designed to be assembled with minimal effort. These are getting real close to prime time, so stay tuned!
My Zombicide Kickstarter finally came in and let’s just say the amount of painting in my future is pretty daunting. CMON’s minis are always top-notch and I can’t wait to get started! The beginning step of the painting process is to prime all the figures with a base coat of black spray paint that adheres …
Yancy Street is an older neighborhood that hasn’t had their sidewalks redone in a while, so I needed to rough them up a bit. The initial gray base color was achieved with black and white spray paint applied in a random fashion. Some areas are darker than others. Once the paint was dry, I carved …
The walls are up and painted with a quick coat of house paint. For this step, I use regular house paint from the hardware store. A great trick for getting cheap paint is to look at the mis-mixed paints at Lowes or Home Depot. You can get a gallon of paint that was mixed incorrectly …
I’ve wanted to build a detailed city street scene for action figure photography for a while, but never got around to it until now. Building 1/12 scale dioramas take up a lot of space, so this needs to be a modular display, where I can add buildings over time. The diorama will also need to …
