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Sunday, October 21, 2012

2012 New Space Diorama - Part 2

I haven't had any updates to this since August 18th and admittedly I've been slow-leakin' this all summer. For a variety of reasons - or excuses - I just didn't feel like workin' on it. The work has been done outside on the patio and the weather has finally changed for the better  - our never-ending summer swelter subsiding into a nice autumn warmness. Most of the materials have been scrounged from what I had on-hand so it's a good thing there was a small container of ready-mixed joint compound in The Cave. I used this to give the Styrofoam its first coat. It does a fair job at covering those little styroam balls and because it's thick it took additional carving and detailing well. The tub ran out of compound before all the Styrofoam could be covered and so I need to go out and buy some.
I've been calling this a 'diorama' but actually it's just a photo backdrop. A diorama is generally a display which tells a story and the components are fixed. This is meant to be a 'living' display, where-in the components can be swapped out at will to tell any number of stories. The basic design was inspired by science fiction art that I've been culling from the Internet for years. To allow room to display space ships, aliens, etc, the actual backdrop couldn't be thick and so I drew my inspiration from images showing tall escarpments and jagged cliff faces.  This  is why the rock faces are tall and scarred.



Here's a pick to show the progress to-date. Enjoy!