Roman Legion Diorama (Part 3)

Now for the good stuff.

As you can see the diorama is big.

 With this being my second diorama ever, I have to say that I am very happy with the outcome. My question now is what do I do for the next diorama. Enjoy the pictures.

Currently I am working some Warhammer 40k miniatures. Both Blood Angels for myself and an Eldar army for a friend. I will post pictures when I am finished with them.

Roman Legion Dorama (Part 2)

The above photo shows what I originally wanted to cram on to the display. After a few practice layouts and some realization that I wanted to add terrain. I decided against the above mass of figures. It also would require a tone of painting.

Since I wanted to add terrain features the above is what I decided on in terms of figures. You can also see some initial test placements of trees on the display.

And now with some added terrain features. This time I used a clay putty for the hills. Next time I will use something else. The putty did the job. It was just a little annoying to work with.

Sadly I did not take any more pictures as I flocked the base as it was a boring and tedious process. It required that I move rather quickly to glue the figures down and then add flock before the glue hardened too much. Even then I had to go back several times and add more flock. Then I added some paint, static grass, bushes, and flowers. The rest is history.

Next post will have up close photos of the diorama.

Roman Legion Diorama (Part 1)

Last year I made a Fellowship of the Ring diorama for my dad as a Christmas present. During my time home last year, my dad and I had some really fun discussions on the Roman military and the history of Rome itself. I decided then and there that the next diorama I made for my dad was going to be of a Roman Legion.

From the start I knew this was going to be a big project. I had never done a diorama with this kind of ambition. I did not want some puny diorama with only 8 or 9 figures on the display. I wanted to make something that conveyed (at least in some small part) the full weight of a Roman legion. It had to have a lot of figures period. The figures need to look good. They also needed some variety in the uniformity of the legion so as to prevent the feeling of "Hey he just painted the same figure 40 times". No, the all needed some level of uniqueness to them.


The first question was what figures to use. I decided to go with Warlord Games Roman Legionaries as I already had some painted and to be quite honest the Warlord Games figures look like they came out of the movie Gladiator. I know that that movie is not very accurate historically, but I like the look of the film. This also helped reduce the number of figures that I would have to paint from scratch as I already had some painted(the figures did require some improvements on the paint jobs).

The second task was display size. I finally chose to go with a 19 1/2 inch by 6 inch display case. This would allow for some freedom in designing the display.

Finally I needed some inspiration for what I was going to make. I also need to make sure that I was not going to make something stupid in the process. Here is what I put together as inspiration.

These photos are of a diorama kit that you can buy online.

Gives a good sense of scale.

Lacks in realism and dynamic pose.

Good mix of realism and pose.

 The next post will have some in progress shots and will hopefully convey some of my ambition in this project.

Romans

As promised here are some photos of where the Legion currently stands. They are all just temporarily based as I would like to base them all at once and their are a few more things I am looking for in terms of basing material.

 

Not much more to say. I am working on finishing another 6 repaint figures and 8 freshly painted figures. I also plan on doing some base coating this week(weather permitting). I would have done it last week, but I had to be out of town.

Under 28mm Eagles Update pt1

Here are a few quick shots of what the updated 28mm Napoleonics will look like when I am finished. I had to finish this lot before I could continue with the Imperial Romans as they were taking up space on my desk.
First some old photos for comparison.

This base has been redone.

This base has been redone.

I have only updated two of the large bases so far I still have one large base and two smaller bases to update for this command set.

Now for the improved and updated miniatures.

Sorry for the blur. I did not see it until now.

So what has been changed? I have reconfigured how I flock my bases, I have added highlights to the figures and then added a wash to give some tone and shadowing, I have updated the miniatures skin color, and I have added eyebrows to my figures. Yes I left those off. It really makes a difference when you add eyebrows to your figures.

Legionnaires Disease

No I am not sick. Though my desk is currently covered in Imperial Roman Legionaries. I got back from spring break a while ago and while I was at my parents house I remembered to grab my Imperial Roman Legionaries that I had left there. Subsequently I have been working these last few days to repair the painted figures and then begin to update their paint job, much in the same manner that I am working on my 28mm Napoleonics. I also went through and took stock of the number of figures I have and what all I could do with them. The following pictures are a few flights of fancy on that subject.

On a side note. I have a little bit of a funny story to go along with the title of this post. About a year ago I got an email from some group asking if they could use one of my old photos in a paper on Legionnaires Disease. I never answered because they wanted a photo quality that I could not obtain. Still it is rather funny.

As you can see I have a lot of prepaired figures and some that where painted to a rather bad standard(by my current standards anyway). The repair work is mainly focused on the water slide transfers as some of them have started to come off the shields as I did a pretty bad job at the time. Also there are a few figure that I may never use, as the poses that I set up are just awful. Oh to be a young and dumb miniature enthusiest.

Parting thoughts and shots. I have not done one of these in a while.
First up are some pictures of the two books that I use the most for painting Napoleonics. I was reading another persons blogs and happened to notice that he had recently been to a literary museum in France and they had a tone of figure plates on collection by this one French couple. I saw one of the plates and went "Hey now, I own a book of that stuff".

They are not worth more than about $25, so don't bother trying to hunt up where I live just to steal them. They are however, an excellent source for trying to figure out what colors to use for your figures.

The last thing I have on my mind is this idea of redoing paint jobs for my figures. I am dead set on doing this for my 28mm Napoleonics and Romans. The full realization that I was stifling my painting skill because I wanted a uniform look is quite startling. And as such I have been looking at my 6mm collection wondering if I should redo those figures as well. No firm plans as of yet besides a definite desire to redo all of the bases for my 6mm figures. In fact I plan on staying away from my 6mm stuff until I get one of these two current redo project over with.