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.