foreign
hey everyone norm from tested here and we're wrapping up this week with another model making
project a diorama project this time mostly everything off the shelf i've been doing
a bunch of fabrication projects at home but today i'm back in the tested studio working on
well one of my favorite collectibles one of my favorite characters in animated film the iron
giant so a little bit of backstory uh this iron giant comes from mondo and mondo from
austin texas they have done big posters and actually do also figures as well a couple years
back they put up this 18-inch iron giant license fully articulated amazing figure i didn't get a
chance to get in on that and it's just impossible to get these days but thankfully in their new
mecca series they put out a new iron giant this one at 12 inches now it's really nice figure
really posable lots of interchangeable accessories exactly the kind of stuff that i like uh but
you know it's not very imposing when i think of iron giant and how he was portrayed in that film
he's a giant robot uh and pop quiz how tall is the iron giant actually in that film canonically
google says 50 feet tall and not quite as big as you know your your mecha godzilla's but still
he's going to loom over trees and forests uh in where was i was in maine right upper north
northeast is where that took place so that's what we're going to do today i want to find a way to
make this 12-inch tall figure look imposing like how the character is portrayed in the film and
thankfully this is 12 inches tall iron giant is 50 feet tall that means quick math it's
1 50th scale and 1 50th is really close to 148 scale which is o scale in the world of miniature
trains boom dots connecting there's prefab stuff available all over the internet in the world of
scale trains i can use to create a diorama around iron giant so that's what i'm going to do today
i've already bought everything i once i had this idea i went on a shopping rampage i honestly have
never delved really into the world of o scale uh model making before but i have a bunch of things
i think will make for a good diorama first of all uh the theme of this will be trees the idea i got
these two really nicely tall from woodland scenics you know trees like this you can get it works at
multiple scales right so it says this tree works at n h o and o scale we're doing o it just means
because of the way the foliage is the foliage is is dressed it can read as 40 feet tall it can read
as a hundred feet tall uh depending on the things you have surrounding it so this is going to read
basically about 45 feet tall my idea is iron giant is maybe peering over to trees and the something
that really helps then communicate the scale is uh this building here so this is a little wood
shack this one is specifically for o scale they do sell them at ho scale as well also from woodland
scenics so i place this guy in front and then you can get like a big pack of trees as well again
these trees will read at multiple scales i'm gonna go decorate and surround this uh platform here
with these trees we're gonna use our trusty crushed nut shells and just some floral moss again
used in past projects put it all together with some super 77 glue and then as my base uh we're
gonna use some foam so i wanna create some lightly uneven terrain not quite flat uh so i'm gonna
carve up some of this lightweight open celled foam and then we're going to cover it up smooth it out
and then start making this diorama okay enough talking enough preamble let's get to making
i'm trying to get that uneven surface here
and i don't need to be uneven throughout because i'll be hiding iron giant behind so
i just really want unevenness in the front enough to plant this hut down
and plant a tree in there so yeah getting there
okay so i think i have this pretty uneven surface um now i don't actually want to start
putting foliage on here because apparently this type of foam doesn't really adhere
well and paint isn't really stick to it of course it is so we're going to cover this up
with a thin sheet of hd foam and i'm going to spray some of this super 77 on both sides of this
and kind of create a top surface that i can massage and maybe put even a heat gun to
okay at this point i'm really just kind of blocking out where the array i wanted
the arrangement of the trees i got my two tall trees here iron giant behind it and then a bunch
of small trees around it trying to blend in the scene got my little wood shed in the front here
and the whole thing is definitely a little wider than i had in my head um and i'll do a little more
blending of course that moss on the ground but i also have some lighting that i want to integrate
in here so i'm kind of built into the scene lighting and these are just lamp posts at o scale
which actually end up being really tall maybe too tall for what i have in mind
typically i guess when they're connected they're going to be this tall which
almost dwarfs iron giant so maybe i'll just go with
this height and place it above maybe the front entrance of the wood shed and
these kind of lights for miniature trains are all powered at least with this system
by their light hub and power supply and i can wire all of that underneath the foam here
maybe carve out some channels so that's not gonna be a problem but uh that will be next
and then really gluing everything down and doing more coverage of that foliage
all right so i'm really happy with where i am so far it's not complete yet but let me just update
you on the progress of this so i got my foliage in i've blocked out iron giant is posed behind our
foot two trees he's got his hands separating them looking over i have my miniature wood
shack here along with a shortened street light here and it's also wired so we can even turn on
that street light it gives it just a little bit of a glow in here now i'm also combining this with
my my favorite set of small spotlights led spotlights i've covered before
and so i have just a few loosely scattered here but when i turn that on let's see it turns into
a whole scene and the combination of the trees the building the light coming up hitting the
trees and then iron giant's head right here as if he's being blinded by spotlights or car lights
that is what i'm super super pleased with like i had this idea in my head when i got this figure
how can i make him look imposing how can i put him in a space that fits his world and thankfully
through the supply of readily available model train foliage and environmental sets we have now
given him a home i'm going to take this project home and maybe do some laser cutting create
a base maybe a wooden frame around the whole thing so i can carry it as well as a place to
to um to stick these lights permanently and fix them but we have basically
the essence of this diorama again super simple not much fabrication at all just a little bit of foam
carving everything off the shelf and all it takes is connecting the dots between scale of what's
available off the shelf and the hero character here thank you so much for joining me on this
quick slap together quick and dirty diorama build we'll have more projects more fun stuff
on the site i'm gonna take this home and we're gonna finish off with some beauty shots so enjoy
so
all right so it's a couple days later and i wanted to give you an epilogue a coda to
this video as you can see the diorama has changed just a little bit and i think i've got it to near
its final state where i'm going to set this up for photography and display first thing you may
have noticed that's changed is the base in itself uh we last left the office i just had it sitting
on foam i always knew i wanted to create some type of display base ford and i had a laser cut
base in mind so i load up illustrator and design a hexagonal base um hexes are very in at the moment
uh and partially also because uh i it was gonna be a little wider than i wanted to be deep
and i kind of set it to make sure it was under that kind of 14 inch width so can still fit inside
like an ikea detol case and then very simply just cut off the excess pieces of foam here
just with another box cutter one of the nice things about designing this laser cut base with
these walls that i have around it is i get to tuck in that foam around and kind of hide the seams all
that extra foliage spilling over so it feels more like a single unit and then in doing that i also
realized i could have started off with this space now that i have that file that template in the
future if i want to do a similar diorama i could actually just carve the foam and build that base
first and then build up from there other things i did i also wanted some some kind of extra life
in this scene so i found online a model of a deer and then 3d printed two small deer
at the appropriate scale so i have them running out of the trees kind of away from the iron giant
here but i did plant uh the lights in and these lights i'll have links to where you can find them
these little spotlights you know in the video you might see them flicker a little bit but in person
if i turn them off and on yeah they they look super great actually i have two of them
hidden in the back just to give some up lighting to the iron giant i think that up lighting really
really helps with the sense of scale because of these tiny spotlights i really really like these
and they're not glued in or taped and actually used just to uh push pins um to sewing pins to to
have them just embedded into the foam and so one of the nice things about this type of diorama is
that everything is can be futz with i can move the trees around if i want very easily i can of course
repost the iron giant uh and if i just want a different angle or kind of move things around
for of course the photography and i think it looks really nice like my big takeaway for this is you
don't need to have a ton of fabrication experience to make something like this because there's some
really great off-the-shelf parts and you know i'm just really happy i got this iron giant looking
really cool and then when you add things like some atmospheric aerosol here a little bit of the
fog it just creates a wonderful wonderful scene this is just
a really fun project i hope you enjoyed it thank you again and i'll see you next time bye
you