Thanks, guys. I'm glad you like the painted features, since that's the one thing I wasn't sure about. The more I look at it, the more I like it, but when I first did it, I thought it looked a bit weak. I definitely wanted to add depth to the building, just because otherwise it looked too flat and distracted from the overall setup. My goal is to make these look like a cross between the scenes they would have in the old pack-in catalogs and dioramas like you seen in collectibles museums.
I finally finished building the rough-outs of the rest of the shelves Monday night. Now I just need to paint the backdrops and do the groundcover, then I can do the other dios. As you can see in the first pic, the building is in a corner, with the side wall painted to look like sky for a larger feel. The other side of that is my GI Joe HQ setup. I did the basic setup using the scrapbooking green squares I picked up at JoAnn's a while back for grass to help visualize how I want the final layout. I'll finish that one next, then move on to the next.
All said and done, this project will be 24' long, 2' wide (with one 4' section), and 2 levels where it makes sense. The planned layout is: desert battle (pictured. One level, double height, 2' x 4'), Joe HQ (Two levels, 2' x 8' per level), AT jungle scene (One level, 2' x 4'), Dreadnok bar (one level, below AT scene, 2' x 4'), Space station (One level, double height, 2' x 4'), and Terror Drome (One level, double height, 4' x 4'). The desert, HQ, and space are pretty much set in stone, but the others I've been going over in my head and may change up once I do the test setup. I'm trying to focus on one section at a time to make sure I actually complete it before moving on to the next, aside from building the shelving, since it all had to tie together.
This is probably my most ambitious project to date, but it's been in the planning for several years. I just finally have the space to do it and a spouse eager to help me do it.
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