WIP: 2CV “Rock and Roll-Bar”

[klutz_100]

Originally Posted by jano11

I'll have to take a trip to Poland to see this in person!

Any time

Originally Posted by jano11

Why don't you repair it? It might be easier to do, and will be an excellent work table again!

Believe me, I've tried. It's beyond salvage

[jano11]

Originally Posted by klutz_100

Believe me, I've tried. It's beyond salvage

That's a pitty, every time I visited my girlfirend's laboratory I was thinking how good those laminar flow workplaces would be for me!

[klutz_100]

3 months since the last update and I have finally made some progress on this build thanks to being off work sick and two ultra-great modelling buddies - Peter and Dan


Firstly Peter in Australia.
I spent a lot of money, time and experimentation on different kinds of possible materials to reproduce a water effect with no success. Peter remembered something he had used before, went to his "not so local" LHS, bought some and sent it to me all the way from the other side of the world! Thanks Peter!

What he suggested is a 2-part epoxy used for glazing decoupage craft pieces. It's completely non-aggressive and dries crystal clear in 24 hours.

First of all, I used my hot glue gun to build a styrene dam around the water part of the diorama. I then glued the diorama base to my workbench with white glue to keep it flat and steady, mixed the resin and gently poured it in.





The next day I removed the dam without any drama (although next time I would probably put some release agent on the styrene just in case)
This is a wonderful lake to swim in because, as you can see, the water is crystal clear! :




Some of you may be thinking "it's too clear". I would tend to agree but I just could not find a way to lightly color it to my satisfaction so I played safe and went with the Nordic fjord look LOL

However, to kill the very static and somewhat unnatural look of this glass-like lake, I intend adding some ripples using thick artist's acrylic gel. I have done some tests with this already and the effect is quite good IMO



Next up is the field.
From the very beginning of this diorama project I have been doing tons of research on railroad modeling sites on how to get realistic looking grass as opposed to something that looks like the carpeted interior of a Maybach ))

Apparently there are 2 secrets to doing grass. The first is to mix colors, textures and lengths randomly. The second is to get the flocking (aka static grass) to stand up straight in the glue like soldiers on parade and not just lie there like drunks in the gutter.

The first is relatively easy but the second not. For that I needed my good buddy Daniel and a secret weapon (you'll see at the end )


Here is SOME of the static grass I used





First I put down some darker, shorter grass for the ground beneath the trees. IMO this area would be more like a forest floor than a pasture and would covered with pine needles etc




I then started filling up the rest of the pasture with different colored, longer grasses in randomly mixed and placed splodges. Once the were down, I used a Popsicle stick to flatten some areas and generally increase the randomness of direction and height.







Some close ups







In this shot you can see how the blades of grass really are all standing up straight in the glue!





This was possible due to my secret weapon - the Grassinator!!! ROFL





Flocking is also known as static grass because it accepts a charge of static electricity which makes it stand up when applied with an appropriate applicator (this is how they make the flocked patterns on t-shirts etc).

You can buy hobby grade static flock applicators for about 150$ (I'll take 2 please ) but I found a schematic for a DIY version on Google but I comprehend less than nothing about electronics.

Dan flew to the rescue like Superman, found and bought all the component parts and made me one himself!
Believe me, I am sure that the one you can see in the photo made by Dan is twice as good as the one made and retailed by Noch.


THANKS DAN AND PETER FOR YOUR KIND HELP IN BRINGING THIS PROJECT BACK TO LIFE~!!

[M.Boy]

.....eeeee yyyyy!
........amazing work!
I admire your patience.

[jano11]

I'm speechless!

[mrawl]

Whoa!!! How real looking is that grass?!?!? Maybe you should have some animals too - a cow, deer, beaver, lol - they'd be loving that juicy grass.

[nniemi]

The grass looks very impressive and real! Actually the whole thing does.

-Niko

[quadzero]

The grass is very convincing and realistic, I wonder... Is there anything you cant do?? I really like this little piece of tranquility and scenery, the water is excellent too.

[klutz_100]

Thanks dudes
I am really pleased that you like it and thanks for putting up with this eternal WIP!!! LOL


I've added some texture to the water surface. I am curious what your opinion is.

I spread some Vallejo water effect gel (basically artists' thick acrylic medium) all over the surface. My tests highlighted that it is important to put it all over the surface otherwise the ripples will look "stuck on"




I used a clay modeling tool to randomly swish the gel about into....a mess LOL




These shots show how it looks during the drying process. As you can see, some of the gel has not fully cured yet and is still opaque.







To add some depth to the water (no pun intended) I tried to add a "wash & highlight" approach.
I thinned out some water-based transparent craft paint that is used for decorating glass/windows and added a VERY thin wash around the ripples.
For highlights, I used some very fine lines of Titanium White oil paint on the crests of some ripples and then lightly removed it with a tissue








Here's a side-by-side of (more or less) the same area with and without ripples.





Just for fun, here's a National Geographic/Discovery Channel type shot while I was standing in the middle of the lake LOL





And here's a dummy run with JP plopped into the middle.




Getting close now!
Just need the hammock, figure and some fine-tune detailing of the terrain


Cheers for looking in and let me know what you honestly think of the revised water

[proosen]

Good to see Jean-Paul (was it?) is getting a quite corner in the world to rest his tired feets (wheels) in.


Niclas

[kaho]

You sir, are a TRUE ARTIST!!
I have been more than curious to try the "static grass" in my LHS but I figured it is just way too much work to build a diorama than the car itself. This is way more difficult to make! (looking natural vs looking clean)
I even had thoughts of jumping ship and start railroad modelling - it would be a great challenge doing artificial landscaping but the results are breathtaking - however with careful thoughts of the space it requires(I wanted a huge town with suburbs here and downtown there, so that's possibly the whole basement)and how hard it is to keep it clean, I turned back.

About the charge you used to make the grass stand, don't they fall back down after the static get discharged?

[mrawl]

Man, that was a gutsy effort with the water ripples, but it looks very good and much more interesting. I was expecting to see a fish in the Nat Geo shot

[Decs0105]

wow...






EDIT: I am still thinking what else to say... opcorn:

[klutz_100]

Originally Posted by kaho

About the charge you used to make the grass stand, don't they fall back down after the static get discharged?

Not at all - the glue holds them well and truly in place.
The idea is to put some glue on the area (I used a 50/50 white glue/water mix) and "shoot" the static grass into that.

Originally Posted by mrawl

I was expecting to see a fish in the Nat Geo shot

Mark, you don't know how close you were to seeing one!
I visited a couple of fishing supply stores looking for miniature fish lures but the good looking ones were too large (would look like a 1/25 Moby Dick) and anything the right size for scale was a shapeless and featureless lump.
I was also thinking about an epoxy putty boot instead

[godfather23]

It has been often said, but I think you deserve me to repeat it: It is just exceptional what you are doing modellingwise - very creative and distinguished for trying new techniques - always looking for perfection of what you made up in your mind.

Thanks for sharing - anytime you can start one of these monsterprojects again. Make sure to let us watch...

Robert