Sinful alley 3: disaster strikes

Here is the newly made three-story building. The foamboard is covered with a layer of Evergreen plastic sheet. Chimneies are also fitted on the top of the building. Why did I have to redo the three-story building? Previously the building is only made from foamboard. I applied grey acrylic paint over it as the base colour. Surprisingly, the paper surface became bending and distorted after absorbed water in the paint. I have to discard the building and remade a new one with plastic sheet as surface. A lesson learnt!

I painted and weathered the roof. The effect is quite good by my standard.

The engraved brick plastic card received a layer of brick red paint. I then applied a layer of  plaster powder solution to the red brick in order to simulate mortar. I used this technic before. The solution should be as thick as full fat milk.

After the surface became dry overnight I used cosmetic cotton buds to rub the surface with some force. The movement is vertical mostly but sometimes the bud moves horizontally.

 The garage is also painted and weathered. It looks pretty good with a lovely small car in front of it.

Our actors cannot wait to start :~)

The three-story building is painted. I added some crack on the top of the building and near windows. And a TV antenna.



Sinful alley 2: the first get-together

I put all the components of the diorama together for the first time. As you can see the alley is wide enough to pass two small vehicles. The park fence is from Vollmer (HO5133) which I bought in Germany for about 8 euro. The engraved stone ground is from Slaters, very good value and effect.

In the next picture you will see the other side of the diorama. There are several corners for our actors to hide and play!

A small project: sinful alley

The project started a few months ago. I was inspired by the dark back alley in the city where dirty things take place. The original drawing is missing so I have to describe the diorama with words. It is a U-shaped end of a cul de sac. If you are facing the alley, on you left is the back of a small factory house; to your right is a three-story residential building. Further down to the alley on the left is an wall with a wood gate to the factory. To the right is a double garage. The bottom of the alley is a line of stell fence supposing to be the border of a park. The ground is cobble stone road. Why I decided to put a fence rather than a wall at the bottom of the alley? Because I want to have an additional camera angle to shoot the activities in the alley. A wall may block the view. The idea is to create a sense of being encircled, a sense of security which allows our actors to do what ever they like. The diorama is going to depict a sense may be found in a French city or any Western European city in general.

Now let's look at all the components of the diorama. On the top are the walls of the factory house. They are made from Slaters engraved plastic card. On the cardborad is the frame of the garage and to its right are the three-story house made with 3 mm foam board. Down to the left are windows made with Evergreen plastic rod and clear plastic card. I only want to create one face of the each structure so as to make it as simple as possible.

Here is a picture of slate roof for the factory building and the three-story house.

The roof tile of the three-story building is made from 3mm*3mm cardboard pieces. Thses pieces are laid in a line first, then the second line of pieces are placed on the edge of the first line to created a 3D effect. The work took me about one night and one morning to finish! The roof of the three-story building is much simpler as you can see from the picture. 

Next is the garage. The roof is a small panel of Wills corrugated iron plastic card. See my another post for a review of the material. The garage doors are made with cardboard. The design comes from some web pictures of old French garage door.

Finally the walls of the factory house are put together, with window fitted.