Just finished my first diorama! Asbury, NJ streets!

[GlueSniffer]

Built this diorama over the last week and a half after work so I would have a nice backdrop for photographing my completed projects on. I scratch built it from wood, styrene, plastruct brick pattern and I 3D modeled and printed the gas meter, manhole cover, and storm drain. Then had a lit of fun adding details like bird droppings, cracks, chewed gum and plenty of cigarette butts from flattened out .015” rod. This was a blast to build! I already have the next one planned!

[Tcoat]

 So realistic I feel like I have been there!

[Anglia105E]

Looks good Matthew . . . The road surface is very convincing and realistic, especially around the manhole cover.

Well done !

David

[PHPaul]

Nicely done!  Excellent details!

Careful tho, dioramas can be addictive and are serious space hogs!  

[ChrisR]

Awesome!

[TarheelRick]

Beautiful work on the diorama, very convincing.  Nice little roadster also.

[crazyjim]

Fantastic work.

[Perspect Scale Modelworks]

Oh man this is so cool! The windows that were filled in decades ago, the manhole cover, etc, etc. And all in a week and a half. Awesome. Car is bad azz too.

[NYLIBUD]

Wow,that is so realistic..I mean first off the car is incredible,but then you add the street,sidewalk,and especially the poles on either side of the buildings gas meter,and I would swear that it was all real.Great job.

Edited January 26, 2023 by NYLIBUD

[iamsuperdan]

Wow, that is really nice.

 

Can you give some details on how you got the pavement finish? Very convincing!

[TonyK]

Really like your diorama. Not usually too excited about hot rods but I'm liking this one!

[vincen47]

Extremely realistic textures, colors, and sheen. I swear the best backdrops are like this one - utilizing the “mundane” features of our everyday world. A background, that by itself, most people wouldn’t photograph unless there was an object, like a car, you wanted to take a picture of, say, as you pass by it. A simple, mostly featureless (until you give it a second look) urban landscape. A perfect approach!

[Paul Payne]

Super diorama, very realistic- and then that roadster! Really nice work!

[KWT]

WOW... very realistic. Please provide some details

[GlueSniffer]

I didn’t expect this much of a reaction to this seeing as it only depicts a small section of street and a wall. I never finished any of the edge details as this was meant to be a “quick and dirty” back drop for photos! I’ll gladly share progress photos and techniques. Especially the road surface as it seems to be what most are interested in and many struggle with. My method is actually really easy!

First, I made the wall by CA gluing Plastruct 1:24 rough brick sheets to 1/4” plywood. Filled the seam with Perfect Plastic Putty. I like it better than the Tamiya stuff.

Next I sprayed the wall with Rustoleum speckled texture paint (light gray) then sprayed it with brick red (I forget the manufacturer, possibly Krylon. It was at Lowe’s) and started layering details. I did a faded white wash look using the salt chipping technique.

I just freestyled the “LIQUORS” by dry brushing it. I used to be a tattoo artist and pinstriper so I didn’t stencil it.

Next I built the sidewalk by cutting squares from thin styrene. I think I used .020” and just made the squares to a scale that just looked right. Not necessarily accurate to a actual city sidewalk. I believe I made them 2-1/2” so that would be a 5 foot square in 1:1. The curb is sliced up .25” square tube. Under the sidewalk is a scrap of wood that was a bit shy of .25” thick. Made one square sit proud of the others and added some cracks with the Tamiya panel scriber tool.

Now for the road painting! The side walk and road base coat is the same Rustoleum texture paint. The sidewalk was a very light gray and the road was a medium gray. I didn’t sand the wood first so it took 3 coats to hide the grain. I was trying to be fast and lazy. The cuts in the road and sidewalk for the gas line repair were also  made with the panel scriber. The utility pole is 7/16” dowel from hobby lobby. 1/2” would be a more correct scale, but I find that going under size sells the realism more. If faced with the choice of materials that are over sized or under sized to the scale you’re trying to achieve… always go under size!

Now to make the paint come to life! The road final color is a mix of 3-4 spray paints mixed by sprayed really far from the surface… to just let the paint fall on the surface. Your not actually trying to coat it evenly. Spotty is a good thing. I used Duplicolor Cast Iron high temperature engine paint for the base. Has a little metallic to it and that helps shift the road color in different light. A lot of places use glass in their asphalt, so metallic in the road isn’t a bad thing. I used Duplicolor gray sandable primer and Duplicolor black sealer primer using the aforementioned over spray technique. Just keep spraying those 3 colors until is gels just right. Most road surfaces are RARELY ever black. So more gray = more better. Depending where you live, your roads may be more red or blue depending on the native stones available. 

The oil stains were done by building up many layers (probably 20 or so) with Vallejo black acrylic watered down, but not quite watered down to the paint of a wash. Probably around 5:1 water to paint. Just go nuts with it. Be random, but also think about where parked cars leak the most. The front of the spaces got a little more. And go wide too… a lot of people are terrible at parking. Tires on the curb or half the car hanging out into traffic!

I modeled and printed the manholes, storm drain, and gas meter. These were fun to paint. Medium rust brown as a base. Watered down a light rust as a wash. Also washed in a little Vallejo light gray wash. Last I polished the raised details with Tamiya detailing powder set F. I used the Titanium color as it is a warm, silvery color that looks like rusted iron that was run over by cars enough to look partially polished. ONLY on surfaces that are driven on and walked on!

Use some Testors Semi gloss black, gray, and teal to add gum to the side walk and street that has been stepped on for years. A little static grass around the utility pole. Bird droppings are just light gray watered down a little, add a few specks of white or indigo over top when the gray dries. Added the letters with dry transfer sheet and chipped it up with my finger nail. The sidewalk color is Vallejo yellow sand watered down into a wash and built up in layers. Used the light gray wash again on the sidewalk, let it really build up were puddles would gather.

Lastly, add cigarette butts and road details. The cigarettes are .015” Plastruct rod, some flattened out. Paint some stripes on the rod that is filter color, cut to size, glue them down randomly, and dab a tiny bit of dark gray on the end. The road cracks are just a India Ink pen. Just scribble them on. But first go walk some roads an parking lots and pay attention to how, where, and why it cracks the way it does. Like around the flange under the asphalt around the manhole cover.

As for the other marks on the road, they are all mostly organic. While I was painting stuff, I had the mixing tray on the street. If I dripped… it is why it is. The wood dowels for the utility pole made a scratch when I dropped it once. So I added a few more scrapes from low cars and snow plows.

I can add more info about the other stuff, these were just the photos I had on my iPad at the moment! I can also write a more official paint list if anyone wants to know the exact stuff I used. I may ever record a tutorial as I am working on something muchhhhhh bigger now!

It will be 3 buildings, 3 stories tall, will have visible rooms through a couple of windows, and full lighting. This is the beginning of a Billiards hall with apartments above.

[MeatMan]

Truly awesome work!

Thanks for the tutorial, too!

[GlueSniffer]

On 1/27/2023 at 7:59 PM, vincen47 said:

Extremely realistic textures, colors, and sheen. I swear the best backdrops are like this one - utilizing the “mundane” features of our everyday world. A background, that by itself, most people wouldn’t photograph unless there was an object, like a car, you wanted to take a picture of, say, as you pass by it. A simple, mostly featureless (until you give it a second look) urban landscape. A perfect approach!

This is the most flattering comment as this was 100% what I was going for! Putting the yellow barriers in made me nervous as I feared they would be too distracting. It almost seems odd that I was really happy reading your comment with the word “mundane” in it ? 

I had grown up near Asbury, NJ which was a booming resort town in the 1950s. By the time the 1990s early 2000s came around, it had been largely abandoned and over run with drug problems. There was a really cool bowling alley there that had been turned into a night club for the hot rod guys. It wasn’t uncommon to see a scene similar to what I built here. The promoter for the club drove a T, then had a hot rodded Model A roadster. One guy daily drove a chopped 1959 Oldsmobile there every weekend. The promoter was cool, even though it was a 21+ club, he let me and a friend of mine in although we were on 16 and 18 at the time. They marked Xs on our hands to show we couldn’t be served.

Anyway, long story short of it, walking down a street and spotting a cool car, pulling out your camera and snapping some photos of it is exactly what I wanted. Nothing that would draw your attention away from the car. Just an everyday life background! 

thank you again for your thoughtful comment!

[GlueSniffer]

On 1/26/2023 at 5:38 AM, NYLIBUD said:

Wow,that is so realistic..I mean first off the car is incredible,but then you add the street,sidewalk,and especially the poles on either side of the buildings gas meter,and I would swear that it was all real.Great job.

Very flattered! Thank you! 

[Nosferatu]

This diorama is amazing! I love all the attention to detail!

Dave

[slusher]

Really nice diorama  and your roadster is beautiful!

[Zippi]

Man this looks so kewl.  I'm really liking this one.  Very nice work man.  

[Tcoat]

On 1/29/2023 at 11:50 AM, GlueSniffer said:

This is the most flattering comment as this was 100% what I was going for! Putting the yellow barriers in made me nervous as I feared they would be too distracting. It almost seems odd that I was really happy reading your comment with the word “mundane” in it ? 

I had grown up near Asbury, NJ which was a booming resort town in the 1950s. By the time the 1990s early 2000s came around, it had been largely abandoned and over run with drug problems. There was a really cool bowling alley there that had been turned into a night club for the hot rod guys. It wasn’t uncommon to see a scene similar to what I built here. The promoter for the club drove a T, then had a hot rodded Model A roadster. One guy daily drove a chopped 1959 Oldsmobile there every weekend. The promoter was cool, even though it was a 21+ club, he let me and a friend of mine in although we were on 16 and 18 at the time. They marked Xs on our hands to show we couldn’t be served.

Anyway, long story short of it, walking down a street and spotting a cool car, pulling out your camera and snapping some photos of it is exactly what I wanted. Nothing that would draw your attention away from the car. Just an everyday life background! 

thank you again for your thoughtful comment!

The thing about this is that pretty much any larger city in North America has a street that looks just like that. Here in Ontario I could probably walk downtown and find a section that is identical to your model. 

In fact you could probably graft your diorama onto the back of this building from my city and it would look like it belonged there.

Oh and the barriers are the PERFECT touch. They are everywhere and we just don't notice them.

[Repstock]

I was hoping to do something similar. I've been building things, but I may never have the room to actually build a diorama. Your has been very inspirational. It looks very natural.

[Mike C]

You did a really great job. It makes the street rod look real.

[GlueSniffer]

On 1/31/2023 at 11:10 AM, Tcoat said:

The thing about this is that pretty much any larger city in North America has a street that looks just like that. Here in Ontario I could probably walk downtown and find a section that is identical to your model. 

In fact you could probably graft your diorama onto the back of this building from my city and it would look like it belonged there.

Oh and the barriers are the PERFECT touch. They are everywhere and we just don't notice them.

That is a very cool building and lot! And you are right. I lived in a small town in Virginia, USA for a few years, and just around every corner there was a wall that looked like this. As for the barriers, it really is a challenge to notice urban infrastructure that we walk passed everyday and pay no attention to. I was taking photos of cracks in the road outside a local shopping mall, my girlfriend thought I was crazy! Building these things really makes to slow down and pay attention! I wish I had wire small enough to cover the lower part of the utility pole in rusty staples from garage sale posters and missing cat fliers that have been pulled off!