The Hollywood Garage

[Tom Geiger]

Great work Jim! I'm turning in my glue and tweezers! I'll never catch up to you and Mr Hamilton! LOL

[Jantrix]

More and more impressive. I'm very glad you started sharing here Jim.

[Dr. Cranky]

Geez, Jim, this is PURE EYECANDY. Loving it. I think this is going to come together beautiful and with the right lighting you'll be able to create lots of interesting pictures with the background. Great way to show off new builds.

[Hollywood Jim]

Geez, Jim, this is PURE EYECANDY. Loving it. I think this is going to come together beautiful and with the right lighting you'll be able to create lots of interesting pictures with the background. Great way to show off new builds.

Thanks Cranks..........

You gave me an urge Virg..........

Background ?! I never thought of that. This was going to be a diorama with everything glued in place.

But if I don't glue down the car and a few other items on the floor, I guess I could use it for a background for other cars.

Hummmmmm. Food for thought.

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[Danno]

There's a disturbance in the force ... centered around Northeastern Peoria ...

Must mean that HW Jim's creating again!

[Dr. Cranky]

Thanks Cranks..........

You gave me an urge Virg..........

Background ?! I never thought of that. This was going to be a diorama with everything glued in place.

But if I don't glue down the car and a few other items on the floor, I guess I could use it for a background for other cars.

Hummmmmm. Food for thought.

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Yeah, that's what I thought you were doing. If you don't glue down everything, you will be able to use it over and over again and always end up with different possibilities, that's what I did with the CRANKY INDUSTRIAL PHOTO-OP BASE.

[Dr. Cranky]

instead of glue.. I think I seen this on Dr. Cranky videos.. use very small rare earth magnets

Derick, I love using magnets. They work really well.

[southpier]

or even pins & no glue.

just looking at the bits 'n' bobs monochrome is giving me surrealistic anticipation of the end product....

Edited January 3, 2013 by southpier

[Hollywood Jim]

This item was not easy to make. It came out OK, but not as good as I had hoped. I may tuck this away in a hard to see spot.

Can you guess what this is?

I painted the outside. It will be rarely seen, unless the viewer is curious enough to look.

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[southpier]

Can you guess what this is?

baby food jar screw storage.

[Hollywood Jim]

baby food jar screw storage.

Ding Ding Ding !!! The man wins a cigar.

That's exactly what it is. My dad used to do this all the time. He even used larger jars.

He would nail the lids to a piece of wood and hang the jars full of all sorts of stuff.

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Edited January 4, 2013 by Hollywood Jim

[Tom Geiger]

That's exactly what it is. My dad used to do this all the time. He even used larger jars.

He would nail the lids to a piece of wood and hang the jars full of all sorts of stuff.

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I think that was one of those big workshop ideas in Popular Mechanics Magazine in the 1950s. Everyone did it! I still have baby food jars full of nails and screws from my grandfather's basement. Who knows how old those jars are, my father probably ate the baby food!

[Jantrix]

I painted the outside. It will be rarely seen, unless the viewer is curious enough to look.

Then you should do something odd here like have the back wall all graffiti'd up. It won't effect the interior of the dio in the least, but when they do get around to the outside, they don't get what they expect.

[Chas SCR]

Should put some kind of grass or weeds around the edges so people will look at the out side as much as the inside!

[Hollywood Jim]

You guys have me thinking about some ideas for the backside of the diorama.

Maybe I'll put up a small sign saying "Please view this diorama from the other side". Or something like that. LOL

[Hollywood Jim]

OK, so far this diorama has been fairly easy. Now comes the hard part. At least for me.

I’m down to the point where I have to decide how to paint the walls and floor and all of the items in the diorama. Working in black and white, (or only two colors) is quite difficult. When you look at the three dimensional diorama, unlike a one dimension photograph, it can look different depending on the lighting and the angle at which you view it.

Remember everything needs to be like a black and white photograph except the car, which will be in red.

I started with doing some simple shading.

BEFORE

AFTER

Then I started adding some details on the back wall. At this point I consulted Ken Hamilton, the diorama Guru. I was worried about the details disappearing into the wall color. He told me that it would be best if the details did get lost to some extend because they are not the focus of the diorama. He was correct. He also said that I should not be afraid to use different shades of the dark color on my added details.

Because the walls were so washed out, this meant that the details would also need to be pretty much washed out. I was not sure I wanted a washed out look for the whole background and the details. I then consulted Narayan Khandekar. Narayan knows all about art and paintings. If I call him an art expert he would probably disagree, but don’t believe it, he is one ! He pointed out that black and white photographs have dynamic range; from almost black shadows to almost white highlights. And he suggested I study up on “dynamic range”. Sure enough after some study I discovered that he was exactly correct. Looking at the photo again I realized that it had very dark areas to very light areas.

So I dove in with both feet and I began to add some very dark shadows to my diorama. This was a scary moment for me !!!

At this point I realized that I still did not have enough dark color. Not enough dynamic range. So I went even darker.

So here is what I have today. These pictures are taken with different camera exposures and with a red car. Important note; I have discovered I can make the diorama look very different depending on background light, my camera settings and my camera flash.

The end result is that now I have dynamic range as Narayan suggested. And I think it looks pretty good. Now when I add the detail items I can darken them up and add shades of my dark color like Ken suggested. Ken and Narayan really pointed me in the right direction.

Thank you guys !!

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[southpier]

fantastic!

[Danno]

Looking gooder!

[Tom Geiger]

Great work Jim. I can identify with it being scary. You get so far with great work and just dread screwing it up. But you're doing good! Here's a few pix of a diorama done in black and white. It was at the Liars show back in 2002. I had to dig a bit to find these!

[Modelbuilder Mark]

Great stuff! Will that be the final Hot Rod in the picture?

[Dr. Cranky]

That is looking good, Hollywood. I think once you add lighting it is going to give you all the right shade and highlights.

[Hollywood Jim]

Great stuff! Will that be the final Hot Rod in the picture?

Thanks.

No the hot rod in the picture is just there because I needed a red hot rod to see how it would look in the diorama.

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[Bartster]

Amazing !

[Foxer]

This is coming out well ... your experts have sent you in the right direction.

A simple thought to consider .. a black and white photo has 256 shades of grey in it by most standards.

[Hollywood Jim]

This is coming out well ... your experts have sent you in the right direction.

A simple thought to consider .. a black and white photo has 256 shades of grey in it by most standards.

Thank you for the compliment.

256..... Oh BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH, now your scaring me.... LOL

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