Dad's Army 6 - Finished

I was on holiday last week, so took the opportunity to finish the diorama (pictures at the bottom for the impatient).

Following the abandonment of the full church hall model, I scribed a new floor piece, and started painting it.

Painting the floor

I spray undercoated the floor in black, then used a mixture of drybrushing and washes to paint it. The original flooring in the show was very light grey. However, I decided that if I tried to match that, it would look like concrete, so I settled on a "scruffy brown" look.

I started the washes using a largish flat brush. A number of passes later, when nothing much had changed, I realised that this wasn't the correct approach. I was sure I had some foam brushes, but couldn't find them. I picked up a packet of twenty for £1.99 from one of the local discount book places, and tried again.

Using a two inch foam brush proved much faster, and gave a better finish. I ended up with an approach where I put some paint on, decided it was too much, then washed it much thinner with the foam brush. Weird, but it worked.

Due to the washes going everywhere (as is the nature of washes), I had to redo the gaps between the boards, but the end result looks reasonably floor-like. Annoyingly, I forgot to do the edges, and only noticed when all the paint was packed away and I'd all but forgotten what colours I'd used. This was the first of a few occasions where I had to try and colour match what was largely free-painting (a term I may have just invented :-)), but I got away with it

The nameplate

I ordered a name plate from NameIt, with the inspiring text of "Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall". It's not very exciting, but should at least let people know what it's meant to be.

I had trouble getting the name plate aligned on a previous figure, so this time I was ready for it. I used masking tape to mark out the border of where the name plate would go. This also let me use pencil on the tape, so I could get it centered vertically on the plinth. A further piece of tape along the bottom edge let me drop the name plate against it, ensuring it was horizontal. This would be much easier to see in a picture, but I forgot to take any of that stage :-(

The name plate sticks reasonably well, but not was well as I'd hoped. The plinth is varnished, and I suspect it might be something to do with that. The next time I'll roughen up the plinth surface first, or use glue in addition to the sticky pad thing on the name plate.

Putting it all together

The final piece of the puzzle was drilling out the holes in the floor for the figures and gluing them in place. I was about half way through when I realised that I didn't have to drill out holes for both feet, and, in fact, one hole would give me more flexibility for the final positioning.

I altered the positions of a few figures from what I had planned. The biggest change was moving Mr Hodges to point at Pike, who's messing around at the edge of the board. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had drilled two holes for Mr Hodges, I couldn't quite get him positioned as I wanted: to do so would have exposed one of the holes. In the end, however, it's not too bad, so I'm happy enough with it.

One very unexpected occurrence was that the superglue lifted the paint off the floor at a couple of the figures. Worst affected was Mrs Fox, where the paint between her feet disappeared almost back to the plasticard. I touched it up without too much trouble, although colour matching was (again) a pain.

Still, everybody's in and settled. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it. It would have been great to have done the whole church hall, but it wasn't to be. I have learned a lot, even from the failed attempt, so there's probably one more blog post to come regarding lessons learned and future approaches to adopt.

Some pictures below of the completed piece.

It breaks down into five small groups:

Sergeant Wilson and Mrs Pike. Presumably Sergeant Wilson has upset Mrs Pike again, and is trying to apologise.

Mr Blewitt, Private Fraser and Private Godfrey. The Fraser figure is kneeling, which proved problematic when trying to find a reason for him to be there. In the end, I'm assuming he's pointing out Mr Blewitt to Private Godfrey, who's going to see if he can help - reaching, I know...

Captain Mainwaring and the Vicar having a chat. Warden Hodges is also part of that group, but has turned around to shout at Pike.

The aforementioned Warden shouting at Pike, who's probably acting out a scene from a movie he's seen recently.

Corporal Jones regaling Mrs Fox and the Verger with one of his old war stories.

Finally, the group shot

Final challenge

The final challenge is to transport the diorama, possibly in a rucksack, on public transport. I have some boxes that should fit nicely, but I need to make sure I don't scrape any paint off during the move.

Wish me luck

Dad's Army 5 - Diorama 2

I've been working on the diorama layout all week, with very little to show for it; there's not even been enough progress to generate any worthwhile photos.

So little progress, in fact, that I'm giving serious thought about reverting to Plan A, which was to just have the figures on the church hall floor. It may not look as good, but it will be done in time. Given some of the problems I'm encountering, I'm unlikely to have completed even the left wall of the full project any time soon.

This week was largely concerned with the office door in the left wall. I have cut out the door surrounds, and have both 2mm and 2.5mm deep versions. The wall is 1.5mm deep, so 2mm is probably the correct size. However, 2mm doesn't really protrude enough and I'm worried it will disappear when I paint the model. The surround edges were mitred by sanding the pieces on sandpaper, and they have actually turned out quite well.

I have cut out the space for the door. This was done by scraper and scalpel, as I couldn't get the scribe and snap approach to work. Unfortunately, the edges aren't quite as clean and square as I'd like, so there's a bit/lot more sanding to do.

I drew up a pattern for the panels of the door in InkScape and printed it out. Unfortunately, the sizes were all wrong, so I redid them by hand on paper, and then transferred the measurements to plasticard. I'm using 0.5mm for the plain back of the door and another 0.5mm piece for the panel section, although I'm not sure how easy cutting very small rectangles from 0.5mm plasticard will be.

I taped "The Godiva Affair" episode last weekend, and it has provided a wealth of new screen captures, including some areas I didn't have, such as the main door to the hall. However, the downside to this is that there now seems more work to do than ever. One small example is that I noticed the insets on the office door are arched at the top, not straight as I had thought. This isn't a big change, but will make cutting out the insets that bit more complicated.

A bigger thing that I noticed was that the bottom section of the walls the whole way around is actually wooden panels. This means I'll have to scribe each one, probably 2mm apart. Having only just recovered from scribing the floor, I'm not looking forward to this.

As a break from modelling, I managed to get my skeletons nearly finished, and have cleaned and undercoated my next group, Pig Iron Heavy Infantry Command Squad,  Wardroids, and a couple of Citadel Imperial Guard Walkers.

I'll decide at some point next week on whether I'm parking the diorama and just building the floor, but the smart money says that's the most sensible approach.

Dad's Army 4 - Diorama 1

Just a quick update with some dodgy photos this week, as I'm spending all my time on the diorama. I wouldn't mind so much if I was making progress, but it's slow going.

The first picture is the cardboard mock-up I put together, to get an idea of what the size of the model would look like, and to see if it would be okay with all the figures in it, or if it would be too small/large.

The rough positioning of the figures below was taken before I started painting anything. It's still largely what I'm planning to use, although Pike and Fraser won't be on the stage (I'm not building the stage)

The current plasticard layout, complete with test figures, is shown below. Nothing's glued yet, so I have plenty of time to move things about if required. The positioning of the back windows will be changing, hopefully sometime this week. The layout is populated with some Foundry Assyrians and Victorian hunters because a) I had them handy and b) they're the same size as the diorama figures.

After a week, all I have to show for my time is:

• the wall sections. The back wall required trimming, after I realised that I had to have the walls on top of the floor piece, rather than around the edge (the office door would have been dangling in mid-air if the walls were outside the floor)
• the floor. This involved scribing 72 lines, each one 3mm apart. Each line took 10 shallow cuts, giving a total of 720 cuts. This took a full evening (I know you can get plasticard with these cuts; the problem is that the card isn't wide enough, and the cuts are the full length of the card, while I need them the full width)
• outline of the left wall in InkScape. I obsessed over this to a worrying degree, trying to get every measurement perfect. The thing that tripped me up was that moving something 1mm looks huge when you're working at 300x magnification. However, when applied to the model, it's barely noticeable. I'm going to try and relax when doing future pieces
• downloaded pictures of the posters that I'll need from a website. I haven't found portraits of the King and Queen yet, but I'm looking

The edges of the pieces aren't completely flat, due to the nature of working with plasticard (that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it). I have sanded them down, but there's still a slight slope. It's not obvious when you look at it, but it will cause problems when I come to glue the pieces together. My plan to work around any problems caused by this gap is twofold:

• use 4mm square rod to provide a surface for joining floor to wall and wall to wall
• pin the walls to the floor for extra support. Pinning will involve drilling 0.5mm holes through the base and into the wall, then pinning with plasticard rod. It won't provide much strength, but should be enough to help keep the walls straight

Next week I will get to grips with the left wall and ideally get it finished. The door will be tricky, and there's a radiator to think about, but hopefully I'll start to see some progress.

If worst comes to worst, I can always just mount the figures on the floor, but I'm still hopeful that I'll get the model finished in time.

Dad's Army 3 - Civilians Finished

I finished the civilians for the Dad's Army diorama last week. I'm reasonably happy with them, some more so than others...

The weakest figures are Mrs Pike and Mr Blewitt, but, to be fair, these figures don't claim to represent those characters. The Mrs Pike figure was pushing a bicycle in the original pack, and looks like she was simply meant to be a British citizen helping fight the Nazi invaders. Mr Blewitt is a fairly generic "old bloke with a walking stick", so again, I can't really complain (not that that will stop me)

I'm happy with the blacks on the Warden, the Vicar and the Verger. I used the Andrea Miniatures Black set for those, and I'm finally starting to understand how the different shades/highlights behave.

The only one of this group with markings was the Warden, and I'm fairly happy with how they came out. It was quite warm while I was painting, so trying to do fine lines and writing before the paint dried on the brush was tricky.

The figures that do represent characters on the show are very recognisable; it was just a shame that the casting of the figures was so poor.

Finished civilians

Note - the damage to Mr Blewitt and Mrs Pike (hat brims on both models) occurred as I was photographing them. I knocked one over, and just as I was thinking "let's not do that again", I knocked the second one over :-(. The damage, however, has been repaired.

Diorama Layout

I have begun thinking about this and planning stuff out.

I'm setting it in the church hall, but the original idea of simply having them on the bare wooden floor has expanded to include the back wall and the wall with the office door in it.

I've been taking lots of screenshots from the DVDs, and each picture depresses me more. There is a lot of detail in the church hall set that I'd never noticed before: pictures, posters, benches, tables, a piano (on order from Dixon Miniatures) and flags, to name but a few.

The problem is that I've never really done a diorama, or a scratchbuild of this complexity, before, and this strikes me as jumping in at the deep end. However, I've started to decide on some measurements and have picked up plenty of plasticard and foam-card (I'm expecting to make lots of mistakes).

It all needs to be done by the start of October (otherwise it'll be turning into a Christmas present). That gives me about seven weeks, but it has to be designed, built, painted and finished in that time. I suspect my evenings have just been booked for the next few weeks :-)

Dad's Army 2

I've just finished the first group of Dad's Army figures, so I thought I should post some pictures. They're not based yet, and won't be until the civilians have been painted (just starting on them).

The figures went together fairly easily - WW2 British Army colours are relatively simple. I was following the SHQ guide, which for the most part was okay. I should, however, have used khaki for the webbing, rather than Vallejo Iraqui Sand, which was too light.

When I was looking at reference pictures of the cast, I noticed that all the belts and puttees, apart from Mainwaring's, were black. Every other picture of British troops from that period that I've seen have the belts and puttees khaki. There were also some strange pouches being worn in the TV series, rather than the standard 37 pattern pouches that the Foundry figures had been sculpted with.

There was nothing I could do about the pouches, so I just painted up the ones on the figures. I decided to follow the cast photographs regarding the belts and puttees, however, so painted them black. I don't know if the BBC messed up their research, but it's probably more likely that units at that time (especially Home Guard units just after Dunkirk), would have got whatever equipment was lying around.

I did actually make an attempt at the shoulder flashes, but they're not very noticeable - one of the drawbacks of painting using an Optivisor is that things that look good at 2.5x magnification tend to disappear in normal use. They're just about visible on Godfrey's left shoulder below. The formation patch below the shoulder flash had "CP1" on it in the cast photos. I decided against trying this, however, as it was more likely to spoil things than add anything to the figure (that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!).

I tried to match the colour for Pike's scarf. I think it's mostly there, although there should have been more purple in it.

And finally, the group shot, still on their painting bases.

I had trouble deciding on hair colour for Captain Mainwaring. I've seen some pictures of him with grey hair, and others with red-brown hair. I decided to go with the red-brown, as everyone else (apart from Pike) had grey hair.

Civilians

Next up are the civilians - the Vicar, Verger, Mr Hodges, Mrs Fox, Mrs Pike and Mr Blewitt. The figures below have been undercoated, with eyes done and the skin basecolour applied.

The Vicar, Verger and Mr Hodges are in black clothes, so I'm hoping that will speed things up.

I subscribe to the online version of Skirmish Magazine, available through Exact Editions. They quite often cover WW2 re-enactment events, so I shouldn't have too much trouble finding clothing ideas for Mrs Pike and Mrs Fox below.

Diorama layout

I had planned to set the diorama in the church hall, with Fraser and Pike on the stage. However, when I had a look at pictures of the hall, there are railings all along the front of the stage, which means that I'm going to have to change my plan.

The problem is that Fraser is kneeling and pointing, so looks out of place with the others. What I'm thinking at the moment is to have him and Pike off to the side - Fraser pointing something out and Pike pretending to shoot it. The alternative is to have Fraser talking to Mr Blewitt - as he's got a slight stoop, it might not look too bad.

Dad's Army 1

I'm just about finished the figures I'm working on (pictures soon - I've still got the bases to do), but have already started preparing the next group.

This will be a group of Foundry WW2 Home Guard figures, specifically the British Home Guard Heroes (excluding the bloke with the pistol) who just happen to resemble the main characters in Dad's Army. I also have the British Characters set for the rest of the main players, but I'm painting them separately.

The plan is to create a diorama of them in the town hall, with various groups chatting to each other, as shown below. The actual placement will likely change, as it in fact did between taking the following two photographs.

and from above

Figure Preparation

The figures took quite a lot of cleaning as there were some bad miscasts and mold slippage to repair. This was rather irritating, as Foundry are normally better than this. There were also some very badly placed mold lines, including one right through the left eye and cheek of the not-Pike figure.

Most annoyingly, however, were the rifles, which were just really, really bad. They were the wrong shape and had very little detail on them - some bits just half-heartedly etched in. I decided to replace the rifles of not-Jones and not-Fraser (especially as there was a blob of metal at the top of his rifle that messed the whole thing up). Not-Wilson's rifle wasn't quite so bad, and would have been more difficult to replace, so I left it.

I had a look around and decided that the Warlord Games 28mm British Infantry would be my best bet for spares (the figures exist, although I can't find them on their web site), so I picked up a set at Carronade.

After I got them home I had a look at the box-art and decided that they didn't look that great, and the guns looked really thin and rubbish. I decided to stick with the original ones on the figures and consigned the 28mm plastics to the loft.

Later on, however, when I finished cleaning the Dads Army figures, I changed my mind again and decided that the rifles were too poor to use, so I might as well see what the Warlord figures looked like. Upon opening the box (having retrieved it from the loft) I was extremely happy to find that the models inside were excellent - it was just some incredibly bad box-art that they'd used. There are a number of weapon sprues, each containing: rifles (including ones with bayonets and a sniper scope), Bren guns, Sten guns, Tommy guns, pistols, a PIAT and a 2" mortar. Not only that, there are extra heads in the box and the heads are separate from the helmets, so can be used for anything. Given the facial expressions and range of ages depicted, there's a lot of potential for conversions. The rest of the parts are up to the same high standard, and it actually made me want to do 28mm WW2, just to paint these guys. It's not something I'll have any time to do in the near future, but I highly recommend these figures - just ignore the box art.

So, having found excellent rifles, I cut the junk ones away from not-Jones and not-Fraser and replaced them. A quick bit of ProCreate to repair the slings and everything was as good as new.

As the figures will all be standing on a wooden floor (representing the church hall), I removed their bases, filed down and drilled their feet and mounted them on corks for painting.

As the figures kept on falling over, the only other thing I did was to attach the corks to 50mm diameter plasticard for stability.

Next steps

I will start the flesh this week, and I'll try and post regular updates, although, to be honest, there's not much involved in WW2 British uniforms, so I'm hoping they don't take too long.