For your first shot out of the breech, I'd go with something very simple. Keep it to a minimum and use it as a learning experience to develop skills in ground material and presentation.
Ask yourself, what are you trying to say?
Are you displaying the vehicle and trying to do something other than just a simple display base? Or are you making the vehicle part of a larger scene and as an element of a larger "picture".
A diorama is like a photograph. It should be thought out, convey some sort of continuty, theme or idea. And be aestheticly convincing and pleasing.
If it is something you want to strat off slowly and small, why not just a roadway with the jeep pulled off to the side. This displays your jeep and keeps it as the main subject. You get to practice making a road which is ample opportunity to make dry dirt, asphalt, cobblestone, mud, snow or any and whatever combination of the latter. By making it a jeep pulled to the side you can practice your groundwork, short grass, long grass, foiliage, rocks, puddles, ditches, sidewalks, desert etc. This simple base, while not an involved project can make for an atractive display of your vehicle.
If you want to get into a little deeper water, try adding some architectural elements on the base. A partial wall, a garden wall, wooden fencing, trees, a bridge, stone walls, temple, etc. Something that may add as a backdrop to your vehicle. This will give you more practice with architectural problems and be a nice compliment to your presentation.
I keep a sketchbook with ideas. The borders are crammed with notes and while it may not be relative to a current project, it keeps my ideas handy so that they are there if the mood strikes me. Often times they become grouped for a combination of ideas to make a bigger project.
Ideas I have sketched for small vehicles like jeeps, kubelwagons etc.
- Parked with guys relaxing.
- On a hill overlooking a vista with a guy standing looking at a guide book and taking pictures.
- Parked on a causeway or bridge and guys fishing or washing clothes in a stream.
- Guys drunk joyriding.
- Asking directions from mp's. Stopped at a checkpoint. At a cross roads reading a map.
- Changing a tire.
- Stuck in the mud.
- Swerving out of the way of an obstacle or animals in the road.
- Stuck behind a hay wagon.
- Americans hiding under a bridge while better armed Germans peruse their abandoned jeep or vice versa.
You get the idea. All of these can be done on a small base that use very little extra or just a little more than the space taken up by the vehicle and make for a vignette of everyday things that still keep the vehicle as a center of attention. If you try and make the base too busy or too big for the vehicle, the attention becomes focused on your base rather than what you built the base for. I've seen elaborate bases swallow a vehicle and the intent was lost. Sort of a case of the base that ate the model.
Good luck and remember, if you don't do it this time, Tamiya produces a few thousand of these kits a year. Plenty of opportunities to put a jeep into any idea you can come up with.
Mike