I have always been impressed with Bob Letterman's huge diorama's and have always wanted to construct one for myself. The first time I saw his "Twilight of the Third Reich" diorama, which featured a French town that was occupied by German forces, was in a Finescale Modeler issue back in 1992 in at which I was in awe and kind of inspired me to build diorama's. A few years ago I purchased Super Dioramas and noticed that the original diorama was called "Legacies" which showed US forces going through the same French town with General Patton leading the force across a bridge.
I have since studied the pictures and construction processes to build the "Legacies" diorama in at which I have started scratch building the structures first to build my own version of the "Legacies" diorama. I will make the buildings with different features so it doesn't look like the original "Legacies" diorama. Once I have about 50% of the structures completed I will start to construct the base. This is first time I have constructed buildings this large. I have scratch built buildings for a model railroad before, but they were at a much smaller scale and consisted mainly of styrene. I have always liked scratch building structures since it makes it unique to what the modeler wants and is something different from the typical kits out there.
The buildings in the pictures below are built out of foamboard, styrene, resin, balsa and artist acrylic paste to simulate stucco and stone. I still need to weather the outside of the first building, add the business signs and posters, gutters need to be installed and put grayish black rock on the roof. I will construct a module for the interior on the first floor at which will house a European art store. I am open to opinions since this is the first time I have constructed buildings using these materials and have never constructed European buildings. I will start building a clock tower building next month. I am liking the results so far. Thanks for looking.
