Diorama and/or Layout Party??

[Bernard]

Here is an idea I would like to throw out to the members and see if people would like to do this. It would be a Diorama and/or Layout Party. What it entails is a set date we all start or continuing working on our layouts or dioramas. It can be a diorama that you might have put off working on, or a new one that you wanted to do, or an area of your layout that you need to work on. At any part of the week you ask questions, post pictures on the developement of what you are working on. The party could go on as long as we want (6 weeks or whatever to be determined by all the participating memebers)

For example, for me I would want to work on a diorama to work on improving my scenery stills, weathering, etc. and asking questions or getting information on ways to go about doing certain techniques.

Would members be interested in doing this?

[CaptOblivious]

This is a great idea. I need some motivation to work on my projects. I'll be out of town the next few days, but I would love to participate in something like this.

[Martijn Meerts]

Hmm.. It's a good idea, although for me personally at the moment it's impossible to say how much I can get done in a certain amount of time. It should improve at some point though, but that's talking about several months from now.

To add to the idea, we could also set a specific topic for a diorama, and see what people come up with, and how different (or similar) they are in the end.

Actually, I keep trying to come up with ideas for nice modules I can build. Some are fairly unique (like the Ghibli modules), some are downright crazy (Tokyo Station), and some are fairly standard stuff (servicing terminal). But I had this idea some time ago, which is somewhat related to this topic, what if I would get people to make mini diorama's/scenes, and than try to implement all of them into 1 module and try to make them fit in. The biggest issue would be mailing the small diorama's once they're done. To take it even further, we could make some small diorama's for each other, so everyone has a little bit of "foreign" scenery. Image, 1 module built by people living in various countries around the world ;)

[Bernard]

I like this idea a lot, let's see if it is possible with shipping and member's time frame. Should the dimensions be universal and the materials light weight. Also should the track be universal if we want to connect the dioramas together? There are a lot of potential, possibilities with this idea.

Dioramas from different parts of the world, as a symbol of friendship. How about taking it one step further (or too far and I'm just thinking off the top of my head.) Sending the dioramas to one member/area to be put together, like a children's hospital for Christmas on display? (I'm just rattling off ideas  :))

But if members want to work on their own dioramas or continue working on a project that fine.

[Martijn Meerts]

Well, the idea really started when I was thinking about how to do the detailed and fragile scenes I had in mind for the Ghibli modules. For example, a guy at work is making me a little Totoro character, which I plan to have in a small scene standing next to a girl with an umbrella at a bus stop (you'll know the scene if you've see the movie, it's great ;)). I'm also working on a very detailed model of the house of the main characters from Totoro. Obviously, glueing those into a module that's supposed to be transportable and stored in places where it uses up as little space as possible is not a very attractive idea. So, what I'm doing is making small diorama on a piece of wood, and the actual module will have a slot where the diorama fits in. That way the diorama can be transported separately, plus I can put them up as a little display diorama when the module is in storage.

Since those diorama's will be so small, I got to thinking it might be possible to make a standard sized module (112x70cm in my case), with a simple track plan (single straight piece of track), and those who'd like to make a diorama for it, would get a little spot there. Why someone would want to go through the effort of building a small diorama and then shipping it off to some random person is beyond me though ;)

[CaptOblivious]

I like the "drop-in" idea: I always figured that's what I'd do with my Akihabara Station diorama when I built a real lay-out: put a hole where the station should go, and just plop it in!

But I like these ideas. I'm happy just to know that a bunch of other people are hard at work at the same time I am; knowing that is actually a fair amount of motivation in its own right. But along the lines discussed, we might consider simply making small dioramas for each other: We've all got our own areas of interest. Someone could do a Suigun Line scene for me, I would do a Tokkaido line scene for Bernard, Bernard would do a such and such scene for the next person and so on (kinda like Secret Santa?). Just something small—perhaps just a sheet of paper in size, enough to show off a loco, and cheap to mail—and inexpensive—no going overboard with tons of expensive structures, etc—, but outside what we've been working on with our own projects?