BB Blog

I occasionally get requests to see my dioramas in larger view, so I wanted to just finally make one thread where I can put some photos of the various dios I have set up and then the next time I need to find them, I won’t have to look through all my photos to find some, they will be in one place.

Unfortunately, I never figured anyone would care about how they were made so I have no Work In Progress shots and since I only take photos of them when I have a scene set up, there are also very few nice, uncluttered shots of them without a bunch of action figures all over the place to obscure the view. So, apologies in advance for the lack of actual useful views of the dioramas themselves and for the photos looking more like they belong in the collection photos section rather than here in the customs section, but it’s all I have to show you who are interested.

So, I started a few years ago with a leftover “entertainment center” of the O’Sullivan, cheap-o pressboard variety that was no longer useful in the era of widescreen TVs and of basic black edging out faux wood grain in home theater furniture. I first made a little building to put in the now vacant TV section of the shelf and like most things, just constructed it out of materials I had lying around the basement: scrap pieces of leftover sheetrock, fake wood grain paperboard from other pressboard furniture, small pipe to contain outdoor electrical wires, concrete reinforcing strips, etc., etc. I used the pipe for a gutter and spray painted the side of the sheetrock grey and then put some lines on with leftover rolls of adhesive black lines that were used by graphic artists in lieu of drawing them with Rapidograph pens back in the day before computers made it much easier.

That’s about all I did myself, for the rest I simply added mass-produced accessories that came with action figures, many of which are quite recognizable to fellow collectors: the Chrysler building-type eagle outcropping, the Daily Bugle billboard, the Spiderman movie stone balcony, the street corner/street light/newspaper box and various other Spiderman figure extras. The rest of the alley was made up of the alley that came with another Spidey figure and I made some sidewalk to go in front out of foamcore spray painted gray and scored to make lines where the slabs separate. There were also sidewalk segments that came with many of the DC Direct Batman figures in the Hush, Dark Victory and Rogue’s Gallery figures. For the background, I used posters of cityscapes.

The interior offices were also furnished with action figure accessories and the walls I created in Photoshop and printed out and pasted on the interior walls of the top floor. I was too lazy to do anything with the bottom one.

Finally, I made a facade to hide the interior (when I needed it to look like a full building and not a cutaway view) out of foamcore wrapped with shiny gift wrap and then put a grid pattern on with the same adhesive lines I used on the alley wall to give it a modernish building look as opposed to a brick and mortar one.

Since then, I have expanded the number of figures I have and likewise, had to expand the town. I added a large piece of OSB (oriented strand board) that was leftover from some construction project and spray painted it black to hopefully have the rough texture, yet flat and stable foundation to approximate asphalt and act as the street for the “town.” I propped it up on some modular wire storage cubes I found on clearance at Target and put it in front of the entertainment center. I almost fit perfectly, but was about an inch too high, so the alley that is behind it actually drops down but you can’t really tell from a distance.

I also added another building, made out of a cardboard box and painted red with spray paint with some black to give it some texture. I cut out “windows” and then put some plywood in them to give it a boarded up slum look (easier than making nice, clear windows you can see through).

Next, I wanted to leave the other shelves on the entertainment center cabinet open to display as many figures as possible since I was running out of room. So I made some “edges” of exterior walls out of more leftover sheetrock and scored brick lines in them with a ruler and blunt nail and then spray painted them red and screwed them to the sides of the shelves to give a look of a building that had been destroyed in some super powered battle and was left standing with the interior revealed.

The rest is just made of more playsets, bases, accessories, vehicles, in scale print outs, etc. for interiors, furniture, litter, etc. to add to the realism of scenes. Here’s more photos. Thanks for looking.

Most of the scenes I shoot photos of are pretty up close, so I don’t have that many that show the whole city, but (apologies in advance to a dial-up users) here are a few that show some detail without quite so many figures in them:

To be complete, I want to add my dioramas I made for Superman, Batman and the general interiors that can be used for everyone from Spiderman and the Fantastic Four to the Daily Planet and Daily Bugle or Avengers mansion or X-men, Dr. Fate, etc. Basically, a laboratory setting, an office setting and a mansion setting.

The mansion is obviously just the playsets for Sunnyvale Library from the Buffy line and the Chalet set from the Matrix with some accessories added from other lines. The office, bat cave and fortress of solitude backgrounds I had to make in Photoshop and print out .

First up, here are some more shots of the office interior:

Here are the image files if anyone wants to use them for similar purposes:

For the Fortress of Solitude, I used the copious amount of styrofoam blocks that seem to come with everything you buy and the printed background I made, along with some actual rocks and crystals I either found or bought at mineral stores. There are also various accessories from other lines in there as well as some small, portable spotlights.

Here is a 72dpi version of it for easier downloading:

The Bat Cave uses more real rocks and the printed background with an overhead, stick on light and various bat accessories from other figures:

Here are the printed parts for the background and the monitors and controls for the computers in both BC and FOS:

For the Batman building that I use as a general place to display the Batman figures (sometimes Wayne Manor, sometimes Arkham Asylum, sometimes both or neither), I got a plywood display shelf/doll house from Michael’s craft store, along with some sheets of scrapbooking paper with various patterns and textures printed on them and some pieces of felt material at the same place. I put the felt on the floor for carpet and the printed sheets on the wall for wallpaper. I added some extra fake wood paneling paperboard from a pressboard cabinet/shelf back to make the wainscoting or whatever you call that halfway up the wall wood. The rest of the furniture comes from action figure accessories, etc. and I made the Arkham sign from twist ties, obviously.

 

The lab consists of a shelf of the entertainment center with aluminum foil on the floor and some red duct tape and I filled it with all the scientific equipment we seemed to have from bases and accessories from figures. Then I put in the guts of a lot of electronics that no longer worked, so there are circuit boards and motors and servos and trays from junked CD players, telephones, Palm pilots, etc. It was originally made for use with the X-men, but I moved the X-men and the Danger Room diorama to another shelf when the X figures began to multiply.

Later, I needed more room and the lab took up the whole shelf, so now it is squeezed in between the Fantastic Four space ship (Muppets Pigs in Space playset, of course) on one side and Doom’s Castle (Van Helsing Dracula’s castle, naturally) on the other so it acts as a lab for both Doom and Richards when needed.