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Bunkerbarge
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Well you've certainly captured my attention, I'm just wondering what is going to come next!
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JohnReid
Guest
I am sorry ,I forgot to explain what that post was really all about.I am working on an online book about storyboard dioramas which are relatively new to the world of modeling ,as we have known it.I just thought that I would give you guys a little preview of the rough draft for the online book.It will not be on any specific genre of modeling but more of a new type of modeling where the story is primary rather than what is being modeled.The early aviation dioramas,the HMS Victory diorama and my new railroad diorama will each have a chapter in this online book, not from a how to build.....perspective but from a how to tell a good story perspective.It is simply an out growth of what I have experienced in my own home over the past ten years that my Victory has been on display.I have found that the viewer is usually more interested in the storyline than the model ship, especially the kids.
It is my belief that the future of modeling is in the story being told not just the model itself.I have noticed that museums themselves have been slowly adapting to this new reality, this knew way of thinking.The modern viewer is no longer satisfied with just looking at objects but wants more than just visual interaction with the objects they are viewing.They are no longer satisfied with looking at just old artifacts without really understanding what they are looking at,very few even stop long enough to read the displays sign.
Natural history museums and their modelers have known this for a long time.Full scale models of animals going about even their daily routines can be very interesting if they tell a good story that the viewers imagination can get involved in.Just displaying a bunch of skins or bones are not enough in todays modern world where viewers are used to so much more visual stimulation.Let's face it objects in glass cases without some kind of story are boring in this modern world.This is where the visual storyboard diorama comes into the picture.It is easy to initially grab the viewers attention with the objects being displayed but to hold that attention for any length of time their must also be a visual storyline that they can relate to in their mind.
Storyboard dioramas are not easy to do and are a real challenge to any modeler .Trying to tell your story in a one frame movie with no dialogue,movement or music etc.. can be difficult but very rewarding if the modeler can pull it off well.It used to be thought that shadow boxes were the highest expression of our art form,that may be true but storyboard dioramas have to be right up there to.
Cheers! John.
It is my belief that the future of modeling is in the story being told not just the model itself.I have noticed that museums themselves have been slowly adapting to this new reality, this knew way of thinking.The modern viewer is no longer satisfied with just looking at objects but wants more than just visual interaction with the objects they are viewing.They are no longer satisfied with looking at just old artifacts without really understanding what they are looking at,very few even stop long enough to read the displays sign.
Natural history museums and their modelers have known this for a long time.Full scale models of animals going about even their daily routines can be very interesting if they tell a good story that the viewers imagination can get involved in.Just displaying a bunch of skins or bones are not enough in todays modern world where viewers are used to so much more visual stimulation.Let's face it objects in glass cases without some kind of story are boring in this modern world.This is where the visual storyboard diorama comes into the picture.It is easy to initially grab the viewers attention with the objects being displayed but to hold that attention for any length of time their must also be a visual storyline that they can relate to in their mind.
Storyboard dioramas are not easy to do and are a real challenge to any modeler .Trying to tell your story in a one frame movie with no dialogue,movement or music etc.. can be difficult but very rewarding if the modeler can pull it off well.It used to be thought that shadow boxes were the highest expression of our art form,that may be true but storyboard dioramas have to be right up there to.
Cheers! John.
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Fenlander
Guest
I have to very strongly agree with that concept John. A diorama must tell a story to make it interesting and the 'fine detail', and dare I say total accuracy, are secondary. However, a diorama just by existing surely does tell a story. from a modellers perspective, there are three basic ways of presenting a model.
One is the model on a shelf. OK, it can tell a story or provoke questions such as 'What must it have been like to have been in one of those?' but generally, that is as far as it goes.
Secondly, what I call a 'scenic base' where the model is displayed on some form of flat terrain or even a photographic terrain, to put the model into some kind of real world context. This can often impart enough detail for the viewer still to wonder about the subject but now tempered with a concept of scale and environment.
Thirdly, what I call a diorama. This will consist of one or more models in a realistic 3D environmental model, the base itself. This should not only show the model but the very conditions, and in some cases accurate depictions of an event, in which it served. In effect it becomes a miniature representation of history itself. The questions that such a diorama can induce are almost endless from wanting information on the vehicle, the secondary equipment, the people represented by figures, the terrain and conditions right up to the political 'Why?' 'When?' and 'Where?'
Any diorama of the third kind must tell a story, even if that story is fictitious as in Sci Fi and Fantasy. Using models based upon real objects, times and political doctrine, a diorama can miss inform as readily as it can inform. Either way, true or false, it is by it's very being, telling a story.
To create a diorama to accurately show a real event is no more complex than a fictitious one. Obviously the detail has to be as accurate as scaling down will allow to really well represent an actual event but, given that most of these events are traditionally based on historical information, it really only represents the truth as known from the source material available and as such has to be a compromising representation of what is thought to have happened.
I think you are working on a fascinating subject that could be of great interest to many modellers, please keep us informed of your progress.
One is the model on a shelf. OK, it can tell a story or provoke questions such as 'What must it have been like to have been in one of those?' but generally, that is as far as it goes.
Secondly, what I call a 'scenic base' where the model is displayed on some form of flat terrain or even a photographic terrain, to put the model into some kind of real world context. This can often impart enough detail for the viewer still to wonder about the subject but now tempered with a concept of scale and environment.
Thirdly, what I call a diorama. This will consist of one or more models in a realistic 3D environmental model, the base itself. This should not only show the model but the very conditions, and in some cases accurate depictions of an event, in which it served. In effect it becomes a miniature representation of history itself. The questions that such a diorama can induce are almost endless from wanting information on the vehicle, the secondary equipment, the people represented by figures, the terrain and conditions right up to the political 'Why?' 'When?' and 'Where?'
Any diorama of the third kind must tell a story, even if that story is fictitious as in Sci Fi and Fantasy. Using models based upon real objects, times and political doctrine, a diorama can miss inform as readily as it can inform. Either way, true or false, it is by it's very being, telling a story.
To create a diorama to accurately show a real event is no more complex than a fictitious one. Obviously the detail has to be as accurate as scaling down will allow to really well represent an actual event but, given that most of these events are traditionally based on historical information, it really only represents the truth as known from the source material available and as such has to be a compromising representation of what is thought to have happened.
I think you are working on a fascinating subject that could be of great interest to many modellers, please keep us informed of your progress.
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- Ron
Good grief Graham, what an eloquent, masterful piece of prose.....Where the heck did you dig that up from?? lol
Ron
Ron
Hi John
This is fascinating stuff. I don't know if you've ever read the book 'Arnhem Defeat and Glory - A Miniaturist Perspective' - essentially this book tells the entire story of the battle of Arnhem but in 20mm scale. I wouldn't call the modelling award winning in itself, but it does (as you say) tell a great story. The advantage I suppose of modelling the illustartions instead of using photographs is that you can depict scenes that have no reference - you'd be hard pushed to get an actual photo of Victor Grabner's charge across Arnhem Bridge for instance! In this way you really give a full visual account (albeit with some artistic license!) of the story.
I'm with you on this - it's certainly interesting stuff, but I can see the execution of such work lasting a lifetime!
All the best my friend
Paul
Ps. The Arnhem book's published by Schiffer Military History
This is fascinating stuff. I don't know if you've ever read the book 'Arnhem Defeat and Glory - A Miniaturist Perspective' - essentially this book tells the entire story of the battle of Arnhem but in 20mm scale. I wouldn't call the modelling award winning in itself, but it does (as you say) tell a great story. The advantage I suppose of modelling the illustartions instead of using photographs is that you can depict scenes that have no reference - you'd be hard pushed to get an actual photo of Victor Grabner's charge across Arnhem Bridge for instance! In this way you really give a full visual account (albeit with some artistic license!) of the story.
I'm with you on this - it's certainly interesting stuff, but I can see the execution of such work lasting a lifetime!
All the best my friend
Paul
Ps. The Arnhem book's published by Schiffer Military History
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JohnReid
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JohnReid
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Thanks Graham for your kind words! Cheers ! John.
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Bunkerbarge
Guest
Hi John, a very interesting concept and one which I am sure will be valuable to many modellers as a reference when it's finished. It's interesting when you think nowadays how many things are presented to us visually particularly as generated by computers, designed to show us things that we would otherwise not be able to experience.
Such a presentation would be the recent series on famous battles by John Snow who used some pretty impressive computer generated imagery to show an idea of what it would have been like.
It's a very interesting concept that the modelling could even take second place to the story as, when you think about it, what percentage of the people who look at a Tiger 1 model know whether that type had a barrel lock on the aft deck or not, but they would find it interesting to see how it handled over rough terrain with a bunch of troops huddled together behind it trying to avoid flying bullets.
It does open up a lot of interesting and innovative thinking.
Such a presentation would be the recent series on famous battles by John Snow who used some pretty impressive computer generated imagery to show an idea of what it would have been like.
It's a very interesting concept that the modelling could even take second place to the story as, when you think about it, what percentage of the people who look at a Tiger 1 model know whether that type had a barrel lock on the aft deck or not, but they would find it interesting to see how it handled over rough terrain with a bunch of troops huddled together behind it trying to avoid flying bullets.
It does open up a lot of interesting and innovative thinking.
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Fenlander
Guest
FAO Ron. I am not just beer and skittles ya know 
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JohnReid
Guest
Introduction 1
I really appreciate feedback both good and bad.Yes,some of it has been negative and some downright hostile but in this new world of communication you can write what you want and publish it yourself and if you have something interesting to say it will get read.No more gatekeepers between the author and his potential audience.If you like it read it, if not don't bother, that is the new standard for what gets read.
Some say that I am claiming to have invented something new to the world of art and modeling .Nothing could be further from the truth.As I have explained dioramas have been around for a long time ,nothing new there.Storyboards are well known to the visual arts and movie making etc...But storyboard dioramas are relatively a new idea.
You can prove this to yourself,just Google Storyboard Dioramas nothing except what I have recently put up.Now Google The Art of the Storyboard Diorama again nothing.Now Google The Art of The Storyboard you will find a few references to movie making production but no mention of dioramas.
What I am trying to say is my book will be an attempt to see dioramas in a new context ,that of an artistic tool to tell a visual story using the diorama as the medium .
In a museum setting you are working with the general public that may or may not understand what they are seeing.They may have absolutely know idea or interest in airplanes,railroads, ships or whatever.It may only be a forced school trip that they are on and they really don't what to be there.But models and stories have been around forever it is almost in our genes I would say.It is this group of people that I am hoping will stop and give my stuff a second look and hopefully somehow be influenced by it.
I really appreciate feedback both good and bad.Yes,some of it has been negative and some downright hostile but in this new world of communication you can write what you want and publish it yourself and if you have something interesting to say it will get read.No more gatekeepers between the author and his potential audience.If you like it read it, if not don't bother, that is the new standard for what gets read.
Some say that I am claiming to have invented something new to the world of art and modeling .Nothing could be further from the truth.As I have explained dioramas have been around for a long time ,nothing new there.Storyboards are well known to the visual arts and movie making etc...But storyboard dioramas are relatively a new idea.
You can prove this to yourself,just Google Storyboard Dioramas nothing except what I have recently put up.Now Google The Art of the Storyboard Diorama again nothing.Now Google The Art of The Storyboard you will find a few references to movie making production but no mention of dioramas.
What I am trying to say is my book will be an attempt to see dioramas in a new context ,that of an artistic tool to tell a visual story using the diorama as the medium .
In a museum setting you are working with the general public that may or may not understand what they are seeing.They may have absolutely know idea or interest in airplanes,railroads, ships or whatever.It may only be a forced school trip that they are on and they really don't what to be there.But models and stories have been around forever it is almost in our genes I would say.It is this group of people that I am hoping will stop and give my stuff a second look and hopefully somehow be influenced by it.
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sprayman
Guest
What a very interesting read, sorry I didnt see it sooner.
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Fenlander
Guest
John. I have just read your second extract re kids and planes. You have touched a nerve there with me. My first flight was heading for Spain for the first time on Holiday and I was 51 years old. I had some knowledge of aircraft as I loved air shows which I had been visiting from the age of 19. I was actually used to the smells and the sights and, in particular, the sounds.
At 51 years of age, I nervously left home for a commercial airport for the first time and for my first flight. Two things stick out in my mind from that experience. One was the total disappointment of the experience of actually getting on an aircraft, I never actually saw the aeroplane I flew in. You hit the nail on the head as we say in the UK, I was fed through a tube into a tube with seats and reversed at my return flight. I was gutted.
Weirdly, the other thing that stuck in my mind from that first time was deceleration. People told me all about the rush down the runway and the sudden lift but I knew how a plane took off, I expected it. What I didn't expect, and this may sound silly, was how hard a plane decelerates in the air. It was as if someone put the brakes on in a car. I never expected to feel that 'thrown forward in my seat'.
There are so many sensory experiences that people will never experience and as life gets more sanitised, maybe they never will. It is returning to our ancient roots when the story teller is the giver of true knowledge.
At 51 years of age, I nervously left home for a commercial airport for the first time and for my first flight. Two things stick out in my mind from that experience. One was the total disappointment of the experience of actually getting on an aircraft, I never actually saw the aeroplane I flew in. You hit the nail on the head as we say in the UK, I was fed through a tube into a tube with seats and reversed at my return flight. I was gutted.
Weirdly, the other thing that stuck in my mind from that first time was deceleration. People told me all about the rush down the runway and the sudden lift but I knew how a plane took off, I expected it. What I didn't expect, and this may sound silly, was how hard a plane decelerates in the air. It was as if someone put the brakes on in a car. I never expected to feel that 'thrown forward in my seat'.
There are so many sensory experiences that people will never experience and as life gets more sanitised, maybe they never will. It is returning to our ancient roots when the story teller is the giver of true knowledge.
J
JohnReid
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JohnReid
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JohnReid
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Until I get some better pics these will have to do for now.A lot of the pics are of the diorama under construction.This pic illustrates what I mean by the checkerboard roof commanding the viewers initial attention.
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Fenlander
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That looks superb, can't wait to see some more.
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JohnReid
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JohnReid
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Fenlander
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Those figures are stunning John, just stunning....