Great work!

Marcel.

Thanks for this Pedro!

Thank you Marc! Answer about the pinkish hues are inside the blog


Thank you too Carl, now I see the light at the end of the tunnel (and so does the pilot I suppose)

Wow thanks Jamie I am short of words to answer you. Well, except, I am happy to be there, my aim is not the same as other modelers I think, I don't care about feathered warriors, beardy greeks, ultra intricate napoleonian clothes, i am just here to show men -usually dead- and create dioramas that could make the effect of a bomb inside your head. That's really ultra pretentious as aim, but i hope my use of techniques is good enough for me to be allowed to say that
Ah well, i still have a lot of progresses to do when it comes to sculpting/painting

[edit]Thanks Marcel for commenting!

Thanks goodness the weather is excellent which means the resin will dry fast enough. I need to put at least 4 different coats of resin, and use probably 8 or 10 colours for that one.
indeed every summer since a few years I visit my parents who live near a big swamp on French west coast, and I always liked the look of the water in the summer, it really takes a lot of colours, mainly of the decaying leaf sort, like dark red, yellow orange, dark green brown. Very beautiful colours but with a slight perfume of malaria (even if you’re unlikely to get malaria in the west of France). Well, I don’t know South East Asia, but I thought that using those colours and would certainly fit –and they are also a far cry from me having a huge Apocalypse Now poster in my bedroom when I was a kid, because the poster also had those colours.
So well, all the tinting was done using oils, both opaque and transparent.

The first coat was some dark green brown transparent oil which I thought would be good on the dark areas of the diorama (near the walking path, below the crashed electronics). So I bent the diorama and proceeded to put that first coat of resin that way.


Then I did some red colours –I used a mix between the aforementioned hue and opaque red (not too much so that the transparency would stay) and applied it further to the right of the diorama.

Now really consider what I am doing: I had some comments about the terrible colours and scruffy looking background I was using for the diorama, but really that was the point: the real colours of the water will be provided by the resin itself! This is why I left a bit of pink here and there (Hi Marc!!) , or some white or bright orange, because pink + transparent dark green resin does really something quite weird and really un-pinkish
That’s like chess guys, you have to think one or 2 or 3 steps in advance

Then another thing I should mention, is that the further you will be looking to the right of the diorama, the more the water will be opaque. Indeed the yellow orange part is the place where the sun reflects and tints the water. When the sun does that you can’t see beneath the water anyway. Hut then - did you guys ever tried to look at fishes in ponds? If the pond is in the shade, then you can see beneath the water quite better, and that’s the reason why the water is almost see through on the left.
To sum up that banter : no sun = transparency, sun=opaque
Well, now let’s dry all that, because I will have a lot of corrections to do afterwards –both concerning colours and the ratio of matt-gloss of that diorama

Thank you Carl! really the water will be looking good with the set of completed picture I will try to get for tomorrow

Well, something I didn't tell in time: the plastic box I used as framing for the resin had been filled with plaster on the underside to prevent leaking, so the first job I had to do was to remove the plastic and the plaster. despite the generous amount of oil I had been coating the borders, i still had some troubles to get this done


So well, time for self critic!
It's all on the picture below


So that kept me busty for a good 2 hours applying dark washes and more or less diluted Future.
The real trouble was indeed that all this resin creeping up the plants!! On some angles it really looked awful and I could not tolerate that.
So i basically removed the plants, cut the resin down, carved some holes with adrill and a cutter and inserted several other plants.
Then I used 2 or 3 coats of Humbrol Gloss Quote to level the water. my trick to get a realistic finish with this thick varnish is to first apply it and then to BLOW on the surface!


Next pictures, it's Rolling Thunder as completed and end of the blog

Close to completion and it is all coming together, very impressive! The lighting coming from one direction is really working well.

It really sucks that all these resins have the the tendency to creep up into surrounding objects. That this happened with your plants is due to the capilary action between the individual strands and the surface tension of the resin. Why is there no resin manufacturor that produces a resin with low surface tension?? We modellers are probably too small a market, but I would have a use for it. I wonder if anyone has ever experimented with adding stuff to the resin to break the surface tension...???

Looking forward to the final pics!

Cheers
Adrian

Wow thanks Adrian, I had no idea at all about the physics behind that creeping problem..
I have been resolving here the way I explained -but also with the fact I used my pigment / acrylic gel mix to cover some of the borders of the resin.

Another thing I didn't know and thanks for that Carl. I googled for it and found a terrible video which led me to suppose the Andrea resin was actually epoxy resin similar to what i use, then how on earth could you mix this with washing up detergent?!! Really I would be much grateful if you could get me details for this Carl!


anyway as promised here are the pics :

Hi Nicolas,

At first I thought the red/orange colour of the water was too much, however this is a Vietnam scene and in many parts of Vietnam the soil is a deep orange colour. You've made a brave choice, but it really works in this context.

The effect of the water is absolutely stunning, and I admire the patience and planning that you've put into this piece.

I do have a couple of questions; where is the pilot's flight helmet, and shouldn't his flight suit have a few more pockets and badges? I ask only because I want to understand the story of who the pilot is and how he survived the crash and ended up lying dead on the fuselage.

Thanks Tony. Well I actually have been modelling this from a real picture which is there , my take is that he was still in the cockpit and then dragged away for the picture.
My own take is that I wanted the pilot to look at the sky and face the sun as some sort of goodbye you see.
Apparently I have just been told on a French forum that the guy should indeed have been wearing some sort of flight jacket with pockets and badge, but I couldn't find any reference so as I like my figs to stay minimal well, I didn't change anything!

About the red, you are absolutely right, for me the big Vietnam cliché is orange and red dust and soil, I have been reading tons of stuff about this and yet as you know, a lot of diorama makers are afraid of colours

Congratulations on finishing the diorama Nicolas. What a mega-effort!

The end result looks very balanced in colour and composition: a job extremely well done! Very impressive.

I like the strong-coloured water very much.

Cheers,
Adrian

Just a stupendous build. This really turned out great for such a gruesome scene. Your bold use of color just makes it all the better. Thanks for keeping the SBS going so we could see how you do these wonderful scenes. I hope to see another soon.

Really great build, minimalist approach, lot of punch for a simple story.

well done,

Cheers

Jamie

Thank you Adrian -and for all the support during this SBS too

Mike I also thank you again for the same reasons. I will rest all summer, then maybe something around september October, it will depend how things goes

Thanks again Jamie!