Well I guess we will start with modifying and painting figures.Ken Hamilton came up with a very good diagram of how to do this.In this case a pic is worth a thousand words.His book is out of print and he has personally cleared me to use it for teaching purposes.

If you want to put figures on your diorama there are a few decisions that will have to be made early on.Will you be scratch building or modifying pre-made figures or something in between?If your building figures from scratch then any scale that you feel comfortable with is OK.But if your like most of the rest of us you will be modifying figures to suit your needs.There are a lot of great figures out there now but not in all scales.Take a look at great models.com, they have a lot of figures in many scales.There are more and more all the time and I know if ship modelers were using them they would manufacture them if the demand was there.Right now the armour guys have the greatest variety in 1/35 scale because they have been into dioramas for a long time.The airplane guys building in 1/32 scale will sometimes use the armour stuff when they can.Different manufactures do differ a bit so measure them yourself and you may be surprised. Also remember humans,animals and even tools vary in size in real life 1:1 scale.
I received the Model Expo catalog the other day and was thinking about this thread.There are a few great possibilities.My choice right now would be HMS Vanguard in 1/72 scale.If I had a few thousand extra hours to devout to it ,it would make for a great storyboard diorama either waterline or free standing.There are lots of 1/72 figures available in Napoleonic uniform which could easily be modified to crew the ship.You have a choice to of bare poles,harbor or full sail rig in calm or stormy seas.
There are other choices too.1/48,1/32,1/24 and even HO for the RR guys and even my current scale 1/16th.Numerous figures are available for all of these. to be cont.......

Now that we have decided on a scale and have good access to lots of figures we can move on.
Usually the larger the figure the easier it is to modify but not always.The Napoleonic figures that I used really didn't need a lot of modification, mostly the cutting off of unwanted items of uniform and some re-positioning of heads and limbs.(See Ken's diagram).The same figures that I used on Victory could be used on Vanguard .They are 1/72 scale and very well made.You will have to get familiar with using an xacto knife # 11 blade though ,as sanding only creates a rough and fuzzy surface which is very hard to paint. In fact in some ways a tooled surface looks even better and more like you would expect if your figures were scratch made from wood.I will post a few pics of the figures i used. to be cont......

These are the five different sets I used and in some cases only one or two of the figures from a set.The seated figures are great for oarsmen etc...all except the civil war set are in period uniforms.Even the civil war guys came in handy with a few modifications.

In my opinion,HMS Victory,by Noel CL Hackney is the best by far as a guide to the step by step rigging of this ship and other English ships-of-the-line.It was written by a modeler for other modelers .I have all the other books on modeling Victory but this little book, that I paid $1.98 for new in a hobby store 35 years ago ,is the best.Unfortunately they now only come up on the secondary market and only occasionally and they want up to $150.00 bucks for it.There are only 7 libraries in the world that stock it and there was only one printing made in the English language in 1970,the others are in German.If anyone knows how to put a little pressure on the owners of the rights to this book,please do so. Mr Hackney was foremost a modeler and he went to a lot of effort to make sure this information was available to modelers.I am sure that he would be very unhappy today to see the price that modelers have to pay and to whom the money is going.I am sure that in his lifetime it wasn't him.
Check it out on the web ISBN 0 85059 053 1.

I personally used his book over a 30 year period when building my own Victory and I don't think that I would have finished it as easily or as accurately as I did without it.It is a real shame that it will not be available to future modelers.And no I am not selling mine.Thanks Noel!

Hi Guys! I know it has been awhile since I posted anything to this thread.
I have been very busy getting my aircraft dioramas ready for donation to the Canada Aviation Museum.The new part of the construction is to be finished in Feb of next year but my dioramas will need to be ready to go well before that ,as they will be doing the finishing for public presentation.The fourth and last large 1/16th scale aircraft diorama will only be finished in a year or two after that, then I plan to concentrate upon finishing the running rigging part of the Victory thread and then bread box size shadow boxes of various subjects.I am very anxious to really get into shadow boxes but my other commitments must come first.
Cheers! John.