Well, it’s finally all done. Only 5 months of off-and-on work so not too bad. Now I just need to figure out shipping via an art shipping firm and pray that it arrives safely. Here’s the final images:

The diorama is in it’s final stages and almost complete. All I have left to do is to make some little crates like the ones Luke was floating around with the force right before he threw a hissy regarding the X-Wing being too heavy. Once the figures were completed I moved onto the seaweed for the X-Wing. The seaweed was made using stretched cotton ball pieces just like my “spanish moss” recipe. The difference was that I used a darker green-black and mixed more dark soil fine turf into the mix. This was strethed out and set into place with a soft brush loaded with Future.

Once the weeds were done I used 5-minute epoxy to mount the X-Wing onto the clear drip-supports and added the final drips using stretched clear sprue and clear acrylic gel medium.

I also finished the lighting using a flickering LED tealight candle that I converted to use wall-power instead of a battery.

Here’s the pics:

This week I’ve been working on the ground litter and finishing up the base water. The ripples on the large body of water are made by applying Liquitex Acrylic Gloss Gel Medium with my fingers to create the peaks and ripples. Finer ripples under the X-Wing were made with a piece of coarse car-sponge. The smaller pools need cleaned up a bit as they’ve got ground litter sprinkled on them I can’t clean that though till it dries.

The ground leaf litter is a combination of Woodland Scenics fine “soil” and “earth” tone turf and crusted basel and autumn oak leaves. I never thought I’d be able to use that WS turf stuff for anything as with most application I’ve seen it looks like bad railroad scenery. However I think I’ve got it looking pretty good thanks to some great builds at the MIG forums.

To apply the litter I first soaked the area with “wet water” which is just tap water with a few drops of dish soap. This lets the later glue app flow nicely. I first sprinkled the surface with the dark green soil tone followed up by the dead-leaf earth tone. Then over that I sprinkled a fine layer of the crushed leaves. Then I used an eye dropper to soak the area with a mixture of Future Floor acrylic, water and Prepared Matte Medium. A ratio of 1/3 of each liquid is fine. Once this dries the area still looks wet, but is set pretty solid.

Once I’m done with the ground clutter I’ll blow off the excess, clean off the water pools, then coat the water with a few more layers of Future to really gloss them up and seal them.

Just wanted to post up a few images of the progress so far. I’ve finished the muck-moss and have been pouring water the past few days. The resin water stinks BAD so it’s bee slow going since I can’t be in my workshop much with the chemical stench and loud vents on.  With my final pour I had some bubble issues. So pissed, but I’m fixing them and should be able to salvage it and make a silk purse from this sows ear. I have quite a few solutions in mind, but so far, many layers of FFA are doing the trick. After some airbrushed much and ripples it should be perfect.

Screeshot from the DVD. The ripples should hide all!

Progress has been slow, but that’s probably because I’ve been putting a few steps off until I figured them out.  Now that I have it’s time to move forward to start finishing this up. First I gave the trees an additional spraying of very thin olive green then some clear gloss future to make it all look moist.

The first part I had issues with was creating a type of “Spanish Moss” growth from the trees and vines to really give it that swamp look. Also I figured that whatever I used for the spanish moss could also be used for the “seaweed” on the X-Wing. I got a lot of suggestions from forum members at Mig anf FFF and based on those I decided on the following solution using cotton balls and fine turf.

Basically pull some cotton from the ball and stretch/pull it into a long flat piece. Then add a few drops of whatever color cheap-acrylic paint. In this case I mixed up a pale green. Then using your finger, roll and dab the paint evenly over the cotton. A few drops will do. You want the cotton colored, but not soaked. In fact the dryer the better it’ll hold its stringy shape. Next take a few colors of fine turf from Woodland Scenics and sprinkle over it. Work in with your finger. Now just drape and shape over the branches. Secure with a drop or 2 of prepared matte medium then if that washes out some paint add a few more paint drops. Let dry and it’s done. You can pull and shape more when dry. I may still do that but overall I like the look. The spanish moss can also be applied on the roots and rocks for added “slime”. Also, here’s the completed R2-D2.

I also started prepping for the water pour. First I airbrushed the water pools with a brown-green swampy muck color. This will be the base and given enough muck in the water may or may not show through. Better safe than sorry though. My water pours will be thin and have varying degrees of paint mixed in to color the water. The final water won’t be this green I think. I also coated the paint and anywhere I plan to pour water with a coat of Future in order to seal the paint in and protect it from the water pour leaking out.

Once cured I added the heat-stretched acrylic rod pieces that will serve to suspend the X-Wing in the air. There are 5 main support pieces, but there will be many thin drip streams in the end so the X-Wing will appear to float with water dripping from it. Once all the water is poured then a layer of leaf litter will be applied to the bare ground.