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:

Yesterday I sculpted Luke pretty much from scratch using Super Sculpy, an extra plastic 1/48 head (I added the hair) and hands. Yoda looks a tad short, but he’ll be sitting up on some roots. I may remove the feet and add a little more to his cloak at the base to make him a few milimeters taller.

Here’s the tiny 1/48 scale Yoda sculpted with Super Sculpey/Sculpy III. I need to do a little touch-up like scraping the folds of his cloak cleaner and adding more nose definition, but he’s otherwise ready to go.  While he may look rough, remember that you’re seeing a larger than life digital image. Once painted and sat onto the base he’ll look just fine. Next-up: Luke.

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.