JamesOLeary
Master at Arms
The following photos are of a diorama I built in 1996 when I was recovering from some injuries when I was in the Marine Corps. I donated it to the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas several years ago. It was on display until recently when that wing of the museum started to get rennovated. Unfortunately, in the set of pictures that I had found, I didn't have a picture of the entire diorama.
This diorama depicts a patrol moving uphill in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. The figures are mostly conversions of DML/Dragon figure parts from the Marine Recon, 1st CAV, and Green Beret figure kits. There are also some heads, helmets, and gear from Verlinden as well as some arms from the parts box. A couple heads are from Hornet. This diorama also represented my first attempts at the lightweight rucksack frames. Unfortunately, at this point of my modeling "career", I wasn't too comfortable with scratchbuilding anything, so I used the lightweight rucksack bag that was in one of the Verlinden kits that contained rucksacks and stuff. What sucked was that I had to buy several of these kits just to get the one type of rucksack that I needed. Despite that, I think they turned out well for what my skills were at the time and what I had for materials.
The figures in this diorama are: a pointman, the slackman/compass man, a rifleman, an M79 grenadier, and another rifleman. The pictures were taken to look like the photographer was part of the partol. Remember, they were taken back in 1996 as regular print photos. They were scanned several years ago and were placed on a disk, so they are not the best pictures in the world. But they are good enough to see how my modeling has progressed over the years and should show newer modelers that if they stick with it, they will improve their skills with every project they work on because as time goes on, you will pick up on new techniques from reading model magazines, reading threads in forums like this one, interacting with other modelers at shows, and through trial and error on your own.
This diorama depicts a patrol moving uphill in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. The figures are mostly conversions of DML/Dragon figure parts from the Marine Recon, 1st CAV, and Green Beret figure kits. There are also some heads, helmets, and gear from Verlinden as well as some arms from the parts box. A couple heads are from Hornet. This diorama also represented my first attempts at the lightweight rucksack frames. Unfortunately, at this point of my modeling "career", I wasn't too comfortable with scratchbuilding anything, so I used the lightweight rucksack bag that was in one of the Verlinden kits that contained rucksacks and stuff. What sucked was that I had to buy several of these kits just to get the one type of rucksack that I needed. Despite that, I think they turned out well for what my skills were at the time and what I had for materials.
The figures in this diorama are: a pointman, the slackman/compass man, a rifleman, an M79 grenadier, and another rifleman. The pictures were taken to look like the photographer was part of the partol. Remember, they were taken back in 1996 as regular print photos. They were scanned several years ago and were placed on a disk, so they are not the best pictures in the world. But they are good enough to see how my modeling has progressed over the years and should show newer modelers that if they stick with it, they will improve their skills with every project they work on because as time goes on, you will pick up on new techniques from reading model magazines, reading threads in forums like this one, interacting with other modelers at shows, and through trial and error on your own.
