"Shopping in Long Thanh" remake first vignette COMPLETED

[moon puppy]

I ended up making this sign with Excel

That's awesome. all the publishing stuff out there and Excel still seems far easier to get something done.

 

[JamesOLeary]

That's awesome. all the publishing stuff out there and Excel still seems far easier to get something done.

Crazy, isn't it?

 

[JamesOLeary]

Today's progress is a pair of cats that I painted to look like two of my cats. I like to include representations of my cats in my dioramas whenever I can. This diorama is a perfect place to include cats. The one laying down is my cat Recon who passed away on 17 October 2020. The other is my smallest and feistiest cat Itty Bitty Baby Kitty who always seems to be getting into everything. I thought she would be the perfect cat to be checking out what one of the Soldiers is carrying in the bag.

 

[moon puppy]

Dude, that's just freakin awesome.

 

[JamesOLeary]

Damn, it has been a month since I made any noteworthy progress. About half an hour ago I finished painting one of the American figures with the exception of some light weathering that I will do prior to attaching this guy to the base.

This guy is carrying a bag of stuff he has bought as presents for the folks back him. The bag was bought at one of the shops as well and adds some color to the figure. Also adding some color is the privately purchased ERDL camo boonie hat on his head. If you are familiar with the ERDL camo pattern and look closely at the shapes of the squiggles and blobs you will notice they match shapes and colors of the real pattern (it helps that I have the actual items in my collection to copy from). I think he turned out fairly well. Next figure to paint will be the guy carrying a tour jacket over his shoulder ( hopefully it doesn't take a month to get to him - I plan on starting him tomorrow)

 

[moon puppy]

That is one square jawed dude. Looks great James

 

[Steve Ski]

Good to see you've been busy, James, excellent fig work, once again!

 

[JamesOLeary]

That is one square jawed dude. Looks great James

Thanks. He is one of the hard core NCOs.

 

[JamesOLeary]

Good to see you've been busy, James, excellent fig work, once again!

Thanks, Ski! Hopefully I can get the momentum going so I can get this diorama done so I can start on another.

 

[Rhino]

These figures are most excellent.
I wonder what would happen if you used a black & white photo of an interesting subject and did the vignette in shades of black & white as well.

 

[JamesOLeary]

These figures are most excellent.
I wonder what would happen if you used a black & white photo of an interesting subject and did the vignette in shades of black & white as well.

Hopefully I wouldn't jack it up. That would be interesting to try out one of these days...and I do have the Scale 75 Black and White paint set...

 

[JamesOLeary]

I just completed the figure of 1LT Brice Barnes with the exception of the light weathering that I will apply before mounting him to the base. He is buying baguettes to go along with some venison sausage his dad had sent him. The Vietnamese money is from ETA Diorama Accessories.

 

[moon puppy]

 

[Duke Maddog]

Very nice! Wouldn't he use MPC's though? Or did he exchange them already? After all, the Vietnamese hated those MPC's...

 

[JamesOLeary]

Very nice! Wouldn't he use MPC's though? Or did he exchange them already? After all, the Vietnamese hated those MPC's...

Being that our Soldiers were paid in MPC's you would think that would be the case, but MPC's were mainly to be used for utilizing AAFES approved vendors. Depending on where one was stationed or was operating in Vietnam, some vendors and businesses outside of US bases would accept MPC if they had a way of exchanging it when new versions would be introduced, which non-US personnel were not supposed to be able to do that, so for the most part if a Soldier wanted to buy anything on the Vietnamese economy they were supposed to exchange their MPC for Piasters at Finance. (My dad was a finance clerk in Vietnam and I remember him talking about this.) This did not always occur, so the purpose of MPC being able to deter the black market from thriving did not always result in the intended effect. In the case of 1LT Barnes' purchase of the bread, he actually did use Piasters. 2d BN 47th IN (Mech) was one of the units my dad was responsible for servicing so there is a good chance that 1LT Barnes got the Piasters from my dad. It is a small military world

 

[JamesOLeary]

I have been refining the composition and the positioning of figures for this diorama since I can try to get it completed soon. As I am gathering, painting, and making the accessories that will be placed in this diorama, I have found that there just won't be enough space to include all of the figures from the original plan and that a couple had to be repositioned in order to make this scene work. This is what the new layout looks like and I think it is actually better than my original plan. I guess you can look at how I plan and build my dioramas and vignettes kind of like how military operations are planned and are conducted. I go through the MDMP to come up with a plan, I make my preparations and establish the logistics before executing. During the execution phase I may come across things that cause me to make adjustments to the original plane and upon implementing those changes the mission is completed successfully. Or I am just pretty scatterbrained and start my dioramas without really having any idea how they will turn out until I am done with them. I think it may be a bit of both.

 

[moon puppy]

 

[JamesOLeary]

Here are some photos of the display counter for the bakery with the accessories installed. I made it out of sheet styrene (both white and clear) and some L shaped styrene strips. The various types of bread are made of Magic Sculpt. The plates of fillings are from Reality in Scale. Tomorrow I will add some photo etched utensils.

 

[JamesOLeary]

Got quite a bit done today in preparation for the completion of this diorama. Instead of mounting the structure to the wooden base and trying to add figures and accessories then, I decided to add the figures and accessories that are going to be on the porch first because if I were to mount the structure to the wooden base first I would lose the flexibility of moving it around while placing items and figures. First I placed the cooler and placed one of the cats on top of that. Next I placed the woman with bread in her hands, then the woman interacting with 1LT Barnes, the display case, utensils, and finally the customer. The last two photos show the layout with the figures that will be added when I do the groundwork.

 

[JamesOLeary]

With the exception of the title plate, this part of the "Shopping in Long Thanh" series is complete. COL Brice Barnes who is the central character in this scene really likes it, so if he likes it, that means I must have done a decent job depicting this event. His liking it means more than any award from a show ever would.



This was a pretty fun project and there are a few more parts to the series that will be completed in the future. Thanks for looking.

Cheers,
James