German View of the Invasion. This is opposite the view that most visitors to the diorama will see. We wrapped up work on the D-Day diorama today. Keith arrived today with the shipping crate in his van. He had about 30 figures to install according to the narrative he has designed for the diorama. Most of the other work was done earlier in the week.  Jeff Hammer and John Drye stopped by Wednesday night to work on punch list items. JD installed most of the German infantry and remaining weapons. Jeff worked on scenic details such as barbed wire and log piles. The fences reall ..read more

We just wrapped up a three day marathon work session on the D-Day Diorama. Whew! Jeff paints figures while Mark and Charlie drop off more painted figures On Sunday Mark Franke, Jeff Hammer, John Drye and Tom Karstens joined me for the start of the worksession. Mark worked on the boats, Tom and Jeff worked on figures. I continued work on the WN62 fighting positions.  Later that day Mark and Charlie Fastoso stopped by to drop off the 160 figures that his gaming group painted.  John Drye came by a bit later and finished painting all the German figures. They are in 10mm scal ..read more

  You knew I had to find a way to add a railroad to the diorama. But, it's not gratuitous! There was a 60cm Decauville railroad at Omaha Beach.  The Germans were using it to move construction materials along the various work sites. The prototype photos show the remnants of the railroad tracks after the Allies had secured the beach. To model the railroad, first I cut some pieces of foam to make the roadbed sections that extend from the shingle to the work sites. I used Durham's water putty to fill in the gaps. Once those was dry, I painted the road bed to match the scenery. Then ..read more

I'm back from Florida and chugging away on the D-Day diorama. While in Florida I painted about 70 infantry, and two DD Sherman tanks that my brother printed. I also printed another LCM on his printer.  When I got home, I printed a couple of German anti tank guns for the bunkers and a French APX turret for a German Tobruk. I made the bunkers with layers of laser cut MDF.   They are not to any particular scale. Keith coined a good phrase, "optical scale." We are selectively compressing the German positions to look good from the normal viewers perspective. Thus, this is not an exact ..read more

Some of the figures in the busts category. In the front row my Castiga (l) got silver, Medusa (Center) and Demophilus (right with blue and white crest) got gold. Rob and I attended the JAXCON 2024 IPMS meet today in Jacksonville, FL. This is the third year I have attended this meet. It is one of the premier IPMS meets in Florida. The meet was a great success despite some rainy weather. Gil Hodges runs the event and does a great job. I enjoyed meeting many of the people from previous years. Everyone is very friendly and low key.  This airplane model caught my eye. Ve ..read more

  L-R. Jeff Hammer, John Kephart, John Drye, Keith Rocco, Mark Franke, Tom Karstens The crew was reinforced today with two more workers for another successful painting party.  John Kephart continued with land infantry. John Drye loaded the boat people into LCVPs in accordance with Keith's design. Mark Franke painted and applied decals on two  Sherman Deep Water Fording tanks, Tom Karstens began painting another group of land infantry. Jeff Hammer worked on weathering the steel hedgehogs.  Jeff is new to our group. He has experience with painting figures, mostly Sc ..read more

It was time to hit the beach on the D-Day diorama.  The first step was to shape the surf zone and the ocean with my Rotex power sander. I tried to create a gentle slope to the beach and broad undulating wave-like shapes in the water.  I also used the Rolex to shape the fascia to depict the same swells. The Rolex is very aggressive and it left some gouges in the soft foam. So, I added a skim coat of lightweight spackle to fill  those.  I applied a coat of white gesso and then dark blue paint to the water area to seal it and get a feel for how it looked. I did some light s ..read more

The crew We had a very successful painting party today to prepare models and figures for the Rocco D-Day diorama. The crew included John Drye, Mark Franke, John Kephart, Tom Karsten and myself. JD and Tom worked on the “boat people” aka soldiers.  They finished all of them- about 150 total figures including a few I did.  We filled up one boat with 32 infantry and 3 crew. We think it looks pretty good.  The plan is to proceed with 4 more boats full of ”boat people.”  John K. worked on the US infantry on land. He will have about 50 done in a week. Some of those ar ..read more

This is the view the US soldiers would have had at the eastern end of Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer. I 'm making progress  Keith Rocco's diorama. This diorama is also situated at Colleville-sur-Mer like my 75mm diorama, but this one focuses on the beach landing in 1/100th scale. The overall diorama will be 5.5 feet wide by 6 feet deep. The ground scale is about 1/500, while the vertical scale in slightly exaggerated at 1/393.  The models in the  foreground will be 1/100th scale. There are a few structures on the land side. They might be a smaller than 1/100th sca ..read more

A few months ago, before we started the dioramas for Keith Rocco,  I began  work on a diorama set on June 6, 1944, D-Day. I was inspired to try this project by some very nice WW2 figures from Speria Miniatures from Sweden.  I have used several of their figures for my 1/48th scale Civil War layout. However, this project would be in a larger scale, 75mm or 1/24. I originally planned just a small 3-figure vignette  centered around a soldier dragging a wounded buddy. However, I decided to expand the scope of the model when I saw a painting by Keith Rocco of soldiers advancin ..read more