[StephenLawson]

Originally Posted by JohnReid

'...About Key ingredients in a diorama, on another level the first thing I look for in a great diorama is,is it believable? Does it look natural? When I taught decorative bird carving ,the hardest thing to get across to my students was to avoid lining things up in a row,having things equi-distant or 90deg to each other.In fact, even today when I am working on a piece, I willoften have to go back and screw things up a bit to make it look more natural.What may look perfectly natural has sometimes taken hours of thought,placing and replacing things until they look just right. Only man plants trees in rows.It is a human tendency that I find that I have to be constantly aware of when I am working.It cannot look too staged,too square,too correct ,to be believable.In life things get dirty,dusty,worn and a good diorama must reflect this. What do you think,Stephen? Cheers! John.

While being realistic is important I refer to the impressionistic arts as an alternative. I refer to my dio of The Last Meeting of IPMS Ragwing. Diorama Probables and improbables each have their places. Shep Payne referred to an artistic license to show several events in series taking place at the same time to get a whole picture. Maintenance, painting, repairing and re-arming all in the same scene. Though some or all of these elements tend to give a build or the piece balance you have tpo ask yourself what is too much? Then again I have done a dio with 722 HO & 1/72 scale figures on a large base...see Projeckt Riesenflugzeug II (da Staaken Diorama.)

For me relative scale says to me, no matter what story I tell if it is all believable due to the relative scale of the pieces and their relationship to the other pieces in the dio - it will work. This means struts not being too thick, figures being as detailed as the objects they serve in the diorama. It also addresses trailing edges being super thin, mold seams being erased. Rather than being believeable for me "plausable" may be a more accurate term. I saw a great dio once though terribly off topic, It was of a break through into a Pharoah's ancient Tomb in Egypt. The diggers and scientists found the mummy building models at a table. It was most humorous and though not beliveable in the realm reality, it did give us all a chuckle. My treatment of 'Ragwing" was a more serious comment about the dedication (AMS) that some club members have (must point the finger at myself here) about modeling and its activities.

Originally Posted by Mark_Miller

John
Well said
and this "contrived randomnes" is a key factor in digital work as well.
Perhaps the most obvious example is composing aircraft in flight. You have to place them in such a way that the compositional elements flow the way you want. But, it has to appear semi-random. you can't just line them all up or it will look false. and you need to watch the shapes you are making to make sure you don't get any man-made looking patterns. You want to hide the artist's hand as much as you possibly can. And it is a lot harder than it looks - but that is as it should be, because it should look like it "just happened" .... But, IMHO, there is little difference between physical and virtual model making. essentialy, we are doing the same thing just the tools are different

Points taken! Life can be pretty random. You have to admire people that take nothing and build something. Me I use sheet amd molded plastic. The difference between one model built by modeler A and the same kit built by Modeler B is what are you willing to put of your time and effort into the build?