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An experienced diorama builder might be able to help me here...but all opinions are welcome of course.
To give the illusion that my dropship (in this case, a Corvus Blackstar) is hovering above a rocky peak, I plan to have a couple of Genestealers on the ground reaching up to it, digging their claws into the hull.
Due to the complexity of the scene, once I glue it all in place it will be a nightmare trying to un-do things, so I'd like to get it right first time. Can anyone tell me if the weight of a large model like this would simply be too much for a few Genestealer arms, and following on from that, am I better to go with plastic glue or superglue?
The Genestealers' feet are going to be fixed into the diorama base with metal pins, so that part of the equation is sound. The claw-to-hull contact should be fine too, as they're penetrating the ship and I can reinforce that on the interior. I'm thinking more of their shoulder joints ripping out once the dropship is on top of them (fyi, the 'Stealers aren't directly underneath, more to the side, so I have a centre-of-gravity issue in the mix).
And yes, the ship has 4 marines on board, plus 2 or three genestealers crawling over the exterior. So fairly heavy...
Wondering why I started this project...but I'm going to see it through if it kills me!
Plastic glue works by melting the plastic and then the active ingredients evaporates off, leaving behind plastic that reforms and hardens. Once a bond is formed it should be as good and as strong as the plastic on its own.
So plastic glue would form the strongest hold, esp on very small areas like this.
However as Flinty points out, genestealers holding up a ship is going to be a challenge. Hiding some brass rods would be ideal. If its a dropship one way to do it would be if its got any downward facing thrusters. Use some wire wool and paint to create a thrust and smoke effect and then hide a brass rod in that.
However as Flinty points out, genestealers holding up a ship is going to be a challenge. Hiding some brass rods would be ideal. If its a dropship one way to do it would be if its got any downward facing thrusters. Use some wire wool and paint to create a thrust and smoke effect and then hide a brass rod in that.
Thanks guys yeah I suspected I'd have to use metal rods somehow. It'll be a challenge to hide them well but I'll post the finished pictures once it's done.
re: the thrusters, it's an option I wanted to avoid purely because I don't like smoke coming from a thruster unless it's damaged (which was also a big consideration!). Just shooting myself in the foot repeatedly on this one
There's no way a couple of genestealers will hold up a hefty chunk like that, unless you put one on each corner, but that will just look like they're carrying it. If you have the skills youd be best off making a big packed column of nids world war z style to give it a strong base to sit on.
chromedog wrote: That isn't a "strength of plastic glue" issue, it's a structural strength of 3 gribblies holding up a honking larger and heavier piece of plastic.
You're going to need a bigger bug (or some "Hidden" support structure).
I think it's a bit of both. The 'stealers will be rigged into the terrain with wires, that bit's not a problem. Their hands will also be attached to the dropship securely (hidden wires there too through the hull). The glue part of the equation is their shoulder joints. I'll have to glue their arms in, so it's a question of whether the glue in the shoulder joints will take the weight, or whether they'll simply pop out. I've found I can twist a glued arm off a model "fairly" easily, though rotational force is obviously different from weight. I guess I'll just have to do it and put myself out of my misery.
I did see a diorama building guy mention he always used superglue no matter what, hence my confusion.
Muzzlehatch wrote: To give the illusion that my dropship (in this case, a Corvus Blackstar) is hovering above a rocky peak, I plan to have a couple of Genestealers on the ground reaching up to it, digging their claws into the hull.
I'm with everyone not believing in the magic strength if a few plastic arms holding things in the air.
I also really get that you don't want "wool thrusters" to hide the wire and the recommended version of using one wire and tunnelling it through the Genestealers is your best option. The only idea I can contributed to that is to maybe have two piles of Genestealers. One as expected, that's grabbing onto the ship and the focus of attentnion but also a second that failed and found no way to threaten the ship (falling off again?) but it still connects the dropship to the ground for a second connection point. That way you'd have two points instead of one just to on the safe side.
You could also try to make the pile of Genestealers thicker, like in this video:
A more chunky pile where you can hide multiple connection points and wires, maybe even with an hidden stand inside of it. It might also work to have this bigger pile make contact with the gunship at a place where they are not the focus of attention but need to crawl over to where the action/attention is. That way the main pile (that draws the attention) might actually not need a wire (and have a real air gap) and convey that illusion while the "support pile" is in the background. But people will probably still guess where the support it. It'd just not be an obvious guess but might be more of a "hey that's clever!" guess and it might need a whole rethinking of your diorama's composition.
A completely different approach that might work if the components are really light is to work with magnets on the "pile" and "dropship" side. That being said, I don't know about the physics of it and how strong the magnets would need to be to replicate the floating effect, like this:
Just instead of tethers you might need to work with both: Some magnets that repel each other (to float) and attract each other that pull (as tethers) at different places. But I really don't know how viable that would be at miniature diorama scale.