Taking pictures of your action figures can be addictive.
From setting up the lights and backgrounds to choosing characters and poses, action figure photography can be a rich and immersive pastime. And while you can get some great shots on your dining room table, sooner or later you’re going to crave new backgrounds to photograph your toys against. Companies like Marvel Select and DST have produced some terrific bases for their action figures, and Playmates delivered a decent full-size Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles playset, but large-scale environments for our action figures remain hard to come by. That’s where diorama-building comes in.
di·o·ram·a:
noun – a partially three-dimensional, full-size replica or scale model of a landscape typically showing historical events, nature scenes or city-scapes, for purposes of education or entertainment.
While a diorama can be made of anything, most hobbyists work with readily available materials and gear. Basic tools are a utility blade for long, deep cuts, and an X-acto-type blade for detailed, precision work. A ruler is essential for measuring dimensions, while a t-square ensures clean, straight cuts. A variable-temperature hot-glue gun is important for getting all the bits to stick, And let’s not forget pencils for marking our work out, ballpoint pens for rendering, and a variety of brushes and acrylic paints.
Your materials will vary depending on what you’re going for. Cardboard, papier-mâché, and wire mesh can all be used to great effect, but these days many dio-builders prefer to use extruded polystyrene insulation foam board or it’s sister, craft-store foam-core. I’ve recently fallen under foam’s spell and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s inexpensive, easy to work with and is surprisingly versatile. From medieval mountain terrains to sleek starships, if you can imagine it you can probably build it with foam.
Fwoosher snowman did a terrific job in illustrating the process of working with foamcore here. He shows how quickly and easily you can build a compact dio that’s inexpensive, versatile and fun to photograph. These are the Big Three key points I try and hit in all of my builds. It’s the compact part that gets away from me sometimes.
Believe it or not, the ACME Chemical Supply warehouse here originally began life as a single brick wall. To get the widest variety of shots possible I went for a two-story build. To add some variety to the piece I decided to build a corner. Once that was done, adding an additional wall on the opposite side seemed a good way to balance the piece out. Looking at that, I realized it wouldn’t be too much extra work to build two additional walls to give the set some depth. To give the dio some added stability I fastened two pieces of foam to the insides of the top of the walls, by default creating rooftops. I discovered that by adding the rooftops I had created two large interior spaces along the side of the diorama. Of course I had to do something with those, and before I knew it what was meant to be something basic turned into a monstrosity that covered my entire workstation!
This diorama is built entirely of foam board, with some inexpensive additions. The fire escape was built from an old hamster cage. The boards on the windows are basic wooden craft sticks stained with inexpensive acrylic paint. The downspout is leftover wooden dowel rod from a previous project. The “dirt” was created using a mix of topsoil and play sand and accented with various kitchen spices and potpourri. The asphalt is a mixture of black craft sand and Elmers glue, while the stone path was created by crushing up inexpensive kitty litter. To fill it out I used various wrestler accessories from the fodder box.
Because I hadn’t anticipated the interior areas of the diorama, I didn’t actually cut the “windows” out. To save myself a nervous breakdown trying to alter an already-finished dio, I opted to make the rooms windowless. It actually adds to the ambiance, giving those spaces a grim and claustrophobic quality that’s compelling to work with.
The “room” on the right-hand side of the warehouse ended up being larger, so I opted to do a few things inside I hadn’t done on the outside. I built a collapsed section of floor which allowed for some interesting perspective shots and gave climbing heroes like Spider-Man and Black Widow space to jump around. I also added a raised bay with a railing for characters to walk on or jump over.
The room on the left-hand side was much narrower than the room on the right. I didn’t want to replicate what I had just done, so I went with a more versatile “open” space. I’ll probably add something more to this in the future — it’s just a matter of waiting for inspiration to strike.
Originally I was planning on calling this the AJAX Chemical Supply warehouse, but for whatever reason I wrote ACME in it’s place. It’s little things like this that tell you, “step away from the diorama with your hands up!” You’re done, buddy. Take your pictures and scram!
So, how did I do? Well, in spite of wildly overshooting my intended goal of a “small scale” diorama I seem to have hit the Big Three.
1. It was inexpensive to build. Between the foam, paints and random action figure accessories I spent less than $40. Granted, I already owned a glue gun, measuring and cutting tools and brushed, so if you’re coming at it from a cold start expect to pay a little more. That said, still cheap for what you end up with.
2. It’s versatile. From the rooftops to the hidden rooms, there’s a lot of space for action. The fire escape and stairways provide multi-level play and display and the open area in the front allows for vehicles or large-scale action figure brawls.
3. It’s fun to photograph. I’ve had a blast taking pictures for this article: I grew up around old warehouses and abandoned buildings, so I had a lot of reference. Revisiting the area through the lens of a camera is a provocative process.
Well, there you have it. I hope that this article inspires those of you on the fence to try your hand at dio-building. The investment is minimal but the rewards can be great. If anything, it saves you from getting into trouble the next time you leave your action figures all over the dining-room table!
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