How to Make a Podrace Diorama

[Music] two years ago I made my first original Pod racer it used to have some lights but I had to borrow the filaments for another project the following year I kit bashed a pod rer from a tractor model kit as you can see the lights still work this year I decided to add a third pod rer to my collection and put it in a race with the first two this one isn't going to be kit bashed but seeing that it is 25 years since the release of The Phantom Menace I thought it would be appropriate to throw Anakin's Pod racer into the mix and think what you will about the rest of the movie but the pod racing scene is awesome I began breaking all of the runners out of the plastic bags and once everything had been released from the plastic bags I threw them back in the box to release the pieces from the runners I found that using this time tested method of just shaking the runners out of existence is far easier than snipping all the pieces one by one to be honest I've been spoiled by snap fit kits this mod racer was more finicky and timec consuming than kits of a similar size and number of pieces that you get from Bondi but even so it went together pretty quick I decided to have the fins more open and fanned out on one of the engines and closed more together on the other as that's what I saw in the movie while the Pod racer was banking during the race and here's a little demonstration of a bank in case you're not sure what I was talking about I completed the Assembly of the cockpit a little bit out of order so I had a hard time sticking the upper body piece on I did eventually get it using some brute force and bending things just to the point of breaking without breaking them and the last thing to do was to glue the cables from the cockpit to the engines after the engines and the cockpit were all together the Pod rer was done and it was ready to be painted I took it outside and I primed it with a metallic silver spray paint after making sure that the spray paint was completely dry I was about to do some masking but I thought hey no guts no glory and I decided to do some free soloing with the airbrush I loaded up the airbrush with a nice mustard yellow and I applied it to the fins and to the hatches on the sides of the engines there was a bit of overspray as I was expecting but some isopropyl alcohol and a Q-tip got rid of most of that I painted in the other Standalone details gave the engines a wash with a black wash sprayed over the entire thing and removed the wash from all the raised details using more Q-tips next I broke out the water decals that came with the kit and I applied those where they were needed Bondi kits are easier to put together but amt's water decals were far easier to apply I've never had this nice of an experience with water decals so whatever AMT is doing great job keep it up after painting up Annie Pod racer was done and ready to join the other team all three of these Racers now have color but the big one needs lights again Anakin needs lights for the first time and this third one needs to be removed from its base so that all three can be installed into one big base so that's what we're going to do now I broke out all the necessary LED noodles and then I jumped over to Anakin's Pod racer and began the process of drilling a pathway from the standoffs to the spot where the plasma binders will be connected I bent a little brass rod to fish the wire through the new holes that I had created once the wires were through I soldered them to the filaments before soldering the other ends of the filament together I added another wire to act as a third strand to be able to braid the filaments into a braid I then tested my circuit and was happy to see that it was working and I finally reimbursed my original Pod racer with its own lights and finally I disconnected the tractor from its power source removed it from its base and all three pod racers were ready to go to Power all of the lights on this diarama I'm going to be using one of these conwi Castle boards Center to me by David from terrain Tronics it runs off of a 5vt micro USB and can be adjusted to the right brightness which is pretty awesome I grabbed a 12 in X 16in gesso board which I drilled a hole through to get a power cable to the driver once I knew that was going to work I added some leads to the driver and the electronics were basically ready to go I wasn't sure how long this diarama was going to need to be to fit all three of the pod racers but in the end I needed to add two two additional boards for everything to fit I glued them together end to end using some wood glue and some clamps after the glue had dried I threw down a sheet of XPS foam and glued it to the wooden base using some foam safe super glue and then I broke out my mask before sanding the edges smooth next it was time to build up the terrain I began with some profile boards from Woodland scenix I wanted the diarama to be at a slight angle to give it a little bit more life and visual interest I also wanted to help justify why the fins on Anakin's engines were fanned out differently once the profile boards had been glued down with hot glue I added some small wooden planks which will be the main supports holding the standoffs that the pod racers will be propped up on for the standoffs I'm using some styrene tubes that I cut about to the right length once all the holes had been drilled and the standoffs put in place I temporarily stuck the pod racers into their wooden planks to make sure I had the spacing right I then applied more hot glue to keep the planks in place permanently and I glued the other end of the planks into the channels and the profile boards to add a nice bit of sturdiness once I knew the positioning of the pod racers was set I added some foam supports between the wooden planks to be another thing for the coming layers to be able to stand on after carving more of an organic look the back of the profile board it was time to add some shaper sheets after cutting crinkling and gluing the shaper sheets over the entirety of the hillside it was time to add some rigidity using a layer of plaster apply directly to the sheets as well as a layer of plaster cloth to hide the seams Between the Sheets Woodland sells a special shaper sheet plaster that remains nice and thin and has a much longer pot life than most other plasters allowing it to be brushed over the shaper sheets which have a fthy side that absorbs the plaster and then hardens very nicely once that layer of plaster had been brushed on I cut out and slapped on the previously mentioned plaster cloths I found that watting up the cloths after they've been soaking for a bit disperses the plaster more evenly and helps hide the fabric mesh texture that they come with I then blend them into the terrain using my gloved hands one final thing that I did was add a layer of sculpt mold I added this where I wanted a little bit more volume and then spread it out to get a more consistent texture across the whole hill side once that had all been smeared and smoothed out I set it aside to dry and I clean the plaster powder off of my hobby mat when all the plaster was dry I brought it back to my workstation and I cut a hole in the bag to create a pathway for the wires I don't remember leaving all of that that stuff in there but it's a good reminder to always double check before moving on to the next step I wanted to sand down the front and sides just one more time it'll help make finishing those sides a lot easier later for the base coat of this big rock I mixed up an oil wash using mineral spirits an oil paints and covered the whole diarama liberally and while I paint this I'd like to give a huge shout out to all of my patrons for a little bit of color I dabbed on some spots of cadmium yellow red but everything was Blended together with the brown wash which was made from burnt umber for this paint job I tried something new and I only thought about it at this point so I'm not sure if it was worth doing or not what I was trying to go for was some implied motion on the surface of the diarama beneath the pod racers so after all the oil wash had dried I airbrushed on a bunch of blurry horizontal Sandy lines I think the effect would have been better achieved using a perfectly flat surface rather than the textured Hillside also probably could have stopped a couple Shades Darker but I think it looks nice once the pod racers are in place I've been trying to clean up the sides of my diaramas even better recently using some wooden veneer which is something I've seen from night shift and other professional scale modelers it's easy to apply and it cleans up really nice I did buy the cheap stuff though so that I could continue to paint the sides with black 4.0 and not feel too bad about it and speaking of black 4.0 that's what I did next the last thing to do was to put all of the pod racers into their positions and make sure that the wires running from each Pod racer were connected all together properly meaning all of the positives were with the positives and all the negatives were with the negatives and finally I tipped it on its side so that I could reach the driver I connected all of the wires to their appropriate spots on the driver and after that I called it good before my final shots please take a moment to appreciate all of the beautiful pod racers that my patrons built for the monthly art challenge [Music] [Applause] [Music] what a great collection of pod racers thank you to all of my patrons who participated [Music] [Music] that is it for this video thank you all so much for watching hope you enjoyed huge shout out as always to my patrons you guys are the best have an awesome week everyone I'll see you next time

Channel: Boylei Hobby Time

Views: 130,901

Keywords: Scratch Build, Do it yourself, How to make, Make it yourself, Diorama, Miniatures, Minis, Painting, Wargames, Warhammer, Scale Model, Realistic Terrain, Terrain tip, Tips, Tips and Tricks, Build, Custom, Customized, Customization, Star Wars, Wild West, Wild Imaginary West, Colorado, Rockies, Hobby Time, Hobbies, DIY crafts

Id: 8TBFKIXbOQQ

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024