First time taking part in this so hopefully I can keep up with you more experienced chaps.
For Christmas I picked up a mantic random box. I always liked their sci fi range but never really invested in it. In the box were some cool space rat men and while putting one together I found that the ogre rats were posed really badly. It looked like this guy was falling over so my only solution was to build a diorama around him. Then I saw this group build happening and I thought why not take part since I was going to be doing a swamp themed mini diorama?
Then it hit me... Who even needs a giant rat with drills for arms? The 25% miniature limitation created massive problems for my plans. I simply couldn't do what I had hoped to do, it would have been closet to 50% miniatures and almost entirely built around them rather than the diorama being the central focus. As such I scrapped all the rat men and went back to the drawing board. That's when it hit me, why not do a swamp based on the Souls series? Who doesn't hate Blight town or the Valley of defilement? They're ill advised places to visit even without techno monstrosities trying to drill you a new exit hole.
I want to do a 2 or 3 tier diorama. A rotten wooden structure built up of whatever wood was thrown into the swamp made by creatures who barely pass for intelligent any more. Using different types of wood to get different thicknesses of planks laid over each other. This will be built upon a mount of filth, everything that would wash up in a swamp from bodies to old pottery to an unlucky guy in a cage (if I can figure out how to make a suitable cage). It's the sewer of the sewer pretty much. I look forward to cutting up sprue to make bricks and maybe I'll even be a bit cheeky and use some textured plasticard on the back drop. Got to push the boat out you know?
I have plant roots and lichen to build up the idea that the civilization that used to be there is now taken over by the swamp. All manner of life breaking up the stone work as they consume everything.
I did still want to include a couple of miniatures to set the mood off but I want them to be more mood setting than action hero. With this in mind I stumbled across Heresy miniatures after a bit of googling last night. They do an excellent set of Ghouls (
http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_11&products_id=28) and a nice "Hellmite" (
http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_12&products_id=383) that will paint up well like some giant tick monster just engorged on his last victim.
I'm thinking this will be a challenging build but hopefully something I can manage. At the moment I don't have access to my usual work space due to a problem I'm awaiting surgery on. That's one of the reasons I picked to work on a wooden diorama since it's an easy material to work with when you don't have a desk to cut things perfectly. Foam, wood and plaster being the primary focus should work pretty well.
When the build officially starts I'll upload a couple of pictures I'm taking inspiration from and maybe a few of my doodles for little trinkets I want to sculpt out of miliput for the ghouls to be scavenging around.