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1:400 Model News & Airport Model Blog

Xīn lóng International - Trees & Backgrounds

5/3/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Realistic looking backgrounds have always been an issue for my airport models. The terminal area is now 8ft wide, which means I can't pilfer backgrounds from elsewhere easily, plus they have to fit into a depth of field that matches the terminal. Once you have a background then it gets really tricky as you have to print it. After many years of thinking about this I have however finally solved the problem. Here's how...
Picture
Terminal 1 sits in front of the new finished background of trees, buildings and hills
I get my backgrounds from the excellent Airport Diorama Designs site. They can be printed using my work colour printer, however covering many pieces of paper there are two problems:
  1. how to hide the unsightly joins between the many pages
  2. how to stick them onto anything without bubbling, marks etc

For my older smaller Dowse National diorama I had gotten the background professionally printed but even then it wasn't perfect. It turned out too dark once it had been finished. It was also expensive and now I needed a background twice as long. The answer was to make my own.
Picture
Picture
Inspiration for this approach was taken from a post I read by Gavin Miller whose exceptional Perth diorama is an exemplar to us all. The first thing to do was get some backing wood. In fact I was able to get this offcut from the local hardware store for nothing. It was just a big piece of ply. Then I bought some blue and white spray paints and got down to business. Two coats of blue created a sky and using the white at varying distances I was able to create clouds.
Picture
The next step was apply the middle distance and that is where the purchased background came in. It is easy to hide the paper join lines when there are buildings and foliage so instead of using the whole background I cut out the parts without sky on them. Even better where the outline was too complex to cut around I could use the different colour of the sky vs my new sky to create the appearance of hills in the distance.
Picture
Fake hills form a background feature where cutting around the buildings was painful!
Best of all the construction of this entire background took only an afternoon as the spray paint dries very quickly. Also I was able to reuse buildings to make the background as long as I needed.
Picture
I had managed to pickup some small modelling trees from a collectables fair in Auckland for only a few bucks. Now I just needed something to attach them to. A look around the hardware store came across these green scouring pads. I fugured they were perfect as I could cut them into strips, stick the trees into them and they already look like grass. I cut some strips and worked out which trees to go where.
Picture
These then slotted between the board and background for an instant treeline.
Picture
Add in the background and I think it looks great. It was so easy in the end I can't believe I hadn't tried this years ago. As you can see though I do need to extend one end a bit.
This has been one of the most successful parts of my work so far. No more mucking about with images after they're taken to get rid of paper join lines for me. Plus the whole diorama now joins together as one whole.
Picture
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    I'm Richard Stretton, an aviation enthusiast and major collector of 400 scale model aircraft. This blog discusses ongoing events in the world of 400 scale.


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  • Home
    • About
    • Links
  • My Models
    • The Hangar
    • My Collection >
      • US Trunk Fleets >
        • My American Airlines Fleet
        • My Braniff Intnl Fleet
        • My Continental Fleet
        • My Delta Air Lines Fleet
        • My Eastern Air Lines Fleet
        • My National Airlines Fleet
        • My Northeast / Capital Fleet
        • My Northwest Airlines Fleet
        • My Pan Am Fleet
        • My TWA Fleet
        • My United Airlines Fleet
        • My Western Airlines Fleet
      • US Local Service Fleets >
        • My Frontier Airlines Fleet
        • My Hughes Airwest Fleet
        • My Ozark Airlines Fleet
        • My Republic Airlines Fleet
        • My Texas Int Fleet
      • US Other Fleets >
        • My Alaska Airlines Fleet
        • My Hawaiian / Aloha Fleet
        • My PSA Fleet
        • My Flying Tigers Fleet
        • My World Airways Fleet
      • UK Fleets >
        • My British Airways Fleet
      • Canadian Fleets
      • China Fleets >
        • My Cathay Pacific Fleet
      • Russian Fleet >
        • Russian Fleet Video
      • Fleet Videos >
        • US Trunk Airlines
    • Model Airports >
      • Dowse National Airport >
        • Gallery 1: Chicago c.1966
        • Gallery 2: Miami c.1970
      • Wright Field Municipal >
        • Wright Field Video Tour
      • Xin Long International
      • Imogenia Intnl 1/600 Scale
  • AV History
    • Airline History Blog
    • Airline Development >
      • CANADA >
        • Canadian Mainline
        • Canadian Charters & LCCs
        • Canadian Regionals
      • CHINA >
        • Part 1: China's Airlines Industry Blossoms 1984-2002
        • Part 2: The Big Six in the 1990s
        • The Big Three
        • Hainan Airlines Group
        • Other Chinese Airlines
      • MEXICO >
        • 1988-2005: Competition arrives
        • 2005-2014: Low cost in Mexico
        • Mexican Airline Genealogy
        • Mexicana Livery Tails
      • RUSSIA >
        • Aeroflot Group
        • S7 Airlines & AiRUnion
        • Other Russian Airlines
      • SOUTH AFRICA
      • UNITED KINGDOM >
        • BA Genealogy Pt1
        • BA Genealogy Pt2
        • BA Genealogy Pt3
        • BUIA & BUAF Genealogies
        • UK Charter Airlines Pt1
        • UK Charter Airlines Pt2
        • BEA Liveries 1946-1974
        • BOAC Liveries 1939-1974
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        • Deregulation Startups 2
        • Trunk Airline Livery Changes 1959-1980
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      • Dallas Love Field
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