I’m on a booknook/diorama kick lately. I made this for a friend’s birthday. The outer box and apartment walls are 1/8" baltic birch. Zim’s base, the fences and the outer box details are made of 1/16" ply and then most of the trim is made of medium weight chipboard. The gnomes were 3D printed. The flanges, satellite and puffer fish are sculpted. The puffer fish are made from foam clay and faux half pearls. The flanges and most of the satellite are made from Apoxie Sculpt.
Here’s the inspiration photo:
The box is lit with 8 micro leds and powered by 2 AA batteries.
Selection of progress shots. I have learned that I need to get better at making a solid base for all the “pretty” stuff to sit on because even though I prototyped this a couple of times I still ended up doing way too much forcing and finessing to get everything to more or less go where it was supposed to.
Thanks for showing your process in photos. I’d only seen finished products before. It helps people like me understand how it is done. I’m sure your friend loved it.
I always appreciate it when other people show their process so I try to be diligent about documenting mine. If you are interested in book nooks and are on Facebook, there is a great group called BookScapes Book Nook Dioramas. People in that group are very encouraging and share how they do things very freely.
Funny you should ask. I deliberately tracked my time on this one because I tend to underestimate how long projects take. 49 hours and 22 minutes. That’s from conception, through designing the digital files and through to the finish. However, a friend had kindly provided me with the files she uses to make her outer boxes. I just modified the front frame and added the detail pieces.
That’s actually a good bit lower than I might have guessed. Does that include passive time like laser cut/engrave, 3D printing, and drying times for paints and sculpted parts?
Somewhat. I didn’t really include the passive laser cutting/engraving time or the 3D print time. Generally when I’m 3D printing or paint is drying, I will be doing another piece of the project. The laser cutting/engraving was maybe 40 minutes all told. The gnomes took about 2 hours to print (I have a Mars Pro 2). So I mainly only timed when I was actually physically working. I spread the 49 hours over about 2.5 weeks.
