Vegetation: A work in progress.

Vegetation by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

Dissatisfied with my large, supposedly modular attempt at creating a background water fall, I disposed of it and decided to go back to smaller background scenery that could be stored more easily and moved about o the diorama table with with greater ease.  The object of course remains to create a jungle like background for K-Troop adventures into Dinosaur Valley.   I was finally able to get to a dollar store yesterday amd I picked up about $40.00 in plastic vines and trees to create the vegation i needed and spent a good portion of last evening taking them apart, cutting them down, and gluing them into holes i drilled into two smaller pieces of foam and plaster rock I had created back in December. You can judge the results for yourself.  The black background cloth is just a temporary placeholder for a sky blue seamless roll or a hard backdrop in the same color.

When ti comes to jungle, there is no such thing as too much vegetation.

vegetation_2 by Gary Menten, on Flickr

Vegetation_3 by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

Nice work... Very Authentic looking. I'd consider some browns and debris to add to it, as most jungle, or for that matter any vegetation is hardly all green and pristine, unless it's at a Greenhouse. IMHO Anyway.

As soon as a I find some brown plastic plants....I promise to use them.

Erika by Gary Menten, on Flickr

Not being obtuse, nor critical, but seems they do make weathering paints? ;-)

SixthShooter wrote:

Not being obtuse, nor critical, but seems they do make weathering paints? ;-)

Painting this kind of soft plastic is never very easy nor successful. The paint always ends up flaking off.

Good Point, and at the end of the day, it doesn't take away from your awesome work. You may not have noticed, but I tend to be a little 'detail oriented' ...

Best

Detail orientation is fine, especially when it comes to indoor dioramas that don't change much. If you look at Dal's he applies this to the AMMO Arms and to Jake's study, but his Dinosaur Valley setups are much simpler, and changeable and the parts need to be handled a lot. That's the aim here. Don't overthink things. Keep it simple, and keep things in such a way as you can change the parts around so as to make it look like you are not in the same place all the time. I'm not going for a competitions class dio here, but experimenting with my own version of Dal's Dinosaur Valley concept in order to be able to set up quick and easy backgrounds for the joint comics we collaborate on.

Nice work Gary! it looks awesome! The best thing of course (for me anyway) is re-arranging it all to make different scenes. Sorry to read that the waterfall never worked out, I was really looking forward to seeing that. I really like what you have made so far, it looks fantastic!

Blondeactionman wrote:

Nice work Gary! it looks awesome! The best thing of course (for me anyway) is re-arranging it all to make different scenes. Sorry to read that the waterfall never worked out, I was really looking forward to seeing that. I really like what you have made so far, it looks fantastic!

It looks a lot less fantastic in wide angle shots right now, believe me. The next important step is getting some sky blue background in there.

Fantastic work Gary! It's inspiring how you and Dal have created such amazing outdoor spaces indoors. I love it, it is a shame that you're not going ahead with the waterfall. But this is a TREAT!
Now you need some Dinosaurs!🦕🦖

I don't think that the plants really need touching up, as I love that vibrant look for Dinosaur Valley. But if you were to do that, I'd say sharpies in varying colpurs would work. I only say this because I grubbed up some fake plant for a school project as a teenager with a brown and black sharpie..

Saradactyl by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

nice Raptor all you need is a T-Rex and you got Banger Island

Everyone knows the Germans discovered a portal in to the Hollow Earth in the Antarctic back in the 1930s!

Looks like your Dinosaur Valley is taking shape! Love the bright colors in the pics!

I have not been able to find any plastic plants at dollar stores around here!

Gather up some coarse sawdust, dye it a couple of browns/tans, lay it out in the sun on paper to dry and use it for jungle floor mulch. Plants in jungles are always dropping stuff and it settles into a deepish mulch.
I came up with this trick whilst constructing a very large HO railway layout for a friend and Woodland Scenics were so damned expensive. 
Worked a treat and it will do wonders for the realism of a jungle too.

OR if you have access to a dryish wooded area, (even a garden) go out and gather some finer stuff, crunch it down even further and use that.
I have a large box of fine plastic plants and hold them up and give them a quick waft with some brown spray paint. 
Just a random waft mind you, and it sticks well, and takes away that uniform bright green plastic look.

LeStryge wrote:

Gather up some coarse sawdust, dye it a couple of browns/tans, lay it out in the sun on paper to dry and use it for jungle floor mulch. Plants in jungles are always dropping stuff and it settles into a deepish mulch.
I came up with this trick whilst constructing a very large HO railway layout for a friend and Woodland Scenics were so damned expensive. 
Worked a treat and it will do wonders for the realism of a jungle too.

OR if you have access to a dryish wooded area, (even a garden) go out and gather some finer stuff, crunch it down even further and use that.
I have a large box of fine plastic plants and hold them up and give them a quick waft with some brown spray paint. 
Just a random waft mind you, and it sticks well, and takes away that uniform bright green plastic look.

The dead leaves and stuff I know how to make, having been in model railroading for decades. I think the issue that was being tossed about was more about dead or dying plant leaves still on the vine or plant. Jungles are full of those too. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do for my ground cover. An important thing to remember is that I'm not out to win modeling awards here, just trying to create something that passes reasonably for an extension of Dal's Dinosaur Valley. Bear in mind that in many, perhaps most of the photos, we don't see the bottom of the scene or the feet, so super=detailing the jungle floor could easily be a waste of time.

Fair enough....

Page_1 (5) by Gary Menten, on Flickr

Actually, a thorough search of the internet, including Wikipedia, FactCheck.Org and Isawitontheinternet.com reveals no support whatsoever for the above theory, though certain fundamentalist religious groups have claimed that Dinosaur Valley proves that dinosaurs and man did walk the Earth at the same time.  

All members please feel free to post your own (preferably cracked) theories about how Germany discovered Dinosaur Valley decades ago, (or did they?)

Kimono Troop Command wrote:

Saradactyl by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

Uh oh! I didn't mean to offend the very accurate Mr raptor!

Of course you didn't. He's overly sensitive. He has Tyrannosaurus envy.

Considering a lot of dinosaurs were plant eaters, I doubt they would
eat brown leaves.

And who knows what kind of seasons they had before the ice age?

TNshooter wrote:

Considering a lot of dinosaurs were plant eaters, I doubt they would
eat brown leaves.  

If they were that picky about what they'd eat they'd have become extinct......oh that's right, they did!
Who knew it was a finicky diet that did 'em all in?
And there was the scientific community telling us it was an asteroid!

That's the problem with vegetarian diets. The plants all die...you die.

The trouble with vegetarian diets is the complete inability to stop repeatedly telling everyone else you are on one.....