If you don’t know Uncle Nightshift, it’s time you check him out. He’s a very talented modeler and a great teacher to boot. I watched his Barn diorama how-to video and was immediately inspired to build a diorama with insulation foam too. I’d never done this, but Nightshift made it seem super easy. This project has been a ton of fun…and has set me down a rabbit hole of learning as much as I can about insulation foam projects.

What started as a desire to simply bang out a quick and dirty build solely as a test extended into a 1+ year long build with all kinds of fun new techniques. Here’s what’s ended up on the diorama:

• Foam base, building, and brickwork
• Resin accessories
• Hand broken styrene wine bottle
• 3-D printed roof tiles
• 3-D printed figure, cat, pigeons
• Groundwork based on materials from the garden + static grass
• Detailed Hobbyboss GMC kit

Creating the diorama concept!

This title gives the impression that I had a well thought out concept once I decided to turn a test project into an actual diorama. False! At some point I came across a funny inside joke that only me and my kid find amusing… and my kid was only slightly amused the first time. But hey, I think it’s hilarious.

The diorama is a farmer unloading hay out of his truck while his cat looks on.

 

The cat is modeled after our cat, Marcello. He tends to “stand guard” outside my office, or really anywhere when I’m doing tasks. He’s done this since he was little and my kid and I have joked, in a goofy voice, that he says “Hey buddy, whatcha doin?” So in typical Dad Joke fashion, the diorama naturally became “Hay buddy, whatcha doin?”

(Meet Marcello)

Cutting the basic barn shape

As mentioned, this project started off as nothing more than a learning exercise. I didn’t expect to have it turn out decent enough to keep going. And learning exercise it was. I was effectively working to replicate Night Shift’s barn design. It’s easy for me to learn when I have a clear target with direct instructions on how to get to that target. Many pieces of foam were lost in this pursuit.

Huge product shout out to the Proxxon hot wire cutter table. It’s relatively inexpensive and wonderfully useful. Get the foot pedal to turn it on and off and you’ll be cutting shapes until the cows come home. Come foam? <Dad joke>

I sketched out my dimension eyeballing it and reading up on how tall barn doors are. I drew the front view out on paper. I was making some weird intersecting angle cuts and that’s part of what took so much practice. It was surprisingly hard to get the angles all correct. I cut it in two pieces, the barn and the attached shed. You can see in the last picture below that I didn’t like the thickness, so I glued an extra backer piece. In retrospect, I still ended up too thin with the final product. Live and learn.

 

Note: I knew I was going to add a backing of wood veneer to the barn backside, so the fact that the cuts weren’t perfect didn’t really matter.

The nice thing about the foam is that it’s all going to be hidden away. When I realized that my roof line wasn’t tall enough, I just cut some additional pieces and glued them in place. Wham bam.

Speaking of gluing… I watched about 75 YouTube videos of people offering suggestions of the best foam glue to use. I didn’t like any of them. You can see here I was testing normal wood glue and Gorilla Glue. I used a number of others. As I pointed out in another post, Aleene’s Tacky Glue is by far the best solution I’ve found. Just make sure to remember to shave off the plastic coating (where the printing on the foam is) so that you’re gluing foam to foam.

Bricks and wood

Once I had the basic shapes cut, the next steps was to prep for the facade work. First and foremost, the bricks. Now, at time of this project and based on Nightshift’s tutorial, individual bricks was the task. Meaning, I had to cut and glue about 45,334,786 bricks onto the barn foam base. (Fun side note: A few days after I finished this project, Nightshift released a new video where he talked about carving bricks instead of cutting and gluing them individually. SMH)

First step was to cut some thin slices. Then cut those slices down into brick shaped “straws”. Then to cut the straws down into invidiual bricks. Last step was to throw them all into a container with some rocks and bolts and shake like crazy to get some texture. In retrospect, a few rubs with a ball of alumium foil would have done the same in half the time. Again, things have progressed since then 😀

   

Once all the bricks were cut, I then glued the wood beams onto the facade to mark out doors, a window, and accents/supports. This was all glued down with basic wood glue. Works great. At this point, the two parts of the facade were kept separated. I didn’t glue them together until all the brick work was done to make it easier to handle. And then the tedious work of gluing down every. single. brick began. Using wood glue and every bit of my patience, I attached all the brick work. It turned out pretty good, but I’ll likely never do this again and opt for carving bricks into a single piece of foam. Much faster, easier, and accurate.

 

Gluing the two halves together

With the brick work out of the way, it was time to attached the barn to the shed. Toothpicks as pins between the two pieces and a healthy amount of wood glue was all needed. As you can see in the pictures, I taped it together and also taped some wood down to the workbench to help keep it pinched together.

Grout and blackening

I sprayed some acrylic black (remember, foam + enamels = no bueno) in areas that wood planks would eventually cover. This was to help block out the “there’s foam behind here” instead of a deep dark void of a real building.

Grout was made from thin plaster that was brushed over the bricks and then wiped clean with a wet paper towel. Pretty straight foward, really.

Building the roof

Nightshift kindly provided his Patreon supporters (are you on his Patreon??) an STL file for the spanish tiles. This was the moment that finally pushed me over the edge to get my own 3D printer. And the first project I worked on with the printer was these tiles. They’re kinda amazing… they print with supports on one end. You just run your fingers across them after you cure them and they pop right off. But adding 40 bazillion spanish tiles was going to be a chore.

(You can see some penguins for my friend Bob Bethea and some chickens that make it into this diorama)

First I laid down some thick cardboard/cardstock to provide a nice flat surface to glue down to. I drew straight lines to use as a guide. Then you start at the bottom edge and start adding layers on top of the previous layer. Layer after layer.

I started on the shed side and as I was working my way over to the barn portion, I realized I’d better put the wood planks in place first, before I tried to lay the spanish tiles “over” the planks. (More on the wood plank work in a bit)

layers and layers and layers. The hardest part of this entire project was trying to keep these damn layers straight. I was not good at this, but it looked OK in the end.

NOTE: These thin resin tiles are very fragile. Print plenty of extras. But also, be careful when you are working with the structure from here on out. I broke a number of edges.

For the final touch, I added three pieces of lead foil at the roof peak. This will get painted in oxidized green copper later.

Adding the wood and finishing the facade

Using basswood “beams” I built a framework behind the areas where wood planks would go. This would allow me to “float and mount” the planks. Then using basswood planks, I put a ton of strips in place, for the front facade and all the doors. For the doors, I hacked away at the bottoms to show damage and decay. I also added a simple frame to the window.

 

 

Door hardware

To finish up the facade work, I added hinges made of Verlinden lead foil with “bolt heads” made of punched lead foil. These went on all the doors.

Then I made latch bolts for the man door and the barn doors. These were pretty simple:

• Bolt: Brass rod bent
• Latch: very small pieces of brass tube
• Mounts: strips of lead foil with punched dots of lead foil for small bolt heads

Barn construction is complete!

Time to mount the barn on the base

I’d already figured out the size of the base, but I needed to play around with the final dimensions of the overall diorama. This meant playing with the vehicle and the barn, but also to start making some texture. I wanted this to be a rough, albeit generic European farm.

Let me back up a step…

Creating the diorama concept

Well look at that… by this point I started thinking “well damn, this has come together nicely! I could make a real diorama out of it!” But I didn’t want to slow progress/momentum by switching gears to build a vehicle, so I looked at my shelf queens. I walked away from a nicely detailed US WWII GMC 2 1/2 ton truck 5 years ago, and I thought “hey, I’ll just dust that thing off!”. My interest in post-war civilian vehicle conversions has taken over my interests lately so an idea quickly popped to mind: A European farmer using a beat up surplus truck on his farm. So I started painting the truck. Once I’d gotten pretty far along with the painting, I realized that this truck just didn’t fit the concept. So I ordered a closed cab, steel bed Hobby Boss GMC from Lionheart Hobby… then got back to the diorama base.

In the meantime, I used the shelf queen to help me figure out general dimensions and concept.

The base was terraformed with a combination of a long blade craft knife and a handheld hot wire cutter.

Barn painting begins! 

I still hadn’t attached the barn to the base yet. I wanted to get the painting done while it was easier to handle. Primed in black to allow for deeper shadowing.

Trying to remember now what order I did things in, but there were several big tasks:

• Airbrushing random gray tones on the wood
• Airbrushing the spanish tiles in random reddish orange tones
• Painting the brick work

First, here’s the airbrush tones:

 

For the wood, I came back with a brush and the acrylics and refined the tones overall. I also painted them in a way that differentiated each plank from each other.

I did this same thing with the spanish tiles.

The bricks were originally painted in a variety of red brick shades. In this process, I lost the white mortar lines so I came back in with those after the bricks were painted.

   

Once all those paints were done, I painted the hinges and latches in rusty tones.

 

And then painted the roof peak copper with a base rusty/coppery tone, added hairspray, then painted the green copper oxided color. And then used the hairspray chipping method to chip the heck out of it with water.

The tiles got a coat of hairspray and then a small amount of buff overspray. This wasn’t a full coat of paint, just enough to add some grime that I could hairspray chip away. Then came a random, minimal application of moss to the roof.

Look how far we’ve come!

Adding the wood edging

Now it’s time to attach the barn to the base and add the wood edging. First came the edging – I used thumbtacks and tape to get everything in place. I used a decently thick basewood so it wouldn’t warp with the “wet” glue. Once everything was in place, I used wood filler on the gaps and on the line between the back of the barn and the edging. I tried to get it as smooth as possible. It took a number of coats of putty and sanding and re-priming to get that back seam to go away. If I’d known about Bondo for Wood at this point, I’d totally have used that.

 

Adding the light fixture

Once the base was in order, I added a 3D printed light fixture and the wiring. The mount arm for the lamp was made from a bend piece of brass rod. The wall mount the arm goes into is two punched pieces of styrene and two bolts punched out of thinner styrene. The wiring is lead wire and lead foil. The junction box is just a chunk of styrene.

    

 

Adding surface texture

Once the barn and edging were in place, I wanted to create some more terraforming…mainly up against the building (as those dirt had accumulated over the years) and in the roadway (making it feel like tire ruts). So I scored the hell out of the foam base, poked some holes, and then layered on some plaster to give the ground form I wanted.

Creating the stones

It was almost time to lay down the actual ground work, but I needed to create the big stones I wanted to have in front of the barn doors. These were pretty simple:

• Cut a thin sheet of foam
• Tear pieces of the sheet to create rough edges
• Clean up the edges to look realistic
• Texture with aluminum foil

These will get embedded in the wet groundwork.

Laying the groundwork

This was a pretty basic process:

• Spray alcohol across the foam base (to help break the surface tension of the white glue)
• Lots of diluted white glue across the surface
• Sprinkle sifted dirt onto the white glue
• Embed the elements like the stones that will be glued down in this process

After a bit of drying time, I pushed in some tire tracks and the barrel just to form an impression.

 

Painting the groundwork

I knew I’d be covering much of the dirt with grass, but I still wanted to lay down some basic tones first. So I airbrushed some buff tones around the base, with extra attention to the wheel ruts.

I also painted the stones a stoney color. Duh.

Next comes the grass!

Perhaps one of my favorite parts of diorama building is static grass. There’s just something awesome and amazing about how it works. I laid down some random patterns of white glue, got out the static grass applicator, and bam! Grass.

I also added a few bits of extra texture in the form of small rocks and bigger grain dirt just to add some variety.

Adding the additional base details

The fun really begins now! First, let’s add a small fence in the back corner. I used the Cricut Maker 3 to cut out the pickets for the fence and then beat up the bottom of the pickets to represent decay. Some enamel washes stained the fence. Turned out great, and it was one of those last minute additions that really helped bring together the whole scene.

Next up was adding vines to the walls. I didn’t want to fully cover the walls in a bunch of vines, just a hint of vines. I used pieces of roots from the backyard for the vines and punched out leaves from real leaves from the yard. A little touch of white glue and viola! the leaves are stuck.

Oh, and you’ll also notice some green grime at the base of the building. Just some green washes but they really help connect the building and the groundwork.

  

More accessories! 

I had a brass bucket in the extras boxes and I pulled it out for this diorama. I wanted the corner to look all junked up. So first I primed in light gray then stippled various gray and white tones to replicated the galvanized look. Then I covered all this with some rust markings.

I also pulled out a Master Box bicycle and painted it up in civilian colors.

 

One detail of this project that I’m particularly proud of is the broken bottle. I took a Miniart green bottle, chopped off the cap, and then drilled out the tiny thing. This left a thin lip around the hole and I used some tweezers to bend/break the edges to replicate broken glass. Adding a label decal and bam… broken bottle.

The base is done!

Printing and painting the figure

d

 

Constructing the GMC

Overall, the HobbyBoss GMC with steel bed was a pretty straightforward build. I added a number of tweaks, but nothing super significant. Here’s a few of the things I worked on…

Added brake lines to the wheels

Removed one of the rear .. bumpers? Not sure what this PE part is called. But I removed one of them and put empty bold holes in the frame. Civilian service was hard on these trucks, right? (No picture on this one, sorry)

Thinned the engine panel louvers. This was done mainly with a scribing tool.

Replaced the wheels with resin ones

Replaced the front bumper with a PE version. I also reworked the front end to remove the winch.

The kit had posts that stuck in the metal bed sides.. but I wanted the empty holes instead. But I had to fill in the missing side.

 

I significantly reworked the bed… although, funny story: basically none of this work would be seen. I recently saw a restored GMC and was struck by how sagging the metal bed was around the bed frame underneath. I recreated this by scraping out the panels with a ceramic scraping tool. Once the basic shape was in place, I used a burr bit in a dremel style tool and just bounced it across the bed. I did this same technique on the vertical walls too. When everything was done, I textured it with some thinned tamiya putty to bring everything together. I also added weld beads down the seams.

I noticed in my reference photos that the beds had a wooden spacer between the bed and the frame. Naturally I had to include that! I also added styrene U-bolts that kept the bed on the truck.

          

Spare tire

This is civilian service, so I wanted to rough up the vehicle. Not so much that viewers would wonder how it was still running, but enough to look “lived in”. One way to do that was to only put one of the two spare tires on the spare rack. And for the one I did include, I made it a blown out tire. This was done by scraping out the inside of the tire until it was thin enough to push out.

Cab bench seat

Since this was a civilian truck that had been in service a while, I figured the leather seats might have taken such a beating that they were replaced with a much cheaper cloth finish. Plus, the seat foam might have worn right through to the springs. So I filled the gap between the two seat panels and applied some blue+yellow putty to the seat and sculpted some folds. Then I took the back and scraped out a hole in the back. Using some twisted wire, I made a seat spring set. Then more blue+yellow putty on top of that.

I painted the bottom like rough canvas and the top like a blanket that had been used to hide the beat up seat. I added some duct tape to the bottom and top.

Cab interior

With the seat done, I turned to painting the interior. This was painted olive drab green, like the truck would have originally been painted like. A little bit of rusting and weathering to dirty it up and it was pretty much done.

Assembling and painting the rest of the truck 

Moving to painting the truck, I based coated the entire thing in rusty brown tones using a “cloudy” airbrushing approach. This would all be quasi-hidden under my final paint colors, but this rusty base would be the rust peaking out of the chips in the paint.

NOTE: Funny thing I learned… when you are trying to paint blue on to top of orange tones, the chipping makes the rust nearly glow it’s so vivid. I don’t know what happened, but I added an extra step of putting down two thick varnish coats between the rust base and the chipping layers that came on top of them. That helped, as did making the rusty base colors much darker than initial intended.

I worked on the blue tones for the cab and gas tank first. The chipping turned out pretty great.

Then I applied the white and chipped it on the bed.

Then I started adding rust streaks with enamel AK washes. The front bumper got the same treatment.

To further push the civilian surplus look, I made one door a different color to imply that it had been taken from another vehicle.

One cool new tip I learned was how to properly mask the windshield. Rather than trying to cut a single piece of tape as a mask, I instead used multiple pieces and shapes to build up a mask. It worked like a charm.

It’s coming together!

I added pins on the wheels to mount the truck to the base. Here it is trying to do a flying act.

Next was the hay. Remember how I said most of the work on the floor of the truck bed wouldn’t be seen? Yeah, I wanted the truck to be full of hay and that meant covering most of the bed. To get the hay effect, I carved a piece of foam and painted it straw yellow. Then I cut a ton of small pieces of thread sealant hemp flax and coated the foam block in diluted white glue. Sprinkling on the hemp and then adding more with drops of the diluted glue created a great look. I also scattered this “hay” around the truck bed and on the ground.

The characters

Both the farmer, chickens, pigeons, and the cat were 3D printed from files downloaded online.

The final product!

Really happy with how this one turned out. It was a long project that prompted me to learn how to work with insulation foam, buy and use a 3D printer, and really think about my storytelling diorama desires. And it took home a medal at the 2023 Model Fiesta event!