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It is our ambitious Goal to realise the 1/72 scale Cröbern-Diorama as realistic as possible. From miniatures, to buildings, to landscape we try to cover everything with historical accuracy. We won´t even make an exeption for bushes and trees, which usually would be portrait in a levelled and therefore distorted scale.
We are two Guys, befriended by our Hobby. Dirk Tietten from Berlin and me, Wolfgang Meyer from Eschweiler, a smaller Town in the vicinity of Cologne. You may ask yourself how such an ambitious Project would be planed and realised over distance?
Well, the Internet surely helps…and we have a policy of sharing tasks that seems to work!
We both have our focal points within the project. Dirk is a great artist! He has the ability to paint insane quantities of miniatures on a very sophisticated level in no time! I on the other hand do all the research about the historical details and construct all those houses and farm buildings. I´m also responsible for shaping and moulding the underground of the model into the rural environment of the battlefield.
As it comes to the research about the miniatures and all their details we share the work as it comes in handy.
The more work you put into a diorama of this proportion, the more you come to realise how gargantuan a 1:1 conversion of the scenery comes to be. Normally such vast models of structure like farms, estates and churches would diminish the pictured fgures and put them out of proportion…but if you put whole regiments in there, everything shifts back into scale. The eye of the beholder gets an even more intense impression of realism.
The Village of „Croebern“ alone will measure about 10 square metre (about 16,74 square yards). Back in the day “Croebern” was a village with stately estates and farms. Thanks to our high quality picture material (see Research) we were able to reconstruct its dimensions pretty accurately.
The whole thing will be based onto separate underground segments. Still, each segment will be larger than anything we know from similar projects.
For the village the underground plate will extent 1,20 metre to 1,40 metre (1.3 to 1.5 yards). Carrier material will be a 9mm birch multiplex plank. Several layers of compact polystyrene foam, each in different strength (purchasable in any DIY-Store) are fitted onto the plate to suit it for modelling the groundstructure. Then, after the polystyrene is carved into form and moulded with spackle (putty), it is painted with dispensioncolour. The putty is the actual medium for the figuration of the countryside.
All the buildings are reconstructed after old photography and build from scratch entirely. The houses consist of 2mm grey cardboard, selfcuring dough and customized accessories. The accessories go from customshop cardboard or balsa-wood laserwork for windows, doors and shingles to teddybearfur for straw mulched rooftops. The construction of the builings is laid out in detail on the DVD “Cröbern-1813”.
( model-house / Wolfgang Meyer/ example )
( model-house / Wolfgang Meyer / example )
( model-house / Wolfgang Meyer / example )
This method of modelling houses has been used before by myself for the Markkleeberg-Diorama. The Diorama was a Co-Production of “Circle of friends - Napoleonic history”. It´s now on regular exhibition in the historic museum “Gate of Markkleberg” in Markkleeberg near Leipzig .
( model-house / Wolfgang Meyer / example )
( model-house / Wolfgang Meyer / example )
(to be continued ......)
