Mudpup's Freshwater Stream Diorama

[MudpupWaterdog]

Hi all,

I was inspired by some of @bmathison1972's beautiful displays to make a similar diorama of my own. I wanted to make a freshwater stream bank big enough to show off a bunch of freshwater life at once. Here are some photos of the result:







Some close-ups on different areas of the stream:











Right now, it's loosely a US-East Coast stream. I know the American cockroach and the red-eared slider belong a little further south, the mussel is saltwater and not freshwater, two of the fish are Japanese, and the salmon/bass would usually inhabit different spaces, but I combined them just to fill out the display for now.

Contents:
Kaiyodo Animatales Choco Q Series 2 Giant Water Bug
Kaiyodo ChocoQ Japanese Crayfish
Kaiyodo Animatales Choco Q Series 3 Great Diving Beetle
Safari Life Cycle - Frog (eggs, tadpole, adult custom painted as a Green Frog)
Safari Life Cycle - Salmon (eggs, parr)
Safari Life Cycle - Earth Worm (juvenile worm, adult worm)
Generic Chinese Life Cycle - Dragonfly (two larval stages)
Generic Chinese Life Cycle - Snail (juvenile snail, adult snail - modeled on Bullyland?)
Safari Great Lakes Toob Dragonfly
Safari Insects Toob Cockroach (custom painted as American Cockroach)
Club Earth Great Raft Spider
AAA Medium Mussel
Colorata Kajika to represent an American sculpin
Colorata Ugui to represent some small sucker or dace
Safari Ltd Largemouth Bass
Safari Ltd Red Eared Slider

Alternate inhabitants include:
Safari Bullhead Catfish
Safari Alliator Snapping Turtle
Safari Softshell Turtle

It can also scale up to hold figures of a smaller scale, ie filling it with Toy Fish Factory fish or the Safari Amazon/Great Lakes/Alligator Toobs.

I'm working on another, I'll post that one soon.

[bmathison1972]

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That is absolutely amazing. And I must confess, I purchased my dioramas. That you made this from scratch is incredible!

The Yujin Insects of Japan are all in the 1:1 scale if you decide to incorporate more of them (tomorrow's Museum post will be one ).

Those generic snail is a knockoff of Bullyland.

By the way, not to nit-pick, but the snail is terrestrial. Most earthworms are also terrestrial but I think there are some fully aquatic species.

[Gwangi]

That's fantastic! I absolutely love dioramas. I swear, if I could go back in time I would focus on making a career as a diorama designer or museum curator, something of that nature. This is inspiring, well done!

The terrestrial snail is admittedly jarring to see in there, but freshwater earthworms do in fact exist. I remember collecting some in my aquatic ecology course.

[JimoAi]

The safari salmon set looks to be sockeye salmon. The adult resembles a female sockeye

[bmathison1972]

this reminds me, I need to go to a pet/aquarium supply store to buy more 'props' for photographing 1:1 scale (and larger) animals

[MudpupWaterdog]

Thanks everyone! And thanks for nitpicking, I do know the snail is terrestrial but haven't gotten a good freshwater snail yet. Still though, I'll move the snail up to the rocks above the water or something so it fits better. The aquatic earthworm is based on info from J. Reese Voshell, Jr.'s A Guide to North American Freshwater Invertebrates of North America. I'd love to pick up more 1:1 insects to populate the diorama. And I completely agree @Gwangi, I would also have loved to be a diorama or aquarium designer. It just seems like such a cool job and a great medium to work in. For now, I'll just have to keep working with insulation foam at home.

Here are some process shots in case anyone else wants some DIY inspiration:

Foam stacked


Cut with a hot wire


Sand glued on


Painting




Added the waterline - a spare piece of Lexan I had lying around

[bmathison1972]

what is the medium in the second pic? Is it clay? Does it have to be baked?

EDIT: I might have to commission you to make me a couple 

[Gwangi]

Thanks for showing the steps. As much as I like the idea of making dioramas, I've never done it, aside from shoebox dioramas for school. I wouldn't even know where to start!

[NSD Bashe]

That is a brilliant work of art; also it's particularly cool seeing the actual steps in the design of it

[MudpupWaterdog]

what is the medium in the second pic? Is it clay? Does it have to be baked?

EDIT: I might have to commission you to make me a couple 

That's just the same insulation foam, but shaped with a hot wire foam cutter. I was still learning how it worked so it doesn't look as natural as I'd hoped, but gluing the sand on fixed those weird swooping lines.

I arranged the foam in steps, then carved chunks out with the wire. I put down two layers of sand and white Elmer's glue for texture, then sealed that with varnish. I used dark and medium brown spray paints to color the whole thing, and then I went over it with a brush to darken hollows and lighten ridges. I also added a green wash below the waterline. Then I glued the Lexan "water surface" in place, and glued the whole assembly into a wooden frame. I put two screws in to hold up & support the front of the waterline. Then it was just a matter of decoration: local rocks, leftover aquarium driftwood/fake plants, camo splotches of green on the backboard, green model railroad turf for algae, and a few other odds and ends that were laying around.

Thanks @Gwangi and @NSD Bashe! I wanted to show the steps here so that anyone with the time and materials can make their own. I'm going to be out in Southeast Asia for research for the better part of the year, but otherwise I'd be happy to take commissions. It was so much fun to make. It was also surprisingly simple once I got into it - the foam hot wire cutter was the only piece of tech I really needed to buy (~$25-$30), and most of the materials I either already had or found for pretty cheap. I'm finishing up one more diorama (rocky Pacific shore, will post that soon) and in the future I'd like to make a coral reef, an icy Arctic/Antarctic ice floe, and a kelp forest (I'll wrap a thin wire around some plastic aquarium seaweed to hold it up). Space is the real problem here - dioramas take up so much more shelf space than just the figures, but it looks so much cooler. I'd eventually like to have a little corner that resembles a mini museum.

[AnimalToyForum]

That's amazing, congratulations! It reminds me of the freshwater fish dioramas on display in the Nottingham Natural History Museum.

[Ikessauro]

Wow, this is so cool! Great detail! Reminds me of drawings I used to stare at for hours on my 6th grade science school books.