The making of 'Drama in the Dungeon'!

I finished up my largest framed diorama to date a while back and I thought it would be fun to show how the whole thing was built.

First here's the finished diorama!

I was inspired by a diorama I saw in the Oldhammer Community on Facebook by Lenny Nero, who made a classic vignette of Dwarves getting too greedy. I knew right away I wanted to do something similar but different.

Diorama by Lenny Nero

Imagining a vertical diorama, the idea of the mineshaft leading to a dungeon filled with treasure was obvious to me and I found a box at work (photo lab) that would work perfectly. The box measured 3x10 inches but was made of cardboard so I had to cover the entire inside with plastic card to prevent the cardboard from getting soggy during painting.

I knew I wanted 3 chambers in the whole scene to put the minis in and found the dwarves after rummaging around in the cupboard for a bit. I finished the mine part up top pretty quickly and used cork tile for the rock parts and balsa wood and Elmers glue, my favorites. In the middle area I kept it rocky with just a single rope for the guys to get up and down with. On the bottom, as the evil threat that awaits our treasure hunters, I was going to use a Barrow Wight from the LOTR ME range from the 80's. So this is where it was after a bit:

But looking at it, I just didn't think that the Wight was that scary and went on the hunt for a dragon. I found a complete Citadel Dragon in my pile of shame and decided on the spot to separate the head from the rest of the mini! Then I green stuffed some treasure around him and found a few bits and bobs. The coins were just styrene rod.

One of the dwarves is a Colin Dixon sculpt, it's the one on the right:

...but I wanted him to have an pick axe so I cut one off a Marauder miner and stuck him on. I really like the pose on this sculpt and knew it would work in the scene, angled correctly and looking greedy.