Topic: Materials for Dioramas: Finding crates, parts and miscellaneous stuff...

[Darth More]

Speaking of Felucia: I was looking for reference pictures on google and found this impressive website:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xYEBYW

Cannot wait to take some time and look deeper into it. Make sure to also check out his 3D model where you can even zoom into! His Instagram is Phil_Creations.




Felucia Biome Cinematic - Fanmade by phil_creations

double-click for full-screen view

[Tamer]

Wow, that is awesome. I need to go share this.

[Darth More]

Wood has become really expensive. toom Baumarkt is a DIY store similar to LOWE's or Home Depot.
They got some neat stuff for my current project.















The quality of these polystyrene plates has definitely DEcreased over the years. They're more like foam than acrylic plates now. Very concerning.



They have a great selection of styrofoam here. I can see acres of Hoth here.





The same one was 12.35€ back in March of 2021. Gotta love inflation and exploding prices in times of war.




Some day I'm going to build a Death Star Playset using this foil.

[Starchaser]

Loads of good stuff there. Too bad about increasing prices, though. It the reality we live with right now.

[Tamer]

Man, some great stuff to be sure.

I have been putting off redoing a back porch because of the increase in prices. Guess I am gonna have to bite the bullet soon though.

[Darth More]

Yes, from what I've seen in the two stores I went to over the past couple days is, that prices have risen by 30-50% compared to last year. Good news is: Prices in both stores are almost identical.

And thanks to a good friend of mine, I got a new shelf today! He was so kind and took me to the store with his big car, so that I could buy a single floor of 2.5 x 0.3 meters. It was 20.95€ and totally worth it!

[Tamer]

Good looking shelf. I need to get some type of brackets to hang our Disney Sabers and Build a Droids. Yours look good.

[Darth More]

Tamer: Thanks! I just took a box as socket for the display stand of Hasbro's FX lightsaber. I know it can also be held by screws, but it worked fine to just elevate it at the wall.

[Darth More]

Back to the Woods

Thanks to trends on Instagram and Pinterest, people claim more for natural wood again. You can make some great looking tables, shelves and what not with them. I can also see them just standing at the wall mounted as decoration. I never get tired of looking at the natural schemes of wood!







JDeck recently showed us how well these racks actually are for our hobby purposes! Click hereto see his project.

Those storage containers are also well suited to store action figures. ACTION and ALDI sell them for the best price here in Germany, which is 12.95 - 15.99€.


Some more metal sheets with different profiles:



To my total surprise BAUHAUS is actually cheaper than toom! This metal sheet for example is 3€ more expensive at toom where I bought it.
I still use it for my current project, but will buy all other materials at BAUHAUS from now on.

[JDeck]

I found another crate to add to my collection. It's the Disney parks Dok Ondar Mystery box. It's a blind bag of Miniature star wars antiquities. Like busts, statues, helmets etc. I think I got a chase variant, a Jedi holicron, that lights up. I might be able to use it in a diorama or something. I just got it for the crate.

The crate is kind of cool. It only has detail on one side, so you have to stand it on It's short side to see it. It has the Crimson Dawn logo and says Crimson Dawn property. Pretty cool. I ordered another, but that'll probably be it, unless I actually start collecting the things inside.

[Darth More]

Wow, thank you so much for sharing these, JD! I just watched a couple unboxing videos of those craits on YouTube.
I appreciate that the designers for Disney go the extra mile and give us nice packaging. They seem to be aware that the box of a product is part of the product itself and can be a significant selling factor. I mean I would get those for the packaging alone as well and that says it all. Hasbro will regret their plastic free packaging. They say it's for the environment, but I don't believe it. It's cutting costs. They told us the same about vac metal/chrome effects years ago and you can still buy a chrome plastic hot wheels car for a dollar right now.

$14.99 however is just rude pricing in my book. It's a nice product, but they crossed a line for me here. That's part of the reason why I boykot such theme parks charging you extra for everything insinde after you already paid $100-200 per person before just to get in. They even charge non-residents double the price, which is beyond my understanding.
It happened to my family in Florida last year.
Anyways those are really nice craits. The helmets and busts seem to be 1/6 or 1/5 scale? Hard to tell. They look similar to the busts which came with magazines of DeAgostini here in Europe.
And I think you pulled the coolest one possible with that holocron! So lucky! I was lucky on those mystery craits of the latest Avatar toy line by McFarlane. They have a MRSP of 5,99€ here in Germany. Put that in contrast to Di$ney's price policy and I don't have to pay extra to enter a toy store like SmythsToys.

[Tamer]

Nice crate JDeck. Off to share.

And yeah I can see your point Philipp. That avatar stuff is just rock solid and at a fair price point.

[JDeck]

I'm tempted to get some of those avatar sets, they're great and would work great for any jungle terrain.
I had this idea to make a pirate throne out of crates. Not real sure what to think of it. Granted it's thrown together with no backdrop.

[Tamer]

You can see what I think on the front pages.

I like it!

[Starchaser]

Great idea! It totally makes sense...but keep it modular so you can repurpose them