I posted this on BTS a while ago, but forgot to post it here.

 I saw this funny cartoon in the BTS humor section. The name of the artist and his website had been cropped out, but I did a reverse image search and found it:


"Excavation Surprise" by Ryan Mason

It's a great visual joke and I immediately thought of ways of building the scene. At first, I thought of making it in 1/35, but that would have made for a pretty large diorama. I remembered that I had the Hasegawa 1/72 Aircraft Weapons Loading Set so I started the rather crappy tractor. I modified it with a scratchbuilt dozer blade and some questionable mechanics for the blade mechanism, but close enough:



Some more mods later (moving the headlights, for instance):





The saucer is one of the bulkheads from a Monogram 1/48 B-29. I vacuformed a copy and flipped it upside down for the bottom half. I don't remember where the bubble canopy came from, but it's getting replaced as well - it's just here to get an idea for the layout.



The two figures are from another Hasegawa set, suitably modified. The T. Rex came from a skeleton scan by the Smithsonian, which I scaled it to roughly 1/72. I did a test print on my filament printer, but the final version is in resin. I had issues with my lab space being too cold for the resin printer, but I managed to warm up the printing area and got some good T. Rexes. The base is several sheets of styrofoam glued together.



I cut the styrofoam to allow the skeleton and saucer to fit. The weathering on the tractor is mostly pigments - I fixed it before plopping the tractor down on the diorama.

This is the diorama almost completed. The groundwork is mostly acrylic spackle over styrofoam. The T.Rex and saucer were blended in with yet more spackle, then painted. I added some rocks, clean kitty litter (which was rock sized in 1/72) and some sand from the Kelso Sand Dunes. All the groundwork is held in place by either the spackle, paint or diluted white glue.The groundwork has an overspray of clear satin mixed in with some dust color.



Closeup of the T.Rex, saucer and alien.



With the original artwork:




I printed a nameplate and called it done:





I mailed it off to Ryan (the artist) as a gift and it got there in one piece.

Hehehehehehe I LOVE it!         

You really made this work! Well done!

Quote from: PR19_Kit on April 16, 2023, 04:01:46 PMHehehehehehe I LOVE it!         

X2!  

Quote from: DogfighterZen on April 16, 2023, 06:28:18 PM

Quote from: PR19_Kit on April 16, 2023, 04:01:46 PMHehehehehehe I LOVE it!         

X2!  

XXX 3     
Brilliant stuff 👏 😀 😄

I like it.

That seriously tickled my funny bone     

Oh excellent - I love that!   

Do you mind if I post it on Twitter?

top stuff    

Excellent, I love it!!                

Superb!!

Genius buid             

Love it!

Thanks guys! It was fun to build - part of the challenge was to make a realistic version of the artwork, but not too realistic. The hardest part was the T-rex. I scaled it down (including tiny, tiny bones) added printer supports and printed it. That's when i realized that half of the very delicate skeleton as buried within the supports. Luckily I only needed a hit of T.Rex.

@Weaver- go ahead and post it on Twitter - I don't think Ryan is there, so please add a link to his page as well.

Quote from: frank2056 on April 17, 2023, 02:34:56 PM@Weaver- go ahead and post it on Twitter - I don't think Ryan is there, so please add a link to his page as well.

'Tis done. Here's the link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/hws5mp/status/1648171362437984257?s=20