Neca TMNT diorama | update 02.04.21

hi folks,

this time i was a bit unfaithful to my 1/6 scale figures and took a detour straight to my childhood.
as usual i am a bit late to the party in regards to availability of the figures. them being a target exclusiv release as well didn´t help getting them here in germany, but thanks to my trusted go-to online store i could catch up at least to some degree.

right now i´m sorely missing bebop and rocksteady, still i refuse to pay scalper prices on ebay or worse.

the diorama is a straight copy of the neca one, albeit done by myself with rather cheap materials and a bit of help from my 3d printer.
so far the price of said diorama has skyrocketed to 500€ and beyond where available, no way i´m paying that much for a 1/12 scale backdrop.
on the upside i´m already planning on adding different "layers" down below like a sewer scene and maybe something technodrome like.

so without further ado, here´s my progress so far, i hope you enjoy :










as for the quality of the figures i´m not a 100% happy with all of them. for example michaelangelo has a very tilted hip with the range of motion heavily shifted to the right (from the front), so the legs are ony straight downward if you push the hip to the far left by force. second shredders left leg peg was warped right out of the package.
i could fix it by heating it, straighten and letting it cool off keeping it in that position, still given the "rarity" of the figures i can´t just file for a replacement, the latter double pack being sold out as of the time of unpacking.

yes they are cheaper than super 7 reimaginations of the original toys, still given the scale a pricetag of about 60€ here in germany for a two-pack should guarantee an undamaged figure( i can live with the odd paint flaw though)

anyone of you having similar experiences ?

cheers

Non-sixth scale? The audacity! It looks very impressive. The different surfaces and three-dimensionality make such a difference. Excellent work!

well what can i say, grew up on them toys and can´t really see them in a 1/6 scale. combine that with cartoon accuracy and my wallet sprung open =)

kinda like a timetravel back into the feelgood zone .

i guess i won´t be "collecting them all" since 60€ a two pack adds up after a few essential figures, still i got bebop and rocksteady on the way once the reissues launch and you can never have enough foot soldiers.

i remember vividly travelling from flea market to flea market back in the early 90s and snatching up every foot soldier that was available. guess some hoarding stuck in the back of my head =)

plus being an adult with money to spend on his own toys instead of waiting for grandma or the occasional birthday/christmas present has it´s perks as well, men always stay kids i suppose

glad you like it, i actually find it easier to build in 1/12 even with the smaller, more filigrane scale.
the "magic trick" i stumbled upon in an youtube tutorial was a thinner foam than the one i usually use and putting it on a wooden frame.

the different floors of the building are separable and put together with screws on the back, making it easier to modify and transport.

the manhole cover is "articulate" so once the sewer part is done i can make a seamless scene with a ladder leading down and the cover used as projectile (ouch)
3d printing for the win i guess.

only downside is once the verticality of the project starts i´ll have to build a whole frame from scratch for the folding tables i use now don´t allow for overlapping or stacking.

another holy grail from my childhood would be a transport module coming up through the rubble, but thats a bit far fetched right now.



time will tell


kind regards

p.s: i already kick my own butt for not keeping my toys of old, some of them like the party wagon would fit as an excellent easter egg in the background and go for quite some money on ebay, major bummer

as for the ones stored on the attic, we miscalculated for the temperatures rising each summer and 25 or so years weren´t kind to the plastic either, so basically "mego melt" on steroids

Well, they are great. And modular design that you can take apart, store, and set up again, is the way to go.

Sorry, I missed this earlier. Very cool diorama. It’s always fun to hear the influences that folks have for their collecting. TMNT wasn’t one of my favorites (I was in HS when these guys came on the scene, and I was more interested in girls than toys). That transport module/tunnel digger would be cool to see realized.

no problemo guess i grew up just in the right time.

being born 1980, i had masters of the universe of course and while i gotta say nothing beats that feeling of your very first figure and the mini comic from alcala of course.
somehow i remember tmnt more vividly though.

cant quite put my finger on it but maybe i was too young to wrap my had around all the cool stuff motu had as a universe and was more comprehensible when the turtles hit the shelves.

i did collect those motu classics figures a few years back but those are rather standing on hold. oddly enough i'm glad to own them but not as eager to build backdrops for them.
snake mountain costing a fortune doesn't help either

i wonder if neca goes the extra mile down the line and releases some vehicles. a detailed party wagon would be awesome.

anyways, glad you like them.
best regards

Great job on this! The manhole cover is a brilliant touch! I like to see figures and dio's in other scales so don't apologize for betraying 1/6th, lol. I'm also a fan of figures based on animated characters, so even though TMNT isn't my forte, aesthetically I think these look really neat capture the cartoon vibe. I can definitely see the appeal. Long live childhood nostalgia! :')

skywalkersaga wrote:Great job on this! The manhole cover is a brilliant touch! I like to see figures and dio's in other scales so don't apologize for betraying 1/6th, lol. I'm also a fan of figures based on animated characters, so even though TMNT isn't my forte, aesthetically I think these look really neat capture the cartoon vibe. I can definitely see the appeal. Long live childhood nostalgia! :')

I still have Bandai's SH Figuarts TMNT figures on my wish list. Love the cartoon aesthetics. But with all the other scales and what not I'm collecting... We'll it doesn't look like it'll be anytime soon. LOL

Very cool diorama.

thank you guys for the kind words, really appreciate them.

to my knowledge, most id not all of them figures/likewise lines like sh figuarts aren't readily available here in germany. actually we lack any kind of "toystore" really that would sell something for the adult collector.
sometimes you get lucky with a comic store but they are far and wide in between and not really stocked in that. regard either.
plus the pricing gets rather steep after taxes ect. so ending up with 60+ € for a single super 7 fogure, even though the perfectly recreate the toys from the 80s and 90s, plus not knowing if you'll get all the essential characters for your collection is kinda bum deal for me.
thinking back when i started buying dragon 1/6 figures 60€ was standard for a full equipped figure.
so i took a gamble with neca and their twopacks( cant really army build foot soldiers with 60€ a pop) and have already missed out on casey and april due to low numbers being available for pre order months down the road.
i know that only a fracture of target stores have those figures in shelves as well, but there's a chance compared to the utter void around here. if you don't want.to fall prey tp scalpers that is.
140€ for bebop and rocksteady my butt.

but its not all topic for a rant since what i get at the moment are all in all cool figures and i enjoy them very muxh.
cheers

Awesome diorama! The weathering of bothe the road and building is incredibly cool, it really brings it to life (and the way the floor foam board is cut, for a second I thought you had a sewer part underneath the street!!!)

I went for the 1990 movie version personally, but those are superb and definitely closer to the original!

Thanks for sharing, n Cowabunga!

those were the days. as goofy aa the movie seems i watched it ad nausea in my childhood. funnily enough i had a second coming of tmnt a few years back when i watched almost every episode in original english as opposed to the german dub i had in my youth.
still can't wrap my head around the paranoia those damn censors had with ninja and nunchucks back in the day.
i mean the 80s gave us some seriously awesome gory movies but ninja's bad,mkay?
needless to say i was hooked with the original voices, especially "uncle phil" as shredder.

as for the diorama, i tried a clear coating on top of the paint for most of the time the paint i usually use sticks really bad to boots and feet of my figures after letting them in place for some time.
oddly enough if you touch the surface it's perfectly dry and not tacky at all, still it attaches itself to plastic after a while.

on the upside, the coating really adds to the color.

a sewer section and maybe a "technodrome" are planned further down the road but right now i literally put it on ice, stumbled down the stairs yesterday and f'ed up my ankle.
in the words of michaelangelo: major bummer dudes

cheers

Ouch! Dude, you need to be careful going down those steps. Hope it’s nothing serious. Being a Turtles fan, have you watched the two newer movies? I saw the first most recent one, but didn’t think it had the same charm as the original one that blackpool mentioned.

Oof, yeah, sorry about your ankle, wishing you swift healing!

thank you very much for the well wishes.
while it kept me from sleeping last night due to acute pain no matter how i lay the foot, its not really serious i guess.
i don't know why i was distracted carrying down a garbage bag, but somehow dumb me managed to descend the stairs sideways;) but i popped a few painkillers and so far it gets better already.
nothing broke as far as i can tell, so i just rest that foot for the weekend and should be ready for action again.

yes, i did watch the recent movies, but didn't like them very much. sure with all the cool graphics and effects 10 years old me would have had a far better time, but knowing tmnt of old, the recent design was to "generic" and lacked charm as you already said.
in these movies the turtles rather looked like 4x hulk in a half shell. turning bebop and rocksteady into giant fat-balls didn't help either.
okay to watch if nothing better is on but i don't remember much of either movie.

on the other hand i got fond memories of the atrocious masters of the universe movie with dolph lundgren, so there goes my objectivity right out the window.

there's something about the 80s early 90s goofyness that you can't port into todays adaptations. either i'm too spoiled or disillusioned as i age but nothing gets close to childhood impressions.

by the ways, anyone of you who got some tmnt stuff he likes to share?

best regards

hi folks here´s a litte heads-up. not much happened to the diorama, yet, but i finally( and i can´t emphasize this enough) had a refunded set of bebop and rocksteady that wasn´t assembled by a completely drunk person at the factory.

so please enjoy the few new pics, i also added a little "sneak-peek" of things to come in the future.
can you guess what i´m working on ? =)







kind regards
tjolnir

Congratulations. And the diorama's looking livelier than ever.

Glad to see, despite the troubles, that you were able to add R & B to the dio.

so am i, when i picked up the paket today i was lamenting for a minute or to whether to leave it as schroedingers bebop in the box for a few days. that "sweet" point between hope and certainty so to speak. but after 3 attempts i went to unpacking and hot water bathing right away. thing is, even after a collective 30 minutes or so in hot water ( just a little below boiling), everything was wobbly but them thighs. you could almost twist the joint ball itself but that swivel wouldn't budge.

saw a review a couple of minutes ago on youtube were his figure snapped its leg at the same spot, only he was trying to split the legs while i was moving it forward. will add the link when i'm not writing from an age old ipad

next on the menu will (hopefully) be a transport module, if i can figure out how to model the drill tip. printing it would take some 35+ hours and as the meme goes : ain't nobody got time for that
found a large pipe i'll saw to size in the next couple days and already printed the tank tracks.
plus a sewer part beneath is planned if i can come up with a working support structure to make it multi-leveled

thanks for your kind words, it's what keeps me going in spite of the drawbacks i had recently.

so far granitor seems to have better joints according to previews, like i said i'm not going to buy another reissue from neca any time soon,though it seems up,until now their original released figures don't suffer from that many issues.
kind regards
tjolnir

Oh this is cool. Love that you're working with a 3D printer! I lost power just before mine finished my last project and electricity was unpredictable for weeks so it has been sitting here without a job.

Looking forward to seeing those expansions/additions!

thank you, glad you like it.
a 3d printer turns out to be a blessing in most cases, but some objects are sadly to small to be printed in detail. 1/6 can be tricky but 1/12, shuriken for example, just turn into a tiny blob.
but like i said, in 85% of the cases a printer saves you so much time and the embarrassment of doimg it by hand and in my case often lacking the skill to properly do so.

one exception here will be the drill head of the transport module, printing it would take some 45+ hours nonstop and fill the enitre bed.
now as for leveling, its never 100% flat, so the more i reach the outer edges the more the objects loses connection to the bed and the print ends up bad, warped or plain broken.
so right now my old math teacher smiles in his grave for i really needed that stuff to build a cone frome cardboard matching the diameter of the sewer pipe i use for the body.

does your printer have a kind of emergency memory or backup file? some printers can continue where they left off after power failure or shutting them off due to other reasons.
kind regards

Tjolnir wrote:does your printer have a kind of emergency memory or backup file? some printers can continue where they left off after power failure or shutting them off due to other reasons.
kind regards

I'm not sure it does and after that forced break my enthusiasm kinda went out the window. I just have no need for printable stuff. I did print a few nice display boxes for my spare heads and that's most likely the kind of thing I'll pick up printing again. I've also been toying with diorama ideas, but I'd need space to display them afterwards, which I don't really have.

Ooooh... now I'm getting ideas again...

don´t give up. i can´t tell you how many setbacks i had with my printer till this day, and still will encounter in the future.
and everytime i haven´t used it for some weeks i have to relearn most of the stuff all over again.

but in the end, holding your unique item in hands is priceless.
plus making your own headsculpt and painting it is beyond awesome, given the proper models, there´s no limit to your figures.

to this day there´s no baraka or shao khan in 1/6 scale but i got my version in my diorama.
this is why all the trouble, screaming shouting and stomping the floor is all worth it in the end.

oh, besides i just checked for a printable drill head in case i can´t come up with a proper handmade tip, around 20 hours with a drastically shortened hight ( still proper width ) and 35 % infill.
OR and thats a bit baffling, cut in 6 pieces so i don´t reach the "critical" edges of the printing bed, i´d even add up to over 30+ hours, go figure.

keep in mind that this time is to be taken x1.5 for never in all my prints did simplify give me an exact timeframe, though it is a damn good program when it comes to adding support columns and stuff.

go make that ideas happen =) i wonder what you´ll create

kind regards

Tjolnir wrote:don´t give up.

It's not a matter of giving up. It's a lack of viable ideas. Not that I lack ideas either, but when I think it through I end up with the realization that I really don't need or want *it* or I'd rather spend my time on other stuff.

I did design a head sculpt, cause that is something I actually want, and then the program crashed and I lost all the progress, only to remember that this had happened before... my own fault. I was in the tunnel and didn't save my progress every once in a while. But it took the wind out of my sails. (Also, my printer isn't high resolution enough for a decent head sculpt, but it would serve well for prototyping of course.)

I'll get back to that idea some time for sure.

Very cool diorama. The scale, the positions, the details, all works so well.

thank you very much, glad you like it. right now my 3d printer is churning out some goodies by the hour. but i have to admit i gonna force myself to not skip the sewer part (i know tmnt without a sewer section would be strange) but one more brick wall and i'll eat my exacto knife
the technodrome stuff is so much more appealing, but with the rat king and splinter on the horizon i gonna create them a proper backdrop too.

this will be a first for me as well in terms of diorama buildup, for i'll try to create a wooden frame to stack the different areas vertically and still remain easy to put together and disassemble when needed.

oh and i got the body of a transport module cut to size from an old drainage pipe. tracks are done and ready to apply, but that damn drill part is driving me nuts.
best regards