Mark Stryker Old West Theme (Characters)

That is one beautiful desk! Donkey, too, of course!

That's some really good furniture and a lovely donkey too.

Thank you both.

Ha, nice pairing up the donkey with Sara!


Btw, still waiting for my machinegun bonus payment??

Ovy wrote:Btw, still waiting for my machinegun bonus payment??

Really? They owe you commission on several sets, I'd imagine. Just from among people I know there's Mark and myself.

Hah! I hope they compensate you, Ovy, with at least a store discount.

By the way, I have a question for all you diorama builders:

I’m curious how some of you folks go about doing your room boxes. I’m a big-time over-thinker, and tend to get lost (and often overwhelmed) with my research and planning stages. I want to be able to add false fronts, etc., for my West World, but I’ve been getting stumped on how to do so. The Stryker “home” has been becoming more along the lines of a 1/6 scale dollhouse as I’d like to be able to have both interiors and exteriors of this location, also the Sheriff’s office, a saloon, etc. so my question becomes, do you make floor plans etc., for your “world’s” — do you have a specific layout for how your locations are laid out — is there connections from room to room, etc.? I‘ve actually purchased a dozen or so books on building dollhouses (since many seem to focus on the Victorian era), and would match (to a certain extent) the era I’m working on. I’ve even been taking screen shots from Westerns to attempt to make out how the floor plan of the homes work, and of course the other buildings.

Stryker2011 wrote:
By the way, I have a question for all you diorama builders:

I’m curious how some of you folks go about doing your room boxes. I’m a big-time over-thinker, and tend to get lost (and often overwhelmed) with my research and planning stages. ...  I‘ve actually purchased a dozen or so books on building dollhouses... I’ve even been taking screen shots from Westerns to attempt to make out how the floor plan of the homes work....

   

Don't worry, I'm laughing with you, not at you; although admittedly, I don't know if you are laughing at this point.

I'm adding in a TL;DR line here at the top: get yourself 2 sheets of foamcore board (20x30), a hot melt glue gun, an Xacto knife with a new blade, a ruler to use as a straight edge, and go to it.

It really is that simple. Or it can be.

I have never yet purchased a book about building dollhouses, although coincidentally, I was looking for books on dollhouse construction at the city library a couple of weeks ago. The only book they had was simplistic and "craft level," very toylike, with crummier looking examples than what I make out of cardboard boxes, so I passed on that. I have no doubt that I would love reading and looking at the pictures in a nice book about constructing well-made, attractive doll houses and figure display spaces. Then I would doubtless find myself overwhelmed by Information Paralysis. And by a compelling desire to purchase expensive power tools.

It sounds like you are seriously stuck in the over-thinking stage of Information Overload.

My "dioramas" are no great shakes compared to the work of others. In my experience, the Best of the Best are the late MiskatonicNick, whose work can be seen on Flickr, and the OSF forum's own Reverend Spooky. The Rev (Adam) is, in my experience, always happy to discuss the process and offer specific ideas on how to accomplish something in 1/6 scale. Like the sorely-missed Nick, The Rev is a super nice guy.

When I'm looking for ideas, my go-to source is to review Reverend Spooky's posts here or on his website (reverendspooky.com), or to look back at Nick's Flickr photos, which are still relevant today, even though most of his builds are now ten or more years old. Nick had a second Flickr account, Toyville Appendix ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/131468295@N07/ ), that, in addition to cat photos, offers a few additional behind-the-scenes pix of some of his dioramas.

Nick's "Setting the Scene" album on Flickr is particularly helpful when it comes to seeing how he did things:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/toyville/albums/72157626093082480

I'll take the liberty of sharing one of Nick's images because it offers an idea of how he "did a lot with very little":


'Kay, with that rambling out of the way, my own question to you, which should have come first (but The Rev's and Nick's stuff is way better than mine, so they warrant the initial mention), is



Specifically, what is your intent: permanent displays (that can occasionally be used for photography)? Or photography settings (that can be used in whole or in part for displays)?

If you're looking at a permanent display, find the topic here on the forum about the Jabba's Palace build, and start there (https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t1166-jabba-the-hutt-diorama-the-viewing-frame-wip). That topic is amazing, and it details the entire "thought process" from initial figure purchase, through looking at examples, to mockups, to completion.

My own dioramas are almost entirely for photo purposes, so they do not need to be complete. I have not yet crafted a photo-story in which relative room placement is important. Sometimes scenes "suggest" room arrangement within a location, but nothing is set in stone. Much like many motion pictures, the fictional room arrangement is whatever suits the story.

Because my dios are not intended for permanent display, I can cut a lot of corners... and I do not need ceilings or roofs! Including a permanently attached ceiling or roof significantly limits the options for photography. Boxes without tops are much better for lighting and for camera access, not to mention setting up figures and furnishings.

I basically build walls out of flat pieces of cardboard, and I cut holes in them for doors or windows. That's really about it. For exteriors, I decorate the panel to look like the outside of a building. For interiors, I decorate it like interiors. For most interior scenes I can get away with having two walls that come together at a corner. That way I can do head-on photos looking in to the room, or angled photos toward a corner, showing a portion of a projecting wall. I usually end up building a third wall for the other end of the dio so I can reverse the angle without taking everything down and re-using a wall.

Having followed this topic from the beginning, it appears to me you are going for a more "realistic" look than for stylized or cartoony, and that you'd like to have things "actually exist" as opposed to be "suggested." That being the case, I once again refer you to the work of The Reverend Spooky. His house from The House of Seasons saga looks, to me, like if you were to remove just a few of the modern amenities, your Old West characters could practically walk right in.

https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t5555-movie-night-from-the-world-of-house-of-seasons

As you continue to think about rooms, homes, businesses, floor plans, and false fronts, my suggestion would be to get a flat piece of cardboard or foam core board and just start. Make a wall. Decide what kind of wall -- maybe a parlor wall you can set the piano against for starters, as it would be relatively simple.

I use 20 inch by 30 inch sheets of foamcore board these days. It warps less than cardboard. Glueing two sheets together offers greater rigidity than single sheets. I know that forum member BAMComix uses thin plywood or MDF board for his builds. I'd recommend starting on your first wall with cardboard or foamcore so you don't have to invest in a lot of tools or invest too much time on each piece. You can always recycle what you've done for use in a better or more robust version as things evolve and progress.

For photography purposes, you really need the back wall height to be at least 18 inches, which is 9 feet in scale. This is a bit high relative to "real" in the modern world, but Old West houses, unless they were dark, cramped cabins, often had high ceilings.

I've left out an important initial question: how much space do you have to set up your display and in which to work? Constructing things true-to-scale in 1/6 scale gets really big really fast. A "small" room in a house today would be 12x12 feet. That's 24 inches square in 1/6 scale. Even "large" dioramas that people build in 1/6 scale, like pubs or nightclubs, are often limited to 5 or 6 feet in width, and about 2 feet deep: or about 12 x 30 feet -- the size of a very tight fitting single-car garage. Imagine packing twenty or thirty people and a bar and a dance floor and a piano in your garage -- usually not realistic for most of us (although in your case, you might be able to move the motorhome and the boat outside and get away with it  ), and nowhere near the size of a real world bar or dance club. Most photos we see of  1/6 scale dioramas are unrealistically compacted in true-scale terms, but they look right to the eye. Rooms constructed to true-scale can actually look too big; plus, it takes a lot more stuff to fill them convincingly. Constructing a miniature room involves a sort of forced perspective effect, and it's partly a process of figuring out what looks right to the eye rather than on paper, and everything is tempered by what is realistic considering the real world space available.

Take a look at raaen99 on Flickr to get an idea of how much stuff it is possible to squeeze in to a tight scene against a flat wall; and keep in mind, raaen99 works in 1:12 scale:


My advice would be to get a sheet or two of foamcore, cardboard, or thin plywood, about 20 inches by 30 inches, and find a pic of a relatively simple parlor or bedroom wall that you like the looks of, and try to emulate that one wall, just to get an initial idea of what is feasible and how things look.

In my experience, drawing things out to scale and "doing the math" ends up not looking right.

Once you get further along in the process, and have enough constructed that you can put a couple of figures in to a scene, you'll start to see that the style and shape of the figures might influence your design. For all their flexibility and "apparent" realism, even seamless figures do not actually represent the range of motion or the relative size of body parts of real people very well. Stairs are a case in point. But that's getting way ahead of where we are at the beginning.

I'll leave you with one more Flickr link -- OddMod:

https://flickr.com/photos/oddmod/51170342039/

Oddmod doesn't allow the embedding of images, but that link will give you an idea of how large an almost-true-to-scale house in 1/6 scale would be.

OM's Flickr is well worth a visit. The photo-stories are a delight, charming and cute and fun, and the world she created for her characters is truly remarkable in its stylized realism. Here's a representative image that would almost work for your Old West aesthetic:

https://flickr.com/photos/oddmod/51261169516/

But start with something simple. One. Little. Thing. That would be my suggestion.

Dave, I hope you realize the Jabba diorama is Mark's.

Mark, everything Dave said. Plus, I still think it is worth investing in a few LaserLines sets from Etsy. If you get a corner section with a door, a corner section with a window, and a middle section without apertures (plus maybe a door and some trim), you will end up with eight hard surfaces that you could mix and match as needed, and even if you paint them up or "clothe" them permanently, you will be able to reverse their sides, doubling your options (here I'm thinking of this as more modular options than a single permanent display). I know you mentioned you'd like square windows, but apart from the possibility that they would be willing to make these for you (I'm pretty sure they've made them in 12th scale), blocking off the arched top of the arched windows would get you your square windows.

GubernatorFan wrote:Dave, I hope you realize the Jabba diorama is Mark's.

Actually... no, I guess I didn't! If he can build something like that, then an Old West house should be a lead pipe cinch!

I respectfully withdraw my suggestions.

davidd wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:Dave, I hope you realize the Jabba diorama is Mark's.

  Actually... no, I guess I didn't! If he can build something like that, then an Old West house should be a lead pipe cinch!

I respectfully withdraw my suggestions.  

No, don't do that. It is one thing to construct an approximation of a sci fi set of this kind, with a printed background, it is another to make a passable recreation of c. 1900 (I guess) rooms and exteriors, which have a very different kind of detail. So he was looking for helpful suggestions, and I believe yours were.

It has been fun reading through this thread.
@Stryker2011 good luck with your diorama/dioramas. The best approach is probably just to get on with it and learn was you go. Sure you will make mistakes, but that's normal.

The donkey and nun look great!

Why don't you just grab some cardboard, some tape and just wing it with cheap materials first, to get you out of your head. Set up the cardboard walls, place your figures in there, grab the camera and see where you want that door, that window, that desk, whatever it may be. Draw it onto the cardboard, or maybe on paper, which you can then clip/glue to the cardboard walls, etc... 3D brainstorming.

Stryker did a great job with that Jabba diorama, and if I recall, approached it similarly to creating a film set. I think approaching the western dioramas in a similar way would also work, so studying the western movies seems like it would indeed be a good source of inspiration. The invidual rooms don't have to be physically connected (other than the facades of some of the the outdoor structures, if need be), but just have to be set up in a way that looks good for each 'shot'. If there's a hallway or doorway leading out of one of the rooms, it can just be the 'suggestion' of one, with only what is absolutely necessary visible, if that makes sense.

Mark, I just chanced upon a LaserLines listing for square window trim, so they must have square windows (or the ability to produce them) in sixth scale -- and even if they didn't, you could use the trim to perfect a modification to the arched windows.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/937132597/

What a great writeup by davidd! You see he has the passion for it.

Also I really like the laser panel suggestion from Ian.

Also (I was looking for your square windows but only seeing them in smaller scales, despite the sixth-scale square window trim), I came across this. It is meant for modern storefronts, but depending on what you do to the surface and sign, I think it would work for your period too:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1326151513

Actually I did find one of their products that comes in sixth scale and has square windows, but was hoping they have that as a simple separate panel option:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1146707746

Also, didn't you say you were looking for baseboard trim?

https://www.etsy.com/listing/844107090

Thanks, All, for the tips. And Dave! Holy cow, that was a lot of great tips and links. Thanks a lot for that wealth of information. And thanks, Ian, for all the suggestions. I actually bought some of that baseboard trim from them, but I bought doors and windows (with “real” glass) from a Ukrainian guy on Etsy (just need to cut out the spaces for them in the craft plywood that I bought). I think a lot of the suggestions are correct, in that I just need to “start” somewhere. I’ve been getting bogged down with finding things that work for the time period (roughly around 1870-75), from exteriors of buildings to interiors, location (I’m thinking Montana), people, reading about real people and events from the era, reading old Western novels, watching a crap ton of old Western movies and TV shows, etc., that my head is just swimming…

Stryker2011 wrote:... watching a crap ton of old Western movies and TV shows, etc.…

When you say "old Western movies," what do you mean by "old?"  Are you talking Unforgiven, Young Guns, and Lonesome Dove, or do you mean Tom Mix and William S. Hart?


Coincidentally, I was thinking about your set-building question again over the last couple of days in relation to some of the "old" western movies I've been watching a lot of recently on the Turner Classic Movies channel: RKO Studios "B" movies from the mid-1940s starring an actor named Tim Holt (who was the son of a silent movie western actor named Jack Holt). Holt appeared in nearly 50 films for RKO studios...and pertinent to this discussion, they almost all look the same!

For sets, there is a cowboy bar, of course, with swinging doors in the front and a long bar with mirrors behind it in back, a piano, several round tables, a stairway leading to an upper gallery with doors leading off it (only used, as far as I can tell, for fights to occur on the stairs), and a door to the side leading to an office.

The office is seen from the same point of view in nearly every scene, so it is obviously a three-wall set. There's a wall with a door that opens in to the bar on one side, a plain wall, and a wall with a door that leads outside for convenient getaways. The office features a wooden desk, a couple of chairs, and a safe (that always gets robbed).

There's a farmhouse setting that consists of a single room that serves as living room and kitchen combined, with paned windows in two of the visible walls, convenient for breaking out with the butt of a pistol while holed up during a gunfight. There's a door leading to a bedroom with a four-poster bed and a dresser, in which the gravely wounded gasp out their last words before taking their final breath.

There's a "general store" setting -- basically a long counter with a nondescript back wall, and there's also a desk in that room sometimes. This set, with minor redressing, serves variously as a general store, a mining office, a livery office, or any other retail establishment necessary for the plot. Sometimes an entry door to the street is shown to screen right. An exit to screen left is "implied," leading to an office, storeroom, or outside as required.

Of course there's a sheriff office, consisting of a mostly square room with a door to the street, a desk, a rack with rifles, and some nebulously placed simple cage-style jail cells that seem to come and go as required by the plot.

Once in a while there's a "fancy" home, for the banker (and his comely daughter) or the mine owner (and his comely daughter) or the railroad tycoon (and his comely daughter), which seems to consist of one room with gas lamps and fancy upholstered chairs and big windows on one wall with heavy drapes across them.

I suppose, if you're a "completist," you'll want a storage shed or outbuilding, a simple plank shed with some random crates and barrels strewn about, in to which somebody can be tied up and tossed to get them out of the way. Conveniently, the victim is usually tossed in among barrels of black powder, so after they work their hands free they can blast their way out.  

A nice aspect of 1930s, '40s, and early '50s westerns is that the scenes are bright and the sets and set decor are clearly visible. Modern westerns tend to be dark -- which is probably more realistic for interior scenes, but... they're dark, and it's difficult to make out details or even to get a sense of space. It's also a budget-cutting approach to film everything in dark spaces in extreme close-up. The older films, in contrast, conserved the budget by re-using the same few backlot sets over and over in multiple films. Most western films of the 1930s and '40s feature very few extreme closeups, instead using action-oriented medium-long shots in most scenes.

For exteriors, the Tim Holt films used the same ranch, the same "main street," and the same cabin in the hills in nearly every film. You talked about constructing false fronts. You'll definitely need a small second floor balcony from which gunslingers can get shot and crash through the railing to tumble down the porch roof and land with a thud in the street... or in the horse trough, if you're going for comedy.

Anyway, for ideas on 1/6-scale set construction, I'd recommend watching 1940s RKO westerns, because the sets they use are very similar to the sets many hobbyists construct for scale model figures.

Great ideas and very informative, Dave. Been watching mostly Westerns by my favorites (John Wayne, Eastwood, James Garner, Clint Walker, Guy Madison, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea), and TV shows on cable networks (Grit and INSP) like Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Wagon Train, The Virginian, Cheyenne. Where, very similar to the old RKO shows, the majority of the locations are the same, so it’s easier to get a sense of how the buildings are laid out. But, I’ve also been researching “town layouts” — which were different based on how the town was built (environment, commerce); mining towns, cattle towns, railroads or stagecoach, etc., all of this impacted how the town looked — there were basically 4 different layouts based on how the town made its living and the morality level present. Very few people lived on the “Main Street” where the majority of commerce and entertainment took place (mainly due to the near 24 hour noise — and the smell; indoor plumbing didn’t really kick in here in the US until around the 1930s)…

Generally, what I’ve been doing is finding a “building” that I think fits what I want for a specific location and taking screen shots of as much of it as possible in the hopes of possibly recreating it. Also reading a lot of Western novels (which prior to recently I had never done) by Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Charles G. West that have given me a lot of great ideas for storylines.

@Stryker2011 i hope when the day comes that you've built your set, 1/6th Clint Eastwood shows up.

ukshaun wrote:@Stryker2011 i hope when the day comes that you've built your set, 1/6th Clint Eastwood shows up.

Oh, I already have Blondie, and the Sideshow one on PO, along with the Preacher. I’m thinking a few “guest stars” will make an appearance at some point.

Stryker2011 wrote:

ukshaun wrote:@Stryker2011 i hope when the day comes that you've built your set, 1/6th Clint Eastwood shows up.

Oh, I already have Blondie, and the Sideshow one on PO, along with the Preacher. I’m thinking a few “guest stars” will make an appearance at some point.

Sounds good.

Stryker2011 wrote:I’m thinking a few “guest stars” will make an appearance at some point.

Let me know when you source a Randolph Scott action figure!

I came upon these old west backgrounds on Aliexpress if you're interested: US $2.56 43%OFF | Mehofond Photography Background Wild Western Cowboy Portrait Wood House Barn Door Kid Birthday Party Decor Backdrop Photo Studio
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMaAKUE

Melancholic wrote:I came upon these old west backgrounds on Aliexpress if you're interested: US $2.56  43%OFF | Mehofond Photography Background Wild Western Cowboy Portrait Wood House Barn Door Kid Birthday Party Decor Backdrop Photo Studio
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMaAKUE

Cool images!

Nice. Thanks. I’ve seen some of those before, and they definitely provide an option — they also give me ideas for false fronts that I could possibly make (at least a portion of some, probably not the entire front).

Ah, thanks for the help. I found this wonderful post again. I have so many favorite characters here that I can't even say which one I like best. Stryker, can you tell me the population? (Of course, surely there are more than just the ones you've introduced?) The bandit is now on the way.....

Oh, and I have to put in a good word for my husband. Of course he was never as arrogant as he looks in the picture. We were in Salzburg with other couples and had these pictures taken there. The other men chose costumes as dangerous outlaws or dashing soldiers. My husband dressed like a dandy to please me. The arrogant facial expression only belongs to the character he portrays.

Revival of the thread! I hope this gives Stryker the energy to go on.


And what a cool pic of you and your husband Eph! I like his pose, he is a very good actor Both of you fit into the Strykerverse
That make me think, we sometimes need more faces behind our avatars to see the real artists behind everything in this hobby

That’s a great photo, Ephi. Very cool. My wife and I have done several of these types of photos, too. And you’re very sweet to bring this thread back to life. I have a few materials to be able to start building room boxes

The population of the “town” is larger than what I currently have. I doubt I’ll be able to make everyone (since I imagine it has about a 100 people). I need a Mayor, a few more Drovers (actual cowboys — the guys who drive cattle), some saloon girls, a few more merchants, kids, etc. gathering the proper clothing is very much a challenge, and gets a bit costly, and it’s one of the things holding me back.