I was born in 1970 and always liked to be on my own. I created my first diorama one day of September 1979 with some Airfix 1/72 soft plastic figs and a cardboard made British Churchill tank, that was the start of a big series of mostly world war two 1/72 dioramas that ended up when I found out that this kind of warlike hobby was really unfashionable with girls, so I wisely slipped with Science fiction stuff, I was still probably seen as being stupid but at least not dangerous anymore.
I built my games Workshop figs and dioramas for quite some time, but then around University I started to really slip from conventional scenes to more abstract stuff using some Prince August Middle Earth figs. I eventually found out that I could express a lot of feelings and personal things in my dios, and I started to literary pour my life into these.
From purely historic or movies inspiration, my ideas I found while listening to music. from 1/72 or 1/48, I finally switched to the 1/35 scale when I realized that it was the perfect scale for human drama.
I then realized I wanted a complete freedom with my dioramas; relativize the whole idea of "accuracy » and generally speaking suffer no artificial limitation in my hobby.
Back after the military service (worse era of my life), I started to build dioramas in 1/35. After a 5 years pause during which I had to learn stuff in order to pay the rent, I started back with new ideas, and a new wish for a certain accuracy in the shapes I was creating.
I indeed discovered that the people tended to focus on inaccuracies and miss the real things I wanted to show. In the meantime I started a process which would lead me at some point to stop completely relying on products available on the market –models or figures.
These days my main goal is to take back the 1/35 diorama from where it is currently stucked (mostly between 1943 and 1945, done by people who for some don't seem to think much about what they actually do) – ultimately I would like everybody likes my stuff, that it could go beyond simple historic rendition, or even well mapped science-fiction. I want to create moods, and that those moods could appeal to a much wider public than the modelling world.
As for today, my views toward my hobby can be summed up in 10 propositions :
1 -The diorama is everything modelling is about, it's the meeting point of the manufactured object that is the model and the human input, you can –and have to- tell stories with dioramas.
2 -When doing your diorama you should not be influenced by any trend or by any fellow modeller for you will only reproduce pale copies of originals.
3 -You should instead be influenced by EVERYTHING; a trip in nature, archive footages, paintings, music… you should never consider this list to be closed.
4 -If you don't have a good idea to start with, or know you won't have any, wait for one to come.
5 - tuez pour l'ambiance. If nothing shines from your diorama, you miss your point and just picture an assortment of junk and people.
6 -You should remember that a diorama is a 3D thing whose advantage is that you can turn it around and get different perspectives of the same scene. You will therefore make an effort to not close the view of any part of it.
7 -You should remember that the nature surrounding a panzer is equally as important as the panzer.
8 -You should buy a book about artistic composition which will help you avoid scattering the work in pointless details.
9 -Whenever dealing with war you should treat it with conscience: you should remember it's a sad thing that destroys a man, even if he survives it. Avoid above all any temptation for historical revisionism -even slight.
10 -You should try to do something you can be proud of and remember that a diorama may be seen as some piece of art if your input in it is strong enough.
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