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Where a guard post stands in a scene

A sentry box is one of the few accessories that tell a viewer where a scene begins. Set it at the edge of the base and a threshold appears: open ground in front of it, a guarded area behind it. The eye stops for a moment at the vertical edge of the structure and only then slips into the interior of the composition toward the hardware and the figures. It therefore pays to leave a little unbuilt space around the box, because an empty place works just as hard here as the model itself.

A legible scale without a figure

Small architecture fulfills a second task in a diorama. Nobody carries the exact dimensions of an armored vehicle in his head, but everybody knows how tall a doorway is and where a roof reaches above the head of a standing person. A structure with a door opening therefore works as the scale of a whole view even when nobody is standing at it. Set it in the second plane behind a vehicle and you deepen the scene optically, and the hardware in front of it looks more massive.

Wood and how to work it

The set is cut by laser from wood, so the walls have a real grain in the material. That behaves differently from a smooth casting: stain and oil color soak into it unevenly and the growth rings stay perceptible even under a covering coat. The shabbiness of the boards therefore comes mainly from toning and glazes, and scribing into the surface is usually unnecessary. Before gluing it is enough to sand the dark edges left by the burn lightly, to try the assembly dry and then to join it so that the walls hold a right angle. The structure goes well with a barrier, a sign or a barrel by the entrance.