1:35 City House No.1

An RT-Diorama city house in 1:35 scale

The item 1:35 City House No.1 is a diorama accessory from RT-Diorama. It is not a model of a vehicle or an aircraft but an architectural element meant for a scene: a city house of the kind that makes up the continuous street frontage of European towns. In a diorama it works as a background, as the frame of the shot and as the reason why the figures and vehicles are in the street at all.

The part a street frontage plays in a diorama

A city scene lives or dies on how continuous the building looks. A single house standing on its own looks like a stage flat, while two or three side by side already force the idea of a whole street carrying on out of shot. The numbering in the name of the RT-Diorama range follows that thinking: the individual houses are designed as variants for one street frontage, differing from one another in the articulation of the facade.

Tips for composing the scene

• Do not run the street frontage parallel to the edge of the board - turning it a few degrees gives the scene depth.
• Always leave at least one view down the street; a blind wall across the whole shot closes the scene off.
• Decide in advance where the main figure or vehicle will be and place the house so that it makes a background for it.
• Deal with the transition from the facade to the paving or the sidewalk before the details; that is where the scene is most vulnerable.
• Take test photographs from sidewalk level - almost anything looks good from above.

Who the element is for

It will be appreciated by modelers of 1:35 military vehicles who want to show a vehicle or a figure in a city setting, and by makers of display-case views in which the house has the part of a static background. It also serves well as a starting point from which a scene can be extended with further elements of building.