Have you ever had the feeling of being watched while sleeping?… Susan felt like that all her childhood. Her parents always believed she had a great imagination but the real truth was her nightmares were too real to be just dreams….
When I barely was 12 and I saw in a magazine a picture of an alien visiting a kid, that image engraved on my memory and became one of my fears along some of those sleepless nights.
For some time now I have wanted to represent that scene in a diorama, so in 2019 I decided to start creating a scene that has taken me two years of intermitent work to complete.
This work has taken me so long among other things because I wanted to make by my own each element of the scene. That means that from the structure of the house itself, the modelling of the figures and its painting to the building of the base, everything has been made by me.
This is the final result and the summary of the whole process:
THE PROCESS
The house building:
My intention was to represent a bedroom of a country house. That means one exterior facade, one interior wall dividing the bedroom and the hall, and the roof.
I wanted to build the walls as realistically as posible so I collected some stones from the mountain and I joined them together one by one using concrete.
Once the stones facade and the bricks wall finished, I started plastering all the interior walls and building the beams of the roof and the frame of the door:
Next step the parquet floor and the wooden vanes of the roof.
The door made of oak, with its tiny hinges and handle.
The windows. Using 0,1mm thickness glass. It was really hard to adjust each glass.
The outside shutters for the windows.
Walls painted. Some small paint peelings to make it more reallistic and a functional lamp on the ceiling. Also a tiny switch.
The handmade furniture, painted and with some extra weathering
A chair and a school bag full of undone homeworks
Some plants with their flowerpots
A lamp.
Color pencils and watercolors.
A trophy and a chimpazee plush coming out the drawer.
The solar system to hang it from the ceiling.
The Earth globe
A spinning top made of wood.
A bird shaped alarm clock.
Mini GameBoy.
A walkman with its removable cassette
1:20 scale terrarium. It was quite hard to make it functional trying to keep all the gaps constant.
inside the terrarium handmodeled William chameleon, the one with the three little horns like the Triceratops, hunting an insect with his long tongue.
I made also some extra items to place them below the table that holds the terrarium; a chamaleons care guide, a replace light bulb and a bag with some natural bushes to replace the ones inside the terrarium.
Finally a lamp inside the terrarium lo light it up.
A puzzle and its box.
Playmobil castle, inspired in the one I used to play with when I was a child.
The gutter using an aluminium pipe and a handmodelled and painted rat
Connect 4
Diabolo
Wall clock made of Iroko wood
Roe deer skull
I purchased some 1: scale tiles to cover the roof but these tiles were neither truncated-cone shaped nor their thickness was accuratelly right, so I spent over 6 hours filing each one. After that, some weathering effect to look like an old roof.
Roller skates with functional wheels made of nuts
Another plush toy
A girl and a cat handmodelled and painted
And here the final result with the “heavy effect” achieved on the bed sheets using real fabric.
The two grey aliens handmodelled and painted
The base with its electrical connection and the switch for the lights.
And finally, the assembly of every element of the scene
