Up until now we have been working on the various components of the medieval village. But now, in this segment we start to put things together. It is beginning to actually look like a medieval village diorama! YAY!

We look at wiring in the buildings and attaching them to the base and we look at things like building the wall around the village, adding the flowing river and making some of the details like the marketplace.

Let's start out this tutorial just by looking at a few different aspects of the village that we work on.

This first picture shows the wall that will go around most of the village.

This is the marketplace, it has its own little spot in the village. I have a tutorial on how to make all these various parts right here: Making the miniature fruit and vegetables along with the stand and cart

Now we take a very big step in the building of this diorama. Up until now we have worked on things in rather discreet packages. We build a general landscape and we built each of the buildings separately. Now we actually attach the buildings to the landscape. And this takes a little bit of work because the landscape is varied and the buildings need to each be specially handled in order for them to look right.

This is where the building sits on the landscape. The front end of it has a big gap on the bottom.

So we made a foamboard foundation for the building to sit on.

This picture shows what we are doing with some of the buildings. Some of them sit on the uneven terrain so they need to still sit even and level. We do this the same way they do it with real buildings - by building up the foundation of the building.

We use foamboard for the major shapes.

We coated that foamboard foundation with celluclay (paper mache) and carved the blocks. And made a stairway out of foam. We will also coat that with celluclay.

This image shows applying the celluclay to the parts of the building. I use a popsicle stick. It's kind of like plastering a building.

The stairs and the foundation are all set. This building is ready to be affixed to the surface of the diorama and sit level like a building is supposed to do.

And there it is. The building is secured to the surface of the diorama.

Sealing the building down can be done in several ways. I used plaster of paris because that is what the actuall surface of the diorama is made of.

Let's continue on with this tutorial and see how the buildings were wired into the diorama.. We also will be taking a look at the walls, waterway and bridge.

Check out my book on how to make fantasy and medieval dioramas. I put all my best techniques and tricks in this book!

How to make Fantasy and Medieval Dioramas