Diorama-Rama Roundup

Remember building dioramas as a kid? Basically you take a shoe box, draw an erupting volcano in the background with crayons, fill the inside with glued-on fake grass, paper trees, rocks, and toy dinosaurs, present it for science class and then get a D on it...cuz it turns out the Cretaceous Period didn't have Hotwheels cars. Who knew, right? Well anyway this month's build challenge cleverly named Diorama-Rama is sort of the same idea, except instead of dinosaurs and erupting volcanoes this is more about building LEGO cars bikes, and trucks, then placing them in some sort of diorama setting. Did we all get a D on this month's science project? Lets take a looks, shall we?


Peteris Sprogis starts us off with a duo of dios (see what I did there). The first being this...Orbita retro futuristic concept bubble top car in a setting that looks sort of like a helicopter hanger. Hey, when its the retro future, anything is possible!





Second on the Peteris slab is a road blaster in some other artsy futuristic setting with what looks like the first entry apparently destroyed in a yellow heap in the background. Cobblestones are the way of the future. Remember that. Invest in cobblestones.





Meanwhile Ralph Savelsberg paves over said cobblestones with this HAMM HW 90 B Roller, doing its business. Doing this business has to do with neatly converting a studded plate surface into smooth tiles and not so much about locking yourself away with a magazine and the bathroom fan on. Sweet colors!





Tim Inman knows all about living in filth and squalor as evidenced by this hilarious dio of Cousin Eddie's camper home from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Perhaps more kids would get better grades on their dioramas if, instead of dinosaurs, they featured Cousin Eddie siphoning the shitter. Just my hunch.





Loek1990 builds us...or rather renders us...this Renault Midlum Boxvan, converted to a Hot Dog van. He tells us this dio is based off his favorite Hot Dog truck in the market next to the city hall where he lives. Obviously Loek lives in Mos Eisley cuz I'm pretty sure that's the Star Wars cantina back there.





No stranger to breathing life into renders is Peter Blackert with his first of many entries, this one called Conrod's Clubhouse. You see, not only does Peter render cars, he has an entire town figured out called Motor City where rival clubs build awesome hot rods. I'm totally stealing that tree technique!





Every town needs a town hall...preferably one where I am the Mayor. Yeah, I know, I'm just about as mature and responsible as an ice cream truck full of howler monkeys, but still Peter thinks I'd do a bang up job keeping peace between the rival car clubs. So long as I get a special parking spot for my Hudson Hornet.





The other car club in MotorCity is the 'Lugnuts Customised Car Club'. Shown here is their clubhouse. The building opens up to show a detailed interior including car lift and engine bench. A town where rival car clubs rule? Sure, if Speed Racer can find primitive tribal cultures fixated with auto racing, then Motor City seems pretty feasible.





I would totally live in a town full of customs and hot rods. Especially if they had a diner like this. Considered neutral ground by the two feuding car clubs, the Lugnuts and the Conrods, is Nani's Diner. Serving hamburgers, icecream and milkshakes to the citizens of MotorCity. I love that surfin' Woody!





Around the town of Motorcity, the Lugnuts gang members have various garage buildings for working on their cars, (I'm totally digging the purple and white leadsled!) or hiding from the Fuzz. That fuzz will ruin any wool sweater. I recommend taking it to the dry cleaners instead of machine washing it yourself.





Why do they have to hide from the Fuzz in Motor City? Why street racing, of course. The Fuzz are the bane of any grease monkey's existence. They're just out to cramp our style, harsh our mellow, dampen our buzz...or whatever other hip, cool ways to say shrivel our boners.





For his last entry, Peter goes from boner inducing Motor City where I preside as mayor to this JCB FASTRAC 8310 Farm tractor on an outback Australian farm. I preside over nothing in Australia. I don't even know what the hell they're talking about half the time. I mean, what the hell is a "banana bender" anyway?





For that matter, what does "corker" mean? Whatever it means, Jonathan Derksen has no doubt created one here. He joins in on all this diorama fun with this Snow Bucket with a classic big block engine and sandwich board advertising...absolutely nothing at all.





A few years ago LEGO produced pieces in copper color. Lino Martins shows off just about his entire collection of rare copper parts with what I thought to be my first ever Steampunk creation called Copperhead. Ralph says I failed at Steampunk but succeeded in building what looks like an OCC tribute to H. R. Giger.





Lego Junkie squeezes out the final entry of this challenge and bends the diorama rule quite a bit by not really having a diorama at all. Its a dune buggy with its outer shell propped up on a couple of sawhorses. He figures since he only creates about one car a year he may as well prop it on sawhorses. Seahorses would have been awesome.





Anyway, that concludes one corker of a challenge! Did anyone crack a fat over that one? On second thought, don't answer that. Instead consider the limitless possibilities of next month's freakin' balls-out sweet challenge cleverly named...Freakin' Balls-Out Sweet 75th LUGNuts Challenge Extravaganza. Pretty awesome, right? Why don't we name every challenge in such a way? Well, this 75th is very special. Normally peeps build for no reason other than to fulfill the challenge and for me to crack jokes in the roundups about boobies and farts or something. But this time we are thanking our members for making LUGNuts great by enticing builders with some pretty sweet prizes. The rules are simple: ask for a random assignment, then build accordingly. Top three gets awesome prizes. If you suggest the three winning entries, you too get awesome prizes. Shampoo, rinse, then repeat. Sound good? I think so. There has been some great suggestions laid out so far, but how will it all turn out? Who will win the prizes? We'll just have to wait and see. I hope you enjoyed this diorama roundup. If we've learned only one thing, its that dioramas aren't just for toy dinos anymore. They're also for Cousin Eddie siphoning the shitter. See ya next time!