Sledgehammer Project; Preparation Pt XI - First Mockup

Its been a really busy around here but I have managed to work on a mock up of the basic diorama during spare moments this week. This mockup serves a couple of different purposes. The first one is to make sure that I don't have to make to many masters for the various components of the trench system. From the looks of it I can get away with two wall sections (long and short) and two floor sections (straight and angled). I'll do two masters of each of the wall sections to include a bit of decoration and maybe a third type of floor piece (bridge like perhaps?). Overall I like how things are going together with the pieces. I still need to do the caps for the top of the wall, which will make them look more trench like and some kind of firing step as well.

Before I start any construction on the masters I'll snap together the Sledgehammer and see how it fits in the position and adjust things accordingly. I have also decided that the French tractor from MadBob Miniatures is just to small. I found a 1/48th scale version of it and I'm hoping that will arrive shortly and that it will be a better fit, otherwise it will be back to the drawing board for that and I may just drop it from the scene altogether. There are a couple of other possibilities out there but they may be big enough to dominate the scene and I don't want that. Finding the right vehicle will allow me to get a much better idea of how big the base for the diorama will need to be. In concept its the largest diorama I have worked on and I'm struggling with some aspects of it. There will have to be enough vignettes to keep the viewer engaged and yet not distract from the Sledgehammer itself.

It starts here with scribbles in my little black sketch book. Here are the initial thoughts

How do I deal with corners? Here is the first attempt, far to complicated and to many masters to build.

This is better, keep it simple

Lets layout the concept on graph paper and see how it might go together. This is the outline, but I would like a little more detail.

Adding in the "tread" basically a square mesh turned 45 degrees to add interest.

Inking it in.

Adding the walls at the bottom of the sheet.

Cut out the walls, I added tabs to each end to help put things together.

And the result.

I think this looks pretty good, the walls will have more detail built into them to add further visual interest. Things like the tower emblem from the sketchbook and nut/bolt/washer castings in the corners and along the sides.