Delphinus milliputus – A new species in the Mediterranean

[sberry]

Delphinus milliputus – A new species in the Mediterranean Sea

I am a lazy guy. Whenever possible, I will buy figures (both human and animals) in the poses I need. For this reason, I also tend to mix shamelessly figures from different companies, even if their styles don’t mix perfectly, just in order to maximize the variety I can get in a diorama.

Conversions I do only in cases of emergency, when there is nothing commercially available at all for a particular pose I want.

Going even one step further and sculpting a completely new figure free-hand style is something I don’t do at all. Until now! For my new project, I wanted to have some dolphins frolicking in the sea, and I was unable to find anything usable in our 1/72 scale. So somebody had to do the job, and this was me. Here are the results:







I started sculpting on three dolphins, hoping that I would get two acceptable results, but they look all at least OK – and they will be partially submerged in the diorama, so the water covers my mistakes anyhow…

(More information on the whole project to follow soon).

[Rich W]

I’d say they look better than ok!

[Iceman1964]

Very good job Sberry, and curious to see your new project

[sberry]

Thank you, gentlemen!

Addendum – here is how I made the dolphins (I have no pics of the process, sorry): For the body, I formed a dummy of aluminum foil and covered it with Milliput. The fins were sculpted separately and then glued to the body in two rounds. First, to get them in place and fix them, with a small amount of cyanoacrylate. In round 2 I used a larger amount of epoxy glue, to get really strong bond, but I also used it as putty/filler for creating seamless connections of body and fins. Perhaps a bit awkward, but having no experience with figure sculpting, it seemed the “safe way” to me.

[sberry]

You may have noticed that there is already some scenery around the dolphins; actually, they are a rather late addition to a project that is going on for a while.
It will be the waterfront of a Roman “villa maritima”, a luxury estate at the seashore. The main stimulus for the project came from Pliny the Younger, who has written about his villas in Italy in his “Letters”. Actually these descriptions are carefully crafted pieces of literature, intended to show what a cultivated man he was, rather than precise blueprints of the actual architecture, and it is impossible to produce an exact reconstruction of any of his estates from his Letters. That did not prevent people from speculation. My favorite is the reconstruction of Pliny’s Laurentinum villa at the Laurentine Coast south of Rome by the great Prussian architect and artist Karl Friedrich Schinkel, dated 1840:


CC BY-SA @ Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Here is a different version, with better contrast, but at lower resolution:


Pure architectural fantasy, but very impressive nevertheless! And a nice inspiration, although for reasons of space I can show only a small section of such a large estate. The base of my diorama is 58 centimeters wide (about 42 meters in reality). For a complete layout as in Schinkel’s reconstruction, the diorama would be a monster of at least 2 x 2 meters…

[Santi Pérez]

Wow, Stephan, those dolphins look fantastic (apart from the originality of their scientific name Delphinus milliputus).

Being a fervent fan of conversions, I have to give yours an 11 out of 10. Not only for the beautiful final result, but also for the great merit of having created the figures from scratch. As deep as the conversions I do are, I always start from an original figure that I transform more or less, but yours are totally new creations.

As always, I will be very attentive to the progress of your new project where these dolphins will have their place. Great work, my friend!

Santi.

[C M Dodson]

They look very nice indeed.

Intelligent mammals with tremendous power.

I have dived with them and there is something special about their presence.

Best wishes,

Chris

[sberry]

Being a fervent fan of conversions, I have to give yours an 11 out of 10. Not only for the beautiful final result, but also for the great merit of having created the figures from scratch. As deep as the conversions I do are, I always start from an original figure that I transform more or less, but yours are totally new creations.

What can I say after so much praise? Thank you very much – but don’t forget that the shape of a dolphin is rather simple. Sculpting e.g. a Roman legionary with all those fine details of arms and armor etc. would be quite another thing, completely beyond my skills!

Intelligent mammals with tremendous power.

I have dived with them and there is something special about their presence.

A very interesting comment, thank you!
I have no personal experience with dolphins, but I know that they love to accompany boats. And that was how this idea developed: It is a maritime diorama, so I had to have a boat in it (Schinkel even has three of them in his sketch), and with the boat came the dolphins as logical extension.

[sberry]

Now here are some more pictures. This is not only my first attempt at sculpting, it is also the first experiment with laser cut parts that I have designed myself. There is this company called Formulor, who produce designs that customers have uploaded. To be honest, it’s not really cheap, because the price is based on the material (MDF in my case, not very pricey), but also on the amount of work that the laser has to do. And that was a lot in my case! But I think it was worth it, because I got a huge number of precisely shaped parts.







Other parts of the diorama, in particular the buildings, will be scratch-built, using a lot of stuff from various sources. I love the roof plates by Fredericus Rex, they are great for creating your own buildings.

[sberry]

The buildings are a central hall and two colonnades as side wings. The central hall will be made “doll house” style, with one wall being removable, so one can see it’s interior.
For all the wall paintings I use designs that I made myself, printed with a laser printer on thick paper; you can see here some parts of the hall:





I have done such an interior scene only once before – oh man, that was in 2015, I can’t believe it is already ten years ago! That was my Roman baths diorama.

[sberry]

The villa will also have a fountain. It is based on the Airfix “European city fountain” that I bought several years ago, having no concrete plans for it at that time. But it will get a little conversion, a fountain figure that pours water from an amphora:







(Some further drafts for the wall paintings in the background). That figure is from the set CM-008 “Greek workers with amphoras” by Crynsminiaturen. It seemed quite a natural use for this figure to me – and in the meantime, I have learned that the template, which Cryns used for sculpting this pose, was in fact an ancient fountain figure!

[Santi Pérez]

The wall paintings look fantastic, Stephan, both in the 2016 Roman baths and in these new buildings from 2025. Several years ago I built a Roman villa from a commercial cut-out and also used drawings taken from the internet and printed on self-adhesive paper to decorate the interiors.

The fountain is also great. Adding the top of a column and the figure with the amphora from which the water flows was a very original and realistic idea.

I will continue to follow this interesting project closely, don't hesitate.

Santi.

[C M Dodson]

Brilliant and creative thinking on display.

Best wishes,

Chris

[Beano Boy]

Wonderful project on open box display!
And very good use for Mr Cryns, figure too. BB

[JurgenH]

I think it's great that when many animal species become extinct, new ones are also created. Incidentally, I think your ideas and work are great. I think I have a subscription again.
Jürgen

[sberry]

First of all, it is great that the forum is still alive! And so I am able to read all these nice comments, many thanks!
I am working on several aspects of the diorama in parallel, and I have decided that it is probably good to present them one by one. As always, the project starts with a big heap of stuff from various manufacturers. Here are the figures before and after using the primer; you can see fountain with the amphora guy again:







It is difficult to spot in the photos, because it is mingled with all the other stuff, but I will also use the set “Roman construction workers” by Hagen Miniaturen; here is a better pic from their website:



Many Roman villas were located in Campania and around the Gulf of Naples, it was the place to be in Antiquity, a sort of ancient Cote d’Azur. But the whole region has a lot of seismic activity, there is Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, and there are frequent earthquakes. So even without a major catastrophe like the eruption of AD 79, the owners of these villas were from time to time confronted with damages to their estates. This is the pretext for me to include some workers doing some repair work on the estate. (And I like this set and wanted to use it in a project!).

[Iceman1964]

the work is becoming more and more interesting sberry !!!
great job, let's see how it developes

[k.b.]

Absolutely fascinating project good sir. I can’t wait to see how it all develops…..

[sberry]

The next pictures show a bit more of the whole project. It would have been extremely tedious to make all the balustrades from scratch – one of the reasons to invest some money and have somebody else make them with their laser:







The Romans loved to have tons of art in their gardens and parks: Statues, stelas, decorated fountains and wells, columns and all that stuff. I will show later more, here is an impression:







Here is the site of the repair works, obviously the pilasters of the main building require some makeover:



The last pic for today gives a glimpse into the interior of that building:

[sberry]

Several years ago I built a Roman villa from a commercial cut-out and also used drawings taken from the internet and printed on self-adhesive paper to decorate the interiors.

Do you have any photos of that project, dear Santi? I would love to see that!