Dinosaur Toy Forum Diorama Contest 2023 - Results

[DinoToyForum]

The voting has ended and I'm delighted to officially announce the winners of the Dinosaur Toy Forum Diorama Contest 2023! (You can see the full poll results and all the entries here: https://dinotoyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=11064 )

In first place is number 17. Sultry feathers - yeah, this is, of course, the Mongolian Gobi! by @Federreptil


In second place is number 25. Taking Shelter by @A.Garcia


In third place is number 11. Let them fight, by @Andreioli


Special congratulations to these three victors who have won £50, £30, and £20 respectively.

There are also three honourable mentions, as follows.

In fourth place is 18. Hellish marshes by @thebermuda303


In fifth place is 23. March of the Northmen by @Perotorum


In sixth place is 27. Too big for you by @jesrosp


Congratulations to all the winners, thanks to all the entrants who made the contest so enjoyable, thanks to all the entrants (and others) who donated the 'entry fee' towards the prize fund, and thanks to everyone who voted in the poll!

I'll be in touch with the three prize winners soon by email to arrange your prizes.

[Pliosaurking]

Congratulations to the winners and good job everyone!

[Mellow Stego]

Congrats to the winners!

[Libraraptor]

Well deserved, congratulations to the winners!

These six are the top notch entrances, no doubt about that, but let´s not forget all the effort that obviously went into contribution Nr. 4  or the originality and chutzpa that went into that trilobites in the bathtub - contribution Nr. 5. And, of course, I liked Nr. 8 very much
And the idea to convert a Schleich Gorgonopsian into a sitting one is quite interesting and well executed, too (33)! I appreciate "Welcome to the Gates of Hell", which is a welcome change from the usual Cretaceous / Mesozoic dominance   And how sweet the handpalm-mammoth (Nr.24) is!

However, I think this was a high-class contest which shows how diverse and versatile our hobby still is and how different approaches to a single simple idea can be. I am proud to be a part of this creative bunch of people!

[Fossilized-Rubber]

I think a lot of these deserved to win and that the pieces made were frankly amazing. Well done everyone on a fantastic show.

[Georassic]

Congrats to the winners! Great to see the contest back!

[ceratopsian]

Congratulations to the winner - and thanks to everyone who gave us some photos to enjoy!

[Federreptil]

Thank you to everyone who voted Sultry Feathers into first place. It makes me proud that the motif has received so much support. Congrats to the other winners.
But I also thank all the participants who sent in entries and all the DTF members who voted, because without each and every one of us, the contest would not be such a pleasure. Special thanks to the organization and work of Dr Admin, so that the competition can take place at all. It's a shame that the fundraising result didn't reflect that. We probably take this contest too much for granted. Yet I have missed it in recent years and a three year hiatus was actually far too long. Perhaps there is a way to better share the burden of running it after all.

[Stunt_Kitty_Films]

My wife and I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that voted for our entry, "Tuesday Last", everyone that participated in the contest either as a contributor or voting member and most certainly the admin who sponsored the contest.

The Dinosaur Toy Blog and Forum have been an invaluable source of information to us over the last few years as we rekindled our passion for toy dinosaur collecting. Thank you everyone here for your knowledge and insight.

We had a great time preparing our entry this past year and are already thinking about next years contest.

[Lanthanotus]

My congratulations to the winners! 


PS:@Federreptil: I always wondered (in this entry and the past ones), do you work with multiple exposures and stacking or do you in fact use/have that many of the same figures?

[DinoToyForum]

Thanks @Stunt_Kitty_Films & @Federreptil 

Re: the fundraising falling short, I agree the approach I took this year isn't viable for the future, and I have things to say about that, but I'd prefer to leave that discussion for the general diorama contests topic at a later date. All in all I'm truly glad I ran the contest this year and this topic should be about celebrating the winners.

[Brocc21]

Congrats to all the winners! Great to see the contest back! Sorry to hear about the fundraising goals not being met.

[Eyka Dino Time]

Congratulations to the winners! I´m very happy for work of everyone 

[Duna]

Congratulations, they are all amazing!!

[Federreptil]

My congratulations to the winners! 


PS:@Federreptil: I always wondered (in this entry and the past ones), do you work with multiple exposures and stacking or do you in fact use/have that many of the same figures?

The contest motifs may use Photoshop for enhancement, but they are always real setups and, at their core, a single photograph. Respect for the other members alone dictates that. Also, I can still remember sharp debates arguing against excessive use of Photoshop and other image editing programs. So the fog in this year's motif is real, even if it meant using two fog machines.

Unfortunately, I've had the spleen of herding in biotopes since the first dioramas. This really leads to the fact that my collection now has a large number of figures of the same species and I usually have more than one model of a species. If possible, the species should then also be available from several manufacturers, so that I can combine different positions, postures and sizes. In the meantime, all figures are also painted over and matched to each other afterwards, which is actually already a crime for hardcore collectors with tag and original packaging.

To keep the costs seemingly under control I focus on certain times and regions and have some themes that I constantly complete. For this I have to do without some nice models, some exciting exotics and I should not want to collect any manufacturer completely. Thus also a Dreadnoughtus herd in 1:35 makes no sense. It will simply be too expensive and the matching structure would be huge. Here for the future 3D printing will be more and more exciting to come to herds. Barely visible, the three fleeing Mononykus at the feet of the Deinocheirus group are already 3D prints. Also, I think The March of the Northmen (#23) in this contest were made with figures from the 3D printer.

Then it is annoying when the scientific progress is too fast and I have to sort out the first herd members already. Or think about where and how I can get an update. So it just happened to me with the Dilophosaurus family of 2015, I would stage the 2013 competition entry of the 'angry chickens at work' in the meantime with feathers (and without a pterodon but an Quetzalcoatl) and also still waiting Spinosaurus is thereby a constant challenge. Since it is now clear that some models are only available for a short period of time, it is therefore sometimes a risk weighing whether it is worth investing in a flock already or whether the model becomes obsolete too quickly.

Fortunately, the fauna and equipment accompany me through the years and some ferns already appear in the dioramas since 2014. I just painted them all over this season because all the manufacturers produce their plants in a blue-green. That brings me to my next spleen. I always build a complete diorama with lots of details first, then look for the motif. This usually means that only a fraction of the personnel can be seen in the later picture. So the pachycephalosaurs in 2014's Horrible Horn Horde walked along unrecognized, and the Tyrannosaurus hatchlings didn't make it into the picture either. This year I built up the Gobi to about 2.56 square meters and of the 15 species in the buildup, only four made it into the final motif. For that I decided to focus in the final selection and thus reduced the variety. There helps only a making-of elsewhere here in the forum that can show all species in the diorama, even if the photo quality makes the scenes appear much more model-like.



This picture cuts the long speech a little short. There is more of it in the diorama section under "Not used for contest 2013".

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks for that thorough reply, Federreptil. A damn lot of effort went into this, but yes, a lot gets lost or hardly/un- recognized in the final photo whithout close inspection. I understand it right, you built that to 2.65 squaremeteres? Do you have a full room dedicatd to your dioramas or do you take them apart later on again?
 

[A.Garcia]

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who submitted entries— it is always enjoyable to view all of the ideas and variety in the different pictures.

Thanks very much to everyone who voted for my entry #25- Taking Shelter. I'm pleased with how it turned out, and happy to see that others liked it. After realizing that my original concept wouldn't be ready in time, I got the idea and opportunity to create a scene with the PNSO Ankylosaurus adult and baby. I decided to present it from the perspective of the young animals, moving behind an adult and heading into the undergrowth as danger looms. I think the Rebor Tyrannosaurus, with its mouth closed, is ideal for representing something large and dangerous, but not actively aggressive.

To prepare the location, I took a while to weed out grass, fallen leaves, acorns, etc, so that the moss base would look scale-appropriate. I then added the log, the stick/tree by the Tyrannosaurus, and small pieces of artificial greenery for the small conifers on the left and right sides, branches on the tree, and fern fronds. The final result is a single image, except for three additional babies and a bit of foreground fern added digitally from additional photos from the same location/angle. I also used the computer to retouch a couple small unwanted elements (like a white birch trunk) from the background woods. While I hadn't done so in the past, I think it worked well to use a hybrid of diorama greenery and natural base to blend the scene together.

[Federreptil]

Thanks for that thorough reply, Federreptil. A damn lot of effort went into this, but yes, a lot gets lost or hardly/un- recognized in the final photo whithout close inspection. I understand it right, you built that to 2.65 squaremeteres? Do you have a full room dedicatd to your dioramas or do you take them apart later on again?
 

We have a kind of winter garden here, where four tables in 80x80 cm can be put together temporarily. Here I have made the assembly. My diorama setups are always temporary. This time the landscape stood only scarcely one week and disappeared afterwards again in boxes and crates. I do hope to be able to do sessions like this more often, but even then I don't have the space to put these sizes up all the time.

[Andreioli]

Thank you to all that liked and voted for my diorama !
Congratulations to all the winners, there have been some great entries this year.

[HD-man]

Nice to see my picks get 1st & 2nd place I especially like how atmospheric Sultry feathers is.