MiniArt 1/35 Dutch Village Diorama
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
Overview
The MiniArt diorama accessory kits are gaining popularity, providing a great combination of small details such as fences with complete diorama bases comprising sheds, houses, and other buildings. The buildings range from small houses to large structures, and include both untouched and battle-damaged examples.
The Kit
This latest diorama kit from MiniArt provides a quaint Dutch village setting, with a stone road with a brick walkway and a brick house with a tile roof. Like others in this series, this house is constructed mainly from vacuformed pieces, with the addition of injection-molded details. The vacuformed parts are done quite well, with great detail, although there are some molding pips that will need to be cleaned off the surfaces. The injection-molded parts are similarly well done, and will require minimal cleanup.
Starting with the basic house construction, this comprises the main house and a side shed. The main house is built up from three side pieces and two front pieces. For all of these, there are separate inside and outside pieces that need to be glued together. As these are all vacuformed pieces, this assembly will take some fiddling around. Luckily, the side shed is much simpler, as there is no interior to deal with. Also on the vacuform side of things is the four-piece chimney, the shed roof, the house roof, the door step and, of course, the main base.
For the injection molded parts, here we get a couple generic sprues found in several of the MiniArt kits. The first sprue provides the door and the window treatments. The windows have a one-piece frame with separate pane inserts. On the same sprue are some parts not for use, such as some ornate iron fencing and a couple of wooden gates. The second sprue provides quite a few parts, but the only parts actually used in this kit are the door, two hinges, and two door handles. That leaves quite an extensive bit of stuff for the spares box, including a complete light post.
Building this diorama is really just the beginning, though, as the real fun is in the painting. It is here that individual tastes can play out, as the modeler can paint the interior in any range of colors. The exterior, as it is a brick house, is a bit more limited, but there can be a fair bit of variation in terms of weathering. With the addition of some artificial grass and perhaps some flowers, one could end up with a very nice looking house. The street opens up lots of possibilities, providing a nice patch for setting a vehicle down. That said, the actual street portion is somewhat small, so if you want to keep the vehicle on the road you will be limited to a small car or motorcycle. Pushing up onto the sidewalk and yard, though, opens up the possibilities to just about anything, including artillery pieces and large tanks.
Conclusion
This is a nice addition to the MiniArt diorama series and should build up into a good looking house. My thanks to MRC for the review sample.