Description of a Diorama

Series Summary

Dioramas are 3D models that illustrate history, nature or other scenes. Dioramas are great for both educating and entertaining. There are both life-size and scale dioramas. In the world of arts and crafts, dioramas can be made with such simple materials as construction paper, shoe boxes, simple paints and cheap toys.

In this free crafts video series, you will learn how to make your own diorama. Starting with a description of dioramas, you will then find out what supplies you will need. You will also receive tips on using paints and construction paper for your background, floor and ceiling. You will learn how to make and place bushes and leaves. Next, you will get advice on lighting your diorama and adding objects to the foreground. Finally, you will find out how to add tension to your diorama scene.

Video Transcript

"What is a diorama? A diorama is a scene that has 3D figures and it usually has some sort of painted or made background. Usually, they're contained in boxes, but you may see dioramas at your natural history museums where they have life-sized animals in beautifully painted backgrounds. Today, we're going to be creating a diorama and to do that you first need to lay it out on paper. First, to create your layout, you need to make a box shape. If your box is rectangular, make a rectangular box shape. Then you need to decide, "Well, what is this going to be about?" This one's going to be about dinosaurs and I want a Brontosaurus over here. And, it doesn't have to look exactly like a Brontosaurus. This is just to give you a rough idea of where things are going to be laid out. I want him against a big pile of rocks, so I'm going to put some rocks over here. And I'd kind of like to have a big tree here. Over here I think I want a group of dinosaurs playing or getting ready to eat each other, whatever dinosaurs do, so I'm going to have one dinosaur there. See that kind of looks like a blob, but it will eventually be my dinosaur. There's my other dinosaur, and here's my other guy. Again, it kind of just represents the space that I'm using. I'm going to put some rocks over here. I'm going to put, I think I'm going to put sort of a pine cone thing here. Maybe another tree coming out here. Then I have my background, I'm going to have some mountains and I think I'm going to have some foliage hanging down from the ceiling. There. So, there is my dinosaur layout. I know what it's going to look like, I know I'm going to need four dinosaurs, I'm going to need some rocks, and I'm going to need a lot of leaves and trees."