Thunderchild (4): a direct hit!

Hi friends.
Although today I am not really in the mood to do some building, I can show you some of the progress I made in the past week.
Firstly, I have made the second tripod. It has been shot right in the face plate and exploded. The remains, billowing dark clouds out of what remained of the "head", is starting to topple and fall into the water. This is what I have in mind, and this is what I made of the "head" of the tripod:

The tripod is held here by its yet unfinished legs, pinned into a cork on which I put a weight to keep it upright.

I used lots of leftover cut-offs from the build of the first tripod, and tried to make it look as if it really had a nasty high-powered explosive ending. 

BLAM! Right in the kisser! Take that, you nasty Martian!

Smoke will be added for greater effect later on.

I still need to do the legs but after this bit I was again focused on Thunderchild.
I found that the base for the diorama actually was too small. I like them small, but this one was just too small in its squareness. I really needed more length to display the models more correctly. I took another frame, this time 20x50cm, and started painting the board:

Medium dark blue underground, lighter blues on top, arctic white coloured white water foamy accents.

Ship's wake. Caution. Wet paint.

Ship's wake, engine propeller wash and the stream around the legs of the last tripod.

A quick test fit. Yes.

I was thinking on how to finish the base plate and to add some more depth to the water, I decided to leave the glass plate on top of the painted board. This way, the glass can act as the top transparent layer of the water. I will of course add a thin layer of transparent acrylic paste to get the choppiness of the water right. Also, there will be white frothy heads on top of the wake pattern and other areas. Underneath the ship's hull I have painted the contours of the hull in red. This way you still can have the suggestion of the part of the hull below the waterline. It will be partially visible, I hope.

Shiny glass plate added. Its mirror-like quality soon will be dealt with when I add a layer of transparent acrylic paste to mimic the water surface. But I suppose it will give a little depth to the watery suggestion I want.

Oh, and I added the tentacles to the falling tripod.

So there. this is what I have done to the diorama so far. Up next: trying to make all the lifeboats and davits for Thunderchild. perhaps maybe even some of the ropes across the ship's masts and chimneys. But that needs to be done with extremely thin thread.
All that hopefully next time I tune in for an update.
See you and thanks for stopping by!

--PK