Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

I do a lot of different dioramas and I do a lot of different siege engines. If you have been following me for a while you have probably seen some of my catapults, trebuchets and miniature castles. I recently got an email from a web visitor who has tied all these things together by making a large diorama of a castle with a very big front gate. But he also built the various siege engines that are attacking it.

This is a pretty cool project and it includes a trebuchet, battering ram and a Mantlet which is a portable shield that was used to protect warriors from arrows and other projectiles.

You can see the various aspects of his project on my website here: A Medieval Siege Diorama Project

You may also want to check out my 8 foot diorama called “The Battle Between Good and Evil” It has a castle with lighting, a mountain and a working waterfall.  A picture of this diorama is below.

I have completed a new web based tutorial with a video on how to make wargaming terrain or a diorama using foam. In the tutorial I show you the different types of foam, explain good foam and bad foam, cover the different types of tools (including hot wire tools) and show you the process for making terrain out of foam.  Foam is very good for making fast and good looking terrain.

In this tutorial I make a castle scene. How to use foam to make terrain for wargaming or dioramas

I am real big on paper projects. I do love them and have made lots of them. And, I was very surprised to stumble across a paper art that I hadn’t heard about before. It is the lost Japanese art of Tatebanko or Paper Dioramas. While in Japan I found a couple of these projects and made them.  These projects are not easy to come by and the art is still very much unknown. But I thought it would be cool to make a complete package that other people could download and put together. So this is what I did. I designed a project I call “The Tatebanko Castle” It’s a nice little castle scene. You can download it, print it up and put it together yourself. Nice little project and should only take you an hour or so.

You can find the Project here: The tatebanko Castle project

You might know that I have a great paper project that is free for you to make. It is a copy of the famous Neuschwanstein Castle and its a pretty popular project. A lot of people have downloaded and made it. If you want to take a look it is here. Paper Neuschwanstein Castle.

But what you might not know is that a gentleman with expertise in clay and ceramics has been using my project to make the same castle out of clay! It’s a pretty big project and it involves a lot of work but it is now almost done. It’s really coming out great and below is a picture of the castle in its current state of almost being complete. Just about the only thing left is the glazing painting and re-firing. I am so looking forward to seeing this project completed. if you want to see the project and how it is being made I have a complete step  by step along with lots of pictures here. The Clay Neuschwanstein Castle Project

In a previous post I talked a little bit about the project of making a samurai sword style katana out of cardboard. The trick to making it strong was to mimic the ancient art of sword making by using two different types of cardboard rather than two different types of steel. It works really well and the katana is very strong. Well, to prove my point I have made a fun little video called “The Katana and the Watermelon”

If you are a fan of swords you have no doubt seen videos of guys cutting watermelons or other things in half with their swords or katanas. Well this video is not quite the same as any of the others. You have got to watch this one

You can watch the video here on my website. Or you can visit my youtube channel and watch it. While you are on my youtube channel you might want to subscribe to my channel to keep updated on my projects and videos.