Dan shares he philosophies on diorama composition in lectures accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation.
A scientific approach comes naturally to Dan: As an environmental engineer, he is a scientist who applies his eclectic background to all aspects of modeling. For example, in planning his groundwork, he says, "As a geologist, I am always interested in the terrain battles were fought on. I always do heavy research in photos and reading, and as this was a long project it was a lot of reading. In Falaise, the typical terrain had these deep gullies full of alluvial deposits. Many of the pictures I saw had gullies like what I tried to depict here."
Having staked out the groundwork, Dan's challenge was to fill it sufficiently full of wreckage to convey the end of the story in Normandy. By the time he finished, his diorama was so complex it couldn't be completely taken in from one angle. We showed a couple of perspectives in the March 2011 FSM. Now, with the help of additional detail photos taken by Dan, we'll delve deeper into a scene that seems to reveal something new with each viewing.