Post #128125 by bigbrotiki on Tue, Nov 30, 2004 7:07 PM

Aaaah, yaaah! Tiki dioramas, one of my favourite concepts! Appart from the murals that changed from day to night with dimming and blacklight effects, little model villages and landscapes are definitely one of my great loves.
Think LAYERED guys, just like a good Tiki bar interior. The Kona Kai did their mural in layers by painting shutters on a seperate sheet of glass in the foreground. This can be done with real materials too:

Get some bamboo stick shutters at an import store like Cost Plus, thin them out some more, put them on the edges of the window to frame the view, so the scenery is open and can be partly glimpsed through the shutters at the edges. Also get some palmfronts and have them hanging from the top into "frame".
Leave shutters and palmfronts un-lit, in silhouette. This will give you more depth and (sur)realism.

Old German cinematographer saying:
"Vordergrund macht das Bild gesund!"
(Foreground makes the image healthy!)