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This blog is here to document my latest 2009 project, an extensive recreation of the Disney 1954 movie 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea through a series of detailed miniature dioramas, all contained under my model railroad table. This will be a "crawl-thru" type attraction (What is a crawl-thru? Read about it here).

Like Disney, I usually tend to keep everything under-wraps until I unveil the final product at the end. However, by keeping everything a secret, I end up not taking any photos of my projects and it is often disappointing to not have any documentation in the end showing how everything worked and was constructed. This time, however, I will document every step in the process of the creation of the project with photos and drawings (and maybe some video) illustrating each leg of the construction. Even though the posts here will be chock-full of spoilers, it will show the amount of work that goes into this and other projects--which is often under-appreciated.

This blog includes weekly updates that consisted of notes, ideas, photos, and maybe some video of what was worked on each week up until the estimated completion date of December 2009. (It was officially finished on December 10th, 2009).

December 21, 2009

Interior Shots

A couple shots of what the interior of the table looks like, with the viewing windows, caption books, and everything else blacked out.


The very beginning scene, which is a "woodcut" print of the "Whale of A Tale" scene in the movie with the caption below. This one basically sets up the characters and the story.



Looking at the first two physical scenes, the "Monster attacks" and "Discovering the monster".






On the left is the Burial scene, in the very back is the last scene (which is a print of Ned, Aronnax, and Conseil in Nemo's boat), in the middle is the Shark attack scene, then the Nautilus cruising scene next to it, and finally the Dinner scene on the right.

The Dinner Scene with it's "caption book"





The "Nautilus Cruising" scene






Looking towards the squid fight scene. The Nemo playing the organ is on the left, a print of the Nautilus approaching Vulcania is in the middle, and out of frame right next to the camera is the shark attack scene. Also, around the corner across from the Vulcania print is the finale scene.




A shot of the Squid fight window at the moment of lightning. Also shown is it's caption below. The organ scene, while out of frame, is right on the left.





On the right is the finale scene and on the back wall on the left is the very end with the main three in the skiff marking the end of the movie and this "crawl-thru". The sign at the very top in the middle just tells the viewer to pull the cord to open the exit door.






1 comment:

Greg said...

This looks incredible. Thanks for letting us all follow along week after week. I hope you've enjoyed the project and are having happy holidays!