Ted Ekering’s Godzilla Diorama Is A Smash

X-Plus collector and toy photographer, Ted Ekering, has set social media on fire with his recent set of diorama photos featuring the Gigantic Series Godzilla 2019 vinyl figure by X-Plus.

What makes these photos radioactively awesome is that he had employed not one, not two, not three, but FOUR tricks of the trade.

Trick #1: He has employed a set of Japanese N-scale buildings in the foreground and background. This size building model is most closely in scale with any X-Plus 30cm Series figure based on a 50-meter monster. That includes all of the Showa series Godzilla figures as well as most of the Millennium series figures. However, as you can see, you are really not limited to those figures. These buildings look fantastic with an X-Plus figure at any scale.

Trick #2: Ted had shot these photos out under the sun for a real sky backdrop. In addition to the authentic clouds and blue hue, the sunlight casting down on the diorama gives an extra touch of realism. (More on this later…)

Trick #3: Ted has further enhanced his diorama with some custom rubble so fine in texture that it looks ridiculously real.

The rubble was crafted by common gardening supplies. Here, Ted uses bags of lime and zeolite.

​After mixing, Ted spray painted some dark patches to add charred variation to the coloring of the pebbles. (See links below to more on how he did this.)

​Ted combined this mixture with some more recognizable debris in the form of pieces of N-scale building models, faux girders and more.

Add some buildings and your figure and you’re ready to rumble.

And for Ted’s final trick (#4), he has employed forced perspective. Did you notice the “real” buildings in the background yet? How about those power lines?
By positioning the camera down low and up close to the diorama and figure, the real background “lines up” with the scene infecting the foreground models with realism.

​Pull the camera back and up and you can see what Ted really had to work with on his second floor balcony.

​There really is no need for a fancy camera to capture amazing images like these. Ted used an iPhone 6, a model which came out 5 years ago!

If you are interested in acquiring some of those demolition buildings and building kits, you’ll have to go on the hunt for them. Some are made by Tomytec and a company called FidgetKute (broken link) or EatingBiting (??). One of the later may be knockoffs of the other so shop with caution.

Ted is an English language teacher living in Okayama, Japan. After school, he’s a ravenous toy collector.

By John Stanowski Originally posted January 5th, 2020​ on Kaiju Addicts.