I'm a perpetual lurker. I rarely finish any of the customizing projects I start. One of my biggest problems is I start projects that are just too ambitious. With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a relatively easy dio/display project that wouldn't involve buying anything new besides paint and other minor purchases.

I got the Shipwreck wave of the new figures last week, and I've been really enjoying tearing these things out of the package. I haven't had this much fun and interest in collecting Joe stuff in a long, long while. At any rate, I thought a simple display base for some of the new figures would be a good place to get back into the hobby.

Plan is to use all the styrofoam I've hoarded to build up and carve a rocky, tiered display for the figures. I was planning it out in my mind, posing the new Shipwreck when I remembered the '85(?) catalog art where they're lined up in front of the GI JOE logo carve in stone. I decided to do something similar, and I'm so please with how it looks so far, I wanted to share.


I started by tracing the GI JOE logo from the file repository in Illustrator. Just a simple black outline. Sized it so the logo would be 4x18", and printed it on 2 8.5x11" sheets. lined them up, trimmed them done, taped them together, then went over the whole thing with clear packing tape. I figured the packing tape would make the stencil a little more durable. I tacked it to the piece of styrofoam I'd chosen.


Next I just used an xacto knife to follow the outline. I added more tacks and trimmed down the stencil as I moved along. I started to trace my progress with a sharpie, but the initial cut was sufficient for the next step.


I removed the stencil, and begin to dig out the first cut a little. I angled the blade and followed the inside of the original cut, sort of beveling the logo a bit. Then I'd just scrape the blade lightly along each edge to rough it up a bit. I was worried at first the final result wouldn't be clear enough, but the lines were actually too sharp and needed to be roughed up a bit to look more like cut stone.


It didn't take more than an hour or so, start to finish. I'm excited it came out this well, I wasn't sure if it carving the foam would work at all. I figured maybe if I started a WIP thread, I'd be more inspired to follow this through and finally finish something!

Next, I'm planning to break up bits of foam to layer for the moutain/tiers the figures will be standing on. I'm wanting it to sort of staircase up around the sides of the logo, so there will be a few spots for figures on each side, with more on top. Once it's pieced together, I'll carve the edges a bit to rough it up and make it look more rock like.

Then it's painting. I've heard spraypaint on foam eats away at the foam, but I also read this can give a good result for rocky terrain. Anyone tried this? I think I'm going to do a gray base coat, with darker washes on the logo and edges to bring out detail.

Anyway, just wanted to share this first step... thought some of the dio-builders might want to see how the foam carving came out.

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Cool idea! And looking good so far - can't wait to see more pics as you progress.

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ahh styrofoam, how many batteries have I wasted hooking up to copper wire,

Don't forget to prime before you paint,

I've learned that lesson.

Looks GREAT!

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Spray paint will simply eat away all your hard work and leave you with nothing...you need a primer over the foam before you try and spray paint.

You might be able to get away with using Plaster Cloth, It will cover your foam well and should be able to be worked so it dosn't hide any of the details...

Awesome Idea...Can't wait to see how it turns out.

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Cool idea you have there. I bet it's going to look great when it's complete.

Do not use spray paint on it! Even with priming, I wouldn't trust it. Just grab some different shade or gray or brown from the Wal-Mart craft section. The bottles are under $1 each. Use a sponge or paper towel and dab the paint on to give it a textured stone look. Once you have it painted all gray, you can use some black spray paint from about 2' or 3' away to make tiny speckles of black. That's as much spray paint as I would use, as it'll pretty much dry on contact from being sprayed from that distance.

Everyone, thanks for the warning on the spray paint. I'll be sure to test whatever method
I do use on some scraps before trying it on the momunment/display. Sounds like I'll want to stick with acrylics?


Thanks again for the suggestions!

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Very nice. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

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Looks good so far. I would rub some elmers glue in the areas you cut away, to keep the foam from continuing to "flake away" in those areas. I too have been hoarding foam for various projects, the denser foam holds details the best and is far stronger. Can't wait to see an update.

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I GOTTA SEE WHERE THIS GOES! NEVER SEEN SOMETHING LIKE IT!

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First, thanks for all the feed back! I'm going try really hard to follow through on this thing, I think it's going to look great if I can be patient with it.

I need some more suggestions though. I tried mixing up some acrylic paint and elmers glue to coat over some test piece. I was hoping it would hide some of the obvious styrofoam texture from the exposed areas. I want it to be rough, but right now it really looks like styrofoam. The glue did seem to coat the frayed edge pretty well, but didn't even it out enough to make it look less styrofoamy.

Someone suggested plaster cloth. Think this will work consistently over the whole piece, even the logo, to keep a uniform look to the "rock"? Do I paint right on top of the cloth?

I thought about making a kind of plaster of paris compound, mixing some thickening agent, even flour, with the glue to coat it with. Or mixing some of the fake asphalt from the modeling section of the hobby store with the glue.

I've seen some foam dio-builders use wall spackling, but I think that would be too thick for the detail on the logo.

The painting tips saved me from making a huge mistake with spray paint, I hope you guys might have some ideas of how to get a uniform texture over the foam.

Thanks again.

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If you can find any pics of the dio I did for the '04 convention (bunch of crystal Balls around a fountain) That was one big chunk of foam from an industrial water heater...carved and modded to be a park circle.

I covered the whole thing with the plaster cloth strips and then painted with a Sand stone textured paint...and it worked quite well. Adding somthings like any of the model Rail roading ground textures while the plaster is still wet probably wouldn't hurt either...

I can't say for sure how much detail you would loose using the plaster cloth...I guess that'd be a case of try it out on a test block...see how much you can work the wetted cloth into carved grooves ...maybe you'll have to recarve a bit..but I think you'll be alble to do alright.

I'm of the oppinion that you can't mess up rock...just keep working it till it's right

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Gesso dude. Cheap, Wal-Mart. It paints on, no problem. Trust me on this one.

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Can't thank you guys enough for the suggestions. I picked up gesso and plaster cloth at Hobby Lobby tonight. spent a while looking through all the terrain stuff in the model train section. I also found "mineral texture gel" in the same are I found the gesso. Similar stuff, though this is thicker and has a "grit" to it. They actually had quite a few of the different gels, different finishes and consistencies.

I applied some of the gesso and some of the mineral texture gel to a test piece. So far, I like the look of the texture gel, as it's a little thicker and hides the styrofoam-ness better. I'll see how they look once they're dried and test some paints. If nothing else, I think I'll be using one of these for the carved areas.

I'll have to play with the plaster cloth tomorrow. So far I'd only been thinking about using styrofoam as the base, but a lot of the how-to's I found in the model train section showed using crumpled news paper to build up areas. I'll have to play with it a bit. I think the hardest part is going to be deciding the layout and build of the styrofoam.

I'm already formulating ideas of how to do a similar display for COBRA. One thing at a time, I suppose.

Thanks again!

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This thing is coming along! I cut a piece of gator board down to fit the dimensions of the shelves I have, so that's the base. Spent yesterday evening carving the lower tiers and using hot-glue to secure them. It really came together quickly. I've got the first few tiers done, and secured the logo-piece in place. I want to do a few more tiers on top. Then I guess it'll be time to texture/seal/prime it with the gesso-like gel I found.

Pictures coming tonight of the WIP. It looks like I'm going to be able to fit all of the 25A released up to wave 4 on this thing, maybe more.

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Here's some images of the progress so far.


First up, this was a surprise... left the glue gun on for a bit as I was figuring out how to lay out the next layer, and when I started putting down more glue it was so hot it ate through an inch of foam in about 5 seconds... seriously fast. One of those mistakes that makes sense, just glad it happened a part that was easily covered up. It was sort of a neat effect though... and watching it, it looked just like the acid-blood effect from Aliens.


Again, using Shipwreck for scale. Makes me wish all the new figures came with alternate hand sculpts so I could have everyone in a "Yo Joe!" pose.


And here it is with more figures. I need to carve up the right side of the logo piece to match the left, but otherwise I think the base is looking pretty good. It already holds a lot of figures, and I'm planning on adding a few more tiers over the logo with a bit of an overhand. On the very top, I want to use the flag from the '97 TRU pack with the Joes kind of doing a flag raising with Cobra trying to swarm the hill. Going for the sort of over-top imagery from the beginning of the movie.

I really like how it's coming along. I think it's going to be a neat little display when it's finished. Hopeful the first step in some more ambitious projects.

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