This year marks the 50th Anniversary of The Flintstones, A Modern Stone Age Family. 50 Years! Good grief, where has all the time gone? It seems like only yesterday we were sitting at the TV watching the latest adventures of Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty. The series ran from September 1960 until 1966. Flintstones movies followed as did a series showing a teenage Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm. Here's a link to an interesting website featuring '15 things you didn't know' - or perhaps you did.
Today's photos feature a simple display I made for Hannah-Barbera's 1/18th scale die-cast Flintmobile. OK, first, how many of you collector's out there just plop your collectible's on a shelf and call it a day? Just about everyone I guess, including me. But every now and then you have to do something to liven up your displays. This is a very simple diorama that requires no special skill set.
The base is made from Styrofoam cut into a square using a simple serrated kitchen knife. Further cutting and forming was made using smaller knives. The look and feel for the landscape came from spending a nice Saturday afternoon watching Flintstones DVD's and making a few sketches. First, the car is the showpiece and needs to be up front. It was placed at a slight angle for a better visual composition. The road it sits on is slightly peaked for two reasons: it gives a nice up-and- down country road feel; and the peak allows the car to sit on the road without rolling off. The colors on the base are all basic browns and greens - strong cartoon quality colors. The perimeter of the base is painted black to better highlight the cartoon color qualities of the rest of the display. The rocks are small landscape rocks from a neighbor's yard (he had just gotten a whole pile delivered for his landscaping project when I asked if I could have a couple of handfuls - he gave me a funny look like I was crazy!). The house is one half of a plastic Flintstones house from an original Marx Flintstones playset with a piece of black construction paper taped in the window. The tree and fern are also from the playset. The backdrop, which was actually made longer than the base for adequate photography, is just foam core board cut down and painted. Watching the cartoon gave me a good feel for how the backdrop scenery was executed in the show.
It was a fun project to build and didn't take that long to accomplish. It makes a great display for a fun subject. Hope you enjoyed it!
