From A Buick 8 Automobile
As far as I can recall, I have never made a scene based on the works of the renowned author, Stephen King although I have built a resin kit of the author himself that I assembled a couple months ago. Having said that, this diorama is based on his novel “From A Buick” which is a very curious sci-fi/horror story indeed. The basic plot involves an automobile (the Buick 8) which is anything but and seems to be an inter-dimensional portal that takes as well as it receives. This pseudo-car has been in the possession of a rural Pennsylvania state police barracks after it had been abandoned decades before and can produce eerie light shows randomly (called “lightquakes” in the story) and has the ability to repair itself if damaged. I find it curious that little has been made of this novel considering the story line though rumors persist that is will be made into a movie at some point.
This build is probably the most complicated that I have attempted with its light and sound effects along with the overall construction of the scene.The obvious starting point would be to acquire a model of the 1953 Buick 8 Roadmaster. As luck would have it, I managed to find a 1/25 scale promotional friction toy of this car on eBay (where else?) and from that one acquisition everything else hinged.
One of many covers for this great novel
Since 90% of the story takes place around the garage in which the Buick is stored, it was logical that it should be the diorama's setting. I decided to make the garage out of wood since there was tons of wall panels (like clapboard) available in all scales. Aside from the aforementioned clapboard, I found some board and batten stock that I could use on the interiors of the walls to look like rough framing. I also used the batten board stock for what I hoped would look like a metal roof once I painted it a slate gray from a rattle can. I got a set of 3D printed garage doors, a standard door for the side entrance and a small window that I printed for the rear wall. I used a piano hinge on the roof so I could fold the left wall and roof half out of the way to display the car in action inside the garage. Finally, for the inside concrete flooring, I cut a piece of 1/8” foam board trimming it as needed to fit. I gently inscribed cracks here and there with a sharp probe and painted the base a khaki color using craft paint followed with a black wash to bring out the surface detail. For the finishing touch, I applied some static grass on most of the base surface with my gray grunge for the “driveway” and some flat stones for the side door walkway.
For the base, I used my old stand by a 10” x 20” shallow shadow box. I prefer this type because I can use it to hide the several battery packs along with the light and sound board electronics. I went to my go to guy (Stan Koziol from Starling Technologies
https://www.starling-tech.com/index1.php?id=home) to make me circuits for the lights and sound effects to my specifications. The lights for the Buick's “lightquakes” were essentially varying on/off & strobe effects and the sound track was a mix of some odd sounds that I found on the web. I cut a hole in the base near the right wall to mount the speaker where I thought I'd get the best sound volume.
Three of the creatures that emerge from the Buick at various times in the story.
The dog/monster fight shown at the left results in both animals being killed.
I really liked this book and found the "Lovecraftian" and the otherworldly elements of the story very intriguing.
The friction toy Buick I had ultimately just didn't work out. I pretty much had butchered the car to accommodate the twenty LEDs I planned to use. So even the the model was accurate for the story, I ended up discarding and started anew. After extensive searches in Google, I came across a 1/26 scale metal police car from Maisto of a 1955 Buick Century that was very similar to the 1953 car in the story. The metal car was much easier to work with since I could remove the bumpers, windshield, headlights and the like before priming and painting it dark blue as in the story. There was a decorative chrome strip on the side panels but none on the doors to accommodate the police badge emblem. I fixed this by AC gluing a short piece of sprue that matched the profile of the existing trim work. I also used the white wall tire assemblies from the friction toy to replace the plastic wheels that came with the Maisto model.
I then took varying lengths of pink LED light strips (I wanted to use purple but it they were just too dim for the effect I wanted to achieve) and placed them randomly inside the car securing them with hot glue. Finally, I fed the LED wiring to the electronics I had mounted on the underside of the base and then secured the car to the garage floor with a short bolt I hid behind the rear tires.
Realizing that the scene was a little lopsided, I got my hands on a 1/25 scale MPC Joker/police car (many thanks to Ronald Lambert from the RIMA for helping me track this model kit down. He had one!) to balance it out. I found as many photos of the Pennsylvania State police car for the same time frame of the story to get an idea about the paint job. Another stroke of luck was me finding a set of appropriate decals on Bay for the car. Additionally, I found a 1/25 scale police officer along with a police dog reacting to the lights and sound issuing from within the garage.
A brief video showing the Buick 8 in action. Be sure to turn on your speakers!
For the title card, I found a script style of font that resembled the style used in the1950's for chrome emblems of a car like a Chevy Impala or a Ford Fairlane. I created a jpeg file saying “From A Buick 8” using my word processor and the Windows Paint program. I then printed it out on my resin printer for a nice crisp appearance and painted the lettering chrome with a Liquid Mirror pen.
Looking back, this was probably one of the most time consuming and difficult dioramas I had built. I think if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably changed some steps to make the project less time consuming and hopefully much easier. Having said that, I'd be curious what Stephen King would think of my efforts. Hopefully, he'd approve. 8/1/24