Custom fireball explosions for dioramas

[darklord1967]

Greetings Everyone!!

I have recently received many inquiries regarding my technique and procedures for creating realistic FIREBALL EXPLOSIONS for my various custom diorama displays.

I am putting together this short step-by-step tutorial for anyone who is interested!

-Cheers fellow customizers!

[darklord1967]

The first consideration I had in my approach to fabricating explosions was to determine what SIZE I needed the fireball blasts to be. Since these blasts would be scaled for display with my custom 1:9 scale figures, I determined that I needed explosions of about 12” in height.

I began by fabricating tough, rigid, transparent under structures for each explosion that I wanted to make. The basic general shape of each fireball would be a mushroom configuration (a short, slender neck base with a large sphere above it). I created these under forms with 8” diameter clear “neckless” acrylic globes. These were fabricated with a single 3.75” circular hole.



I purchased a single 12” long, 4” diameter clear acrylic tube. I cut short tube lengths of about 3” to use as the “neck” portion of the mushroom.
The 4” diameter tube section was glued over the 3.75” diameter hole on the globe to complete the simple transparent mushroom.

[darklord1967]

I wanted to establish a nice bright internal light source for these explosions that would be wireless so that I could be free to position them anywhere on my diorama I wanted.

I elected to use these flame effect rechargeable LED lamps.



I glued two of these lamps together and they fit perfectly up inside my plexiglass mushroom shape.

[LonnieFisher]

You say eight inch diameter globe, but the picture shows a ten inch diameter globe. So is it really eight or ten inches? Just for clarification...

[darklord1967]

I created the billowing flames of these explosions using Polyfill fiber stuffing.



I spray painted wadding sections of polyfill in yellow, orange and black…



… and then attached it in controlled layers to the plexiglass mushroom form with 3M spray adhesive.








With the fire effect lamps positioned up inside of the fireball explosion shape and turned on, the effect is pretty spectacular!




During my recent LEGENDS OF GOTHAM CITY CITY EXHIBIT, the full charge time for the internal fire lamps of these explosions EASILY lasted 8 hours of continuous use without dimming.

[darklord1967]

You say eight inch diameter globe, but the picture shows a ten inch diameter globe. So is it really eight or ten inches? Just for clarification...

I actually used an 8 inch globe. Sorry for that confusion.

[LonnieFisher]

These look so awesome! You do such excellent work on your custom stuff.

[darklord1967]

These look so awesome! You do such excellent work on your custom stuff.

Thank you so kindly, buddy. I do try.

[sprytel]

Thanks for posting the "how to". Those explosions are so dramatic and eye catching... I definitely was curious about them when I saw your diorama pictures. This is an ingenious design.

[shaunaconda]

Really cool!

[rykerw1701]

That's awesome! And thank you for the time you took in posting all that.

[battmasterson]

So very cool.

[darkbros]

Too awesome, and yet so simple to make! Great job!!

[blastphemey]

Thank you for the "how to". I would not have expected them to be that simple for how awesome they look!

[danadoll]

That is so cool.

Dana