Moana 2: Backdroppin'

DB says: I wasn't going to make the same mistake I made with the Tehachapi layout backdrop's fabulous 90 degree sky joins, so decided to cove the backdrop joins (cove? sounds more like a pirate word).

I applied some quite thin styrene sheet, held in place with pins while the glue dried, before hiding the pink [pauses for Beavis and Butthead interjection] with some white paint. I'd wanted to use photo backdrops on the Sawyers Bay layout, but with that no more, and buoyed by ECMT's instamodule success, I was keen to try them here, having snapped a bunch of shots from Moana earlier in the year for such an occasion. A little careful printing produced something that looked like it might work:
Initially I felt the mountains should be taller, but after putting a loco on the track and applying an eyeball, I think it's about right. I also had to bear in mind that there will be low viewing angles involved. Skies were brutally amputated from the pics with a sharp knife blade.

In the pic below, the first layer of blue has been applied (using what may have been the prototype for the world's first paintbrush) which barely covers the white. Next time I'd just do straight blue rather than starting with neutral white as it took multiple coats to cover. As you can see, Woodland Scenics (or similar) Plastercloth hills started to form at this stage over wire netting. Best to get some of the messy stuff out of the way before the backdrop is done and the track laid.
After a couple of goes, I managed to lighten the backdrop sufficiently with thin layers of almost-drybrushed white (keeping things lighter closer to the horizon) applied with a fresh brush. I really should have a little more cyan in the sky, but after holding a vote with myself, it was agreed that I could live with this and started attaching pictures with gusto and PVA. Of course, things couldn't possibly continue to go as swimmingly as they had been :Well, its OK from a distance, but there is still quite a lot of work to be done. The problem isn't the joins or white paper edge on top of the mountains - which can be fairly easily dealt with - but in the colours, which looked fine when I was printing them out (of course), but now they look a bit red in places, a bit yellow in places. The main batch were 'developed' to a consistent formula in photoshop, but a couple weren't. I thought I got them fairly close, but they are a bit off. The 'proper' way to do it, once the printing scale was figured out, would be to stitch them all together on the computer, process the colors on that file and then get someone with a nice big printer to print the whole panorama out on one long roll of paper. Still, a worthwhile experiment I feel, and all is not lost, for tomorrow I'm going to buy a beret and a cape together with some watercolours, and then cut off my ear, as I think this can be salvaged with a little artistic daubbling. A word that I just invented.