GrahamB’s collection

[playmofire]

Heather calls set 3637 "Family With Suitcases and Pig??" in PlaymoDB. But there is definitely a pig there! The family must have taken the pig in Third Class with them if it wasn't allowed in the baggage car!

Maybe a salute to the Citroen 2CV the spec of which I think referred to eggs, the farmer's wife and a pig.

[tahra]

That's a lovely set - one day I must try to hunt down those hats....
(for the sake of completion )

[GrahamB]

Safari

There were fifteen early sets in this theme, issued between 1980 and 1987 (that includes four ‘Direct Service’ sets and five ‘Color’ sets). I haven’t included the ‘bedouin’ or ‘arabian’ sets 3415, 3585 and 3586. I tend towards the Wikipedia definition here;

“A safari (/səˈfɑːri/; from Swahili safari 'journey' originally from Arabic Safar 'to journey') is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in East Africa.”

The stickers that come with the sets refer to Expedition Ngorongoro. The Ngorongoro crater is a real place in Tanzania, next door to the Serengeti.

I set up a diorama with most of the sets, apart from the Color Safari Jeep and Biplane;

The backdrop is a picture of the Ngorongoro crater.

I made this picture with the help of Photoshop® a while ago. Looking at it now though, I am not too happy with it. The foreground perspective doesn’t match the background and some of the foreground still needs ‘editing out,’ especially under the trees on the right. I am tending towards thinking that photographic backgrounds are too ‘real’ for the abstract level of Playmobil models (which are less ‘real’). The foreground is a uniform green sheet of fabric with orange sand sprinkled on in places, which seems more appropriate than the photographic background.

Here are some pictures without the photographic background, for those of us who like to see ‘making of’ pictures!

[Klickteryx]

Those are great and the shot with the photographed backdrop gives a good sense of open terrain. The main issue for me is that the real ground doesn't match the colour of the photo. It probably would have been better to have an entirely sand ground with some clumps of green.