The entire model was primed with grey, then gloss coated with black. It then received a coating of ALCLAD aluminum. The tentacles were airbrushed with a clear blue; it is not as noticeable as I would have liked.
Then I dropped the damn thing and got to rebuild it a second time, lucky me!
The rest of the diorama evolved by accident. I realized that most folk wouldn't be familiar with what they were looking at after my wife thought the war machine was from Star Wars, Episode 20 "Revenge of the Tripods". Sooo I thought a scene from the book would be in order, depicting a gas attack on the English army. Only the artillery man survived and recounts the battle later in the book. To keep my narrative short all the features on the diorama were either kit bashed from Tamiya figures or scratch built. I did as much research as possible to depict the equipment the British would have mounted as a defense in this time period. For example the Gatling Gun was in use by the British home guard (reserves) as late as 1910. (See, even back then the reserves got the obsolete equipment, just like today). The newer Maxim machine was used by the regular British Army. And I scratch built them both from brass and plastic. The heavy siege gun was a resin kit but I added a brass barrel, elevation wheels, sighting devices, etc. The signal flags (Wig Wag) on the cemetery hill were used to communicate with other gun batteries as were the signal rockets.
The scenery came from a variety of sources including grass from my back yard. The tree actually is a piece of sage brush from the banks of the Rio Grande River, they make great looking trees. The structures were built from wood and the wall from stone glued to a piece of balsa. Oh, the smoke canister was fashioned from aluminum, a leftover from another project. The British Soldiers depicted a WWI uniform and I realize that is not the time period of which Wells wrote. But if you look at the cover of the Classics Magazine, it depicts WWI style uniform and I went with that.
Image: Tripod
Image: Survivor
Image: Hiding with the pigs
Image: Guns and casualties
Image: Martian's-eye view
Image: On display