Model: A Behind the Scenes Look

Okay, took a ton of pictures this weekend, and my computer is gasping at me. Hope to fix that situation this evening. Anyway, I did promise some behind the scenes look at creation of some of my pictures and possibly a bit more.

Today we will be looking at my picture for "Model", to refresh your memories, here it is again in all it's glory:

Now, lets see what went into it. As you can see there are quite a few images merged into this. Lets look at the original main image, and several other ones I wanted to deal with. First off, these sprues are from some Warhammer Fantasy Battles miniatures that I never got around to cutting and assembling. Been a good 5 years since I even played the game, but I digress. I figured these would be a good starting point for the "IDEA" I had for this category. The trick was selection of the right sprue and background of the whole image. Here are several test shots of what I was attempting. I ended up going with this image out of all of them due to the angle and ease of focusing other images. I am not a image manipulation guru, I am just picking up some tricks here and there...
Next, I had to assemble a whole batch of "accessories" and heads for the picture. Originally I tried getting a friend of mine who had modelling experience to be the source images for this. Alas, schedules didn't work out and time was limited. Hence the selfies used here in the final product.

I ended up not using one image, but that's okay, I can deal with that.


Of course I neede my hat as an accessory.

Now I could go into further details about how it was done, but that gets too technical. Needless to say I spent a lot of time masking, scaling, and cloning to get the image just right. It took a lot of time, and work to do it. I am glad I got an honorable mention in this category, and even happier with how original it was. No one else did something like this. Till next time.

Softboxing: Miniatures

Well, the soft box is mostly a success. I think I need more light in some cases though. Will be working on that. In the meantime, I am starting to document my Warhammer miniature army. Fantasy battles for those that are curious. Don't ask how many. There are just a lot. Some I have had fun with.

A Do It Yourself Project: Table Top Soft Box

Okay, this post is a little technical but I just had to share. I got a little ambition this past weekend and went on a whirlwind tear cleaning my apartment. I know, I know, not even close to the annual spring cleaning. Up shot, I found some foam core board that had been gathering dust and I had a clean table to work with...



So what do I do? Mess it up by making what's known as a soft box. A device that diffuses light and reduces hard shadows with strobes. At least that's what I think it's supposed to do. So a bunch of cutting and bending and folding later this is what I ended up with..




A quick little test to make sure my strobe fits...


Just a few more details and it was almost ready. Tinfoil and a cloth front.



So a little bit of effort, ingenuity, and use of trash junk SUPPLIES that have been hanging around my place and I end up with the following. First is with my places "natural" light then the soft box, with a white back ground and finally with the cloth cover in full soft box mode.











I think I will be having a bunch of fun with this new device. Expect a lot of shots of my Warhammer miniatures in the next little while. An old hobby meets the new passion.