Friday, August 8, 2014

What's on the bench.

Just a quick post, more to keep up my painting and blogging mojo more than anything else.

Here's a couple of shots from the other day of some 1/72 figures from the Caeser Fantasy Adventurer set.

Nikon D5100, 18-55mm lens, Macro (Flower Symbol) setting. Afternoon reflected sunlight.
I'll try to start captioning my photos with what I remember of the camera settings and conditions. These guys were all based and then primed gray. I wanted to try different things with the flesh so three of them have territorial beige (?) as a base flesh color while the odd one out has the yellow ochre to provide a base for Dwarf Flesh. Wartchemakalit (2nd from left) has also had her hair done in Camel I think. Nanoc (far right) has had bestial brown applied to the leathery bits, Botgun Metal on the sword, and some kind of brown (probably Burnt Umber) on the hair.

D5100, 18-55mm lens, Macro Setting, Afternoon sunlight, brighter day?
So I did a little work, apparently fixated on "Not Legolas" (or I guess by my naming convention, Salogel.) The figures with the darker base skin tone have all had Reaper 09045 Tanned Highlight painted on. Nanoc in particular looks a little like how Arnold was painted up in "camouflage" in the 80's Conan the Barbarian.


Well maybe not even. Anyway I ran through all of my new Rosemary & Co brushes and I want to say I did the edge detail on Salogel's tunic with the #1, although it might have been the #0. I got #2 down to #2/0 and they all hold a nice point.

Next up I brought out my oldhammer ball & chain fanatics and Goblin Shaman.


During the Anologue Hobbies painting challenge I painted their flesh in Hauser Light Green. What shocks me now is that a quick perusal of the internet shows nothing but Night Goblin Fanatics.  I personally found the Night Goblins to be a total cop out sculpting wise. For me a sea of robed figures is "BORING".


In the above picture I was trying to show the painting of the foot wraps. This is 9AM-ish sunlight through te blinds, directly down onto the table. Too many shadows etc.


Same time, blinds adjusted to be parallel with the sill causing no direct sunlight. Much better. The first of these three was taken in the afternoon. My window faces East, so more direct light in the morning. All of these were also with the Nikon D5100; 18-55mm lens; Macro setting.  One other thing I'll note is that in these last two pictures there is a little too much clutter around the figures. The Macro setting can be your friend, by having a short depth of field, but you need to take into account that even blurred out clutter can be distracting. Especially if it is a bright color.

Welcome to R.A.E. Gingerbhoy of Gingerbhoy's Painting Projects, a fine painter and figure converter.

14 comments:

  1. Thanks for the welcome Sean. And thank you for the compliment.

    I like the look of those 1/72nd miniatures. It's a scale that I played with as a school boy, but never seriously as a gamer. I'm always curious when those type of troops are displayed on blogs, and it gets me thinking about why they aren't used more in the UK gaming scene?

    As to your cameras ... Well, I googled them, and, let's just say comparing yours with mine would be like comparing the NASA moonbuggy and The Flintstones car :))

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    1. Cheers Roy. I decided to start buying 1/72 (20mm) stuff when i took the plunge to get back into the hobby. There is some pretty cool stuff these days, although a maddening lack of Sci-Fi. I was aware at time of writing that my camera is not what one might consider an everyday camera. I definitely think it may be gilding the lily. I do think it is making it possible for me to take the kind of photos I want to though. I will be showing other types of cameras as I think I have access to more consumer market stuff.

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    2. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a camera such as you have and would really make use of it, if I did. But I'm a boring git, with lack of transport or daily excitement, so I'd be stuck for things to take pictures of :( With me it's just a point and click camera, for the miniatures, is all that I require. Anything I buy will have to make itself pay the cost back with good photo's for eBay. Either that or I try and get a job for Playboy as a photographer ~ on second thoughts, no. Toy soldiers can be demanding masters, imagine all those 'diva' models :))

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    3. Hi Roy, yes. I'll be covering that aspect of trying to get the most bang for your buck. Ultimately I'm hoping that we can get some kind of idea as to how we can squeeze that value from whatever camera we have at our disposal.

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  2. The goblins are definitely better in the last shot with the more diffuse lighting. Not only are there no lines from your blinds in the picture, but the models also don't cast such deep shadows.

    As for the background clutter, I agree that it's distracting. However this could be taken care of very easily by cropping the picture; you've left a good "margin" of neutral colour around the figures themselves.

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    1. Hi Hugh. You are correct. What I was mainly trying to get at with that photo, besides showing how impatient I am, was that direct sunlight may not necessarily be the key to "good" pictures. Cropping does cure a multitude of sins. Again my style of photography is, much like my parenting, "do what I say, not what I do." I did not spend any more time than to line them up so they would all be in focus and then fiddled with the blinds. Hardly prepping the shot.

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  3. Looking good Sean, love the Conan inspired figure.

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    1. Thanks Ray, his twin brother Canoc has an axe the size of a briefcase that he's waving overhead. That fantasy set has some really nice sculpts in it. I guess copyright laws are lax in Russia. Or wherever Caeser is from.

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  4. Great progress on those 1/72, I don't know how you do, my eyes just can't cope with the smaller scale.

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    1. Hi Michael, to be honest I didn't think I could do that level of detail either. The Rosemary & Co. brushes made it achievable. A brush with a good point makes a huge difference. I do have a magnifying visor, but I've taken to just squinting over the top of my glasses. One benefit of trying to do fine detail on 1/72 is that it makes 28mm figures seem huge.

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  5. Good progress and great reference to Conan (1st and only worth watching). For the camera, pretty smart to write down the configuration... I am definitely not make for photography

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    1. Hi Cedric, the figure itself is referential. I do love the original Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer sucked. I actually really liked the new one with Jason Momoa. It had some problems, but in many ways was itself referential to the 80's movie. Somebody complained about the nudity in it, a complaint that I found preposterous, but in the directors commentary he gave the reason for it. He said if anyone asked for a role for their girlfriend he said sure, but they had to be naked. Now it all makes sense. Also if you have the commentary by John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger take a listen to it. It made me appreciate that classic even more. And I'll try to keep up with the camera settings.

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    2. thanks for the advice on the commentary. Conan is not a big sale in Hong Kong and I was disappointed in the recent one. I found it nice but without character.

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    3. Hi Cedric, many fans of Conan were disappointed. I was so excited for this movie that I may have ignored its problems. The story was weird and parts of it did leave a feeling of SyFy Channel movie, but the scenes with Jason Momoa kicking ass were great. And the kid Conan killing the Picts all by himself.

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