Hobby tips: Take better pics, easily!

 

 

Looks like crap right?

 

Something that I see time and again, is people who put a lot of effort into their painting, but who cant do justice to their work when taking photos.

 

That's fair enough. If you wanted to be a photographer, you'd have started that as your hobby instead. But rest assured, there are some simple steps that will dramatically improve the quality of the photos you take!

 

 

First up, the tools you'll need:

 

All you need is some blue tac, a paint brush or similar, a piece of plain paper (grey is a good colour as its not too dark or too bright) & somewhere with some decent indirect light.

Note: the tripod is optional. 

 

A separate note on lighting: avoid warm or frosted lamps as they will change how the colours of your mini show up.

Get some clear light blubs & point the lamps directly up rather than at your mini.

I use $5 lamps from a discount store with $2 bulbs from the supermarket. I have one set up either side of my desk. Its also worth noting that all these photos were taken at night..

 

 

 

Next, setup: 

 

Blue tac your piece of paper to a wall as shown above.

Put another wad of blue tac underneath the paper & stick your hobby tool in it (this helps get the angle of your mini right for the pic).

 

 

Place you mini so its in the middle of the paper, above the tool (it should be on a bit of an angle).

 

 

Lastly, take the shot:

 

Get in close.

Real close.

Keep your camera steady (if you are not using a stand, try putting the camera on a flat surface in front of the mini, or balance it on a paint pot, spay can lid etc.)

Note: be careful your shot only includes mini & background. This helps to ensure that the camera has the white balance & focus correct by reducing the amount of things in the photo.

 

 

That's it!

Cameras these days (even the one in your phone) are so good, that they will do the majority of the work for you if you just give them something decent to work with.

 

Now, go on & take some good photos!

Army painting: Daemonette step by step

 

Okay, so this guy obviously isn't a daemonette.. but he was as close as I could find from what I had laying about.

This is a quick step by step I whipped up to help a mate get his army painted.

 

One thing that's worth noting is that the key to this technique, is the undercoat.

I have sprayed black all over. Then sprayed at aprox 45 degrees with gray before a final zenithal (90 degrees) coat with white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All told, this took me only a couple of minutes to paint, including dry time!

 

 

Painting re-work for Golden Demon '12 - Pt2

Okay, so part 2 of my re-work of my mounted Nurgle lord..

I put a lot of focus into adding contrast & depth as well as finishing off some details..

I feel its now looking much better.. id rate it as 7.5 or maybe 8.

So still definitely work to be done.. But its almost there.

Let me know what you think!

Painting re-work for Golden Demon '12 - WIP

At a recent tournament (Event Horizon) I got some somewhat unenthusiastic feedback regarding the paintjob on what I affectionately call fatty & stinkbeast (CSM Nurgle lord on daemon mount).. which prompted me to look a bit closer at it myself.
Turns out it was actually a bit.. uh.. lacking.

Im really happy with the model itself & it has many really enjoyable aspects from a painting perspective.. its just the paint didnt do it justice.
So I figured I should go back & re-work it to a level it deserves - Golden Demon level that is!

Underpinning this is a core strategy I plan to use to help me in my crusade to win a demon: Objective revision.

The basic idea is that once you have painted something & you are pretty happy with how its turned out, take the best pics of it that you can.

Once you have the pics, review them as if you were judging someone else's work..

You know when you look at something on CMoN by a stranger from the other side of the planet & you think.. "well this bit is all right.. but what the hell where they thinking there?! nah.. ill give it a 6."

You will cringe at the amount of little things that you forgot to go back & finish, or that looked good at the time.. or that you just plain missed!

It might sound like common sense.. & ive heard of this before.. but this is the first real time ive ever applied it to my work.

In the example of fatty & stinkbeast, it wasnt bad before, it just didnt have the impact it needed.

At the time I finished painting it before, I though it was brilliant.

After having it reviewed by some impartial judges though, I realised that how I saw it & how it actually looked just didnt match up..

Once I looked at it with an impartial & critical eye, I realised there were areas that were simply washed, or even just base coated.. admittedly they were in hard to get to spots etc, but in GD? Thats instant knock out material!

There were lots of little things that I had become so accustomed to during the hours I had spent painting the model, that I simply didnt see them any more.

The main thing though, there was no where near enough contrast between the rider & mount.. they looked like one big blob of the same colour without the detail to back it up.. I realised that I would have rated it maybe 6 or 7.

It certainly wouldnt have made it past regional level in GD.

This is what he looked like before:
Click pics to view full versions:

Not good enough.

So I set about changing the base colour of the mount.. aiming for higher contrast I went for blue & started building back up from there.

The result so far is much darker overall & the contrast between rider & mount is far more pronounced.

This is it now (Note, the colour is a bit dull due to taking pics at night.. but its WIP anyway):

So that is the result of my first objective review.

There is still more work to be done.. Some of the saddle details, the axe & horns for example..

but once thats done, I will take more pics & perform another objective review.. & I will repeat this process untill I would objective rate it at least as a 9 before I even bother to enter it into a GD.