electric indigo

This time for real - in 1/20!

My suggestion for night shots would be to start with the backlight setup. Play with the angle of the kit towards the light source, adjust the background independently. If necessary, you can adjust the levels in Photoshop and clip the depth value until you have a pitch black background. The "space" shot of my Galactica was made that way. For more of a night impression, you could slightly under-expose the shot or adjust the medium values with the graduation curves tool.

I have the Entertainment Bible #19 with additional MADOX material, but I don't want to cut it apart for scanning... With all the Megazone, BGC, Gall Force & Rheagall Force material, it's my favortite Artmic collection.

So - will there be Aztecs?... _ I made some real progress on my V-Siren (about time...) First there's the scratch build head armor Some heavy blending on the legs: and I finally found the formula for the Neptunium Now on to the fun part:

Dr. Leavitt was the coolest character in that movie! I wonder if the Gundam writers will follow Tomino with killing off roughly 30% of the female cast...

Amazing beast! There's still a heavy debate going on inside my head wether I have the space to display it properly.

Don't worry, looking at HMA's records, it will probably sell for affordable 5000 Yen...

Yeah, I still have to recover from the genderflip in RDM's Galactica – when they gave Apollo a male haircut...

A new attempt to make a LOGH IP kit, this time from HMA Garage (who produced the Patlabor II aircrafts): "Legend of the Galactic Heroes Brynhildr, the flagship of the Empire Decided to make a plastic model kit on 1/8000 scale! Supervised by Mr. Kato of Studio Nue and Mr. Otsuka of Modeling Studio Alba Creates Under intensive development to leave in the history of the galaxy"

Looks good enough in that photo . What paint did you use?

Osprey gets tough: Is anybody else reminded of the Millennium Falcon in the Hoth escape?

Since the subject comes up on a regular basis in other threads, I thought we should collect & share our approaches in a place where we can retrieve the information more easily. I hope this will help get the best representation of the hard work we put into our builds and inspire our fellow modelers. Some basics first from my personal perspective: You dont't need a high-end SLR to get good photos of a model, a point-and-shoot camera or phone will give excellent results with the right setup. It is desireable, however, to have control of the aperture, since this determines the depth of field. Generally speaking, a higher aperture value will give you a larger area where the object is in focus – unfortunately, this means that the aperture opening gets smaller and you need a higher amount of light to get the right exposure (picture brightness). That's where a tripod comes handy, because you can compensate the need for more light with a longer exposure time. I prefer to shoot in natural light, but of course photo lights will give you independence from daytime and weather conditions. My backgrounds are in most cases sheets of strong, colored paper, leaned upright at the far end against a pair of water bottles. The bend radius of the paper will give you some control over the gradient in the background. This is a tabletop shot in my sunroom, the main direction of the light is from the back, but it's also coming from basically all directions. It provides a good look at the paintjob and the kit's details, some modulation of the shape (which would be less in a frontlight situation), but it's also a bit bland from a dramatic perspective. This is a similar perspective, but a whole different setup. I took it in my bathroom, which is small and has a very defined light source, a window giving soft, north light. Again, the light comes from the back, but there is much less bounce light from other directions. The sheet of paper is just large enough to block out the background, so the light can flow around and produce this nice highlight situation. Here's a test shot on my workspace that gives you an idea of the setup. After shooting my models for years with a wide angle, low focal lenght to make them appear bigger, I recently found out that I like my aircraft shots much better with a high focal length: I think that way they more closely resemble mid-air shoots of actual aircraft (that are taken with high focal lengths for obvious reasons) and the foreshortening provides an interesting impact.

Ok who makes a Zeta Gerwalk?

Greatest hits:

Regardless of the thickness issue, the print from the Mars looks awesome; such a smooth surface! What are the max. printing dimensions?

Made my way through Army of the Dead last night – what a waste of time. Some visuals where great, but the lazy, incoherent writing and self-indulged directing ruined the experience; it was like watching two 10-year-olds having fun with their action figure assortment in a sandbox. Best bits came from Notaro, who was apparently having a blast on her greenscreen experience. I leave the rest to Ryan:

I like most of the Eclipse design, it introduces new shapes while still being recognizable as something from the Gundam universe. Unfortunately, the head doesn't follow this direction. Needs more Xi or Zeta there.

The blog points out that the small scale makes it easier to display the whole fleet.

I'm still stuck in prep hell with the V-Siren. Checked the pose for the 100th time and adjusted the shoulder armor layers. One more go at the angle of the feet... I also want to add a piece of additional head armor that's in Nagano's illustration

Pricey, but preordered.

Gripen E in splinter camo!

More Lo-Viz

So stealth is not an issue anymore?

The Myung figure is new...