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Mr Steve making steady progress on many precious things I see! I'm liking that apothecary terminator- they're the lifeblood of the Chapter so terminator armour makes alot of sense to me! Realise he's 1st Company of course.

That Tyranid Warrior looks good! Liking the blues on the chitin, nice work there.

You should read the Asimov Foundation series by the way- and thank you for the tip re. Lensman! It's weird, that's the second recommendation for that series I've seen in a week!

Evening all, been a productive little period for me, although I’m not going to manage to finish the full squad this month, I have 8 veterans completed and ready to be based, which is great progress for me, the other two I’ve started blocking in colours so hopefully won’t take too much to complete. Although I feel that is wishful thinking given I spent two hours painting today, and I would struggle to explain what I did, the misses says small details and I’m inclined to believe, but it doesn’t feel like it should take that long to do, I suppose I was working on four models at once so ….

I’m happy with how they have turned out (the photos are from my phone so apologies on the quality and lighting), I realise I do need to do 6 backpacks now, and that is a minor miscalculation on my part but never mind. I know they aren’t exactly codex complaint with the gold trim rather than white, but they definitely have the veteran, 1st company, vibe going for them.

 Ragsta wrote:

Mr Steve making steady progress on many precious things I see! I'm liking that apothecary terminator- they're the lifeblood of the Chapter so terminator armour makes alot of sense to me! Realise he's 1st Company of course.

That Tyranid Warrior looks good! Liking the blues on the chitin, nice work there.

You should read the Asimov Foundation series by the way- and thank you for the tip re. Lensman! It's weird, that's the second recommendation for that series I've seen in a week!

Cheers Ragsta, trying to keep a few things going to prevent blue (UM) burn out, it helps that the others are small combat patrols that I’m trying to complete, so relatively few models. I think the Eldar, Tyranids and Tau all have about 20 models left to do to complete their various patrols (maybe 30 each at a push if I want to get all the of the models I have done). It is nice dancing between them and playing with other colour schemes. The Tyranid Warrior was fun to do, and relatively simple, just have the other two to build now and will probably try and get them both done together. I also have a bit of a soft spot for the Tau so look forward to doing a few more of them, I now need to figure out how to translate the scheme up so that it is suitable for the bigger mechs!

The Asimov series is great, I read it quite a few years ago, the first few books I think are the best, much like the dune series tbh! Two recommendations for the Lensman series, wow not bad for something written in the 70’s! I’m just reading it again at the minute and really enjoying it, the first book starts a little slow, but once you get into them they are great!

Woop woop, after a few hours, a glass or two of wine and no interruptions it is done. Back packs complete, models based and all ready to go. Formal pictures to be sorted tomorrow but happy the models are all complete, plus managed to get the pathfinders and tyranid warrior based as well. Heading to bed late, I’m not sure if the baby (13 month old) is going to give me the sleep I need to function as a human but I’m wishing!

The other two veterans have had the gold applied and washes on the reds and racarth flesh. I need to do base colours on the faces, the wreaths (greens) and bolt gun metal. Haven’t started any highlights, but they are starting to come together.

One thing I have realised is that trying to display them is going to be a challenge as all the models for the squad are at conflicting angles and so there is not a hope of them being arranged uniformly! Not a tonight problem, but when it comes to adding them to the shelves my OCD will be an issue!

No painting tonight, but managed to get the camera out to take a few photos. I still haven't quite figured out how to get the best lighting or angles to make them look as good as they do in real life, so that is a bit of a work in progress for me. Unfortunately when i do figure it out I will probably have to take everything out of the cabinet and snap some proper photos of them. Any tips would be more than welcome!

Until then - apologies for the quality - but here are the pathfinders, tyranid warrior and the 8 completed veterans.

No painting tonight, but managed to get the camera out to take a few photos. I still haven't quite figured out how to get the best lighting or angles to make them look as good as they do in real life, so that is a bit of a work in progress for me. Unfortunately when i do figure it out I will probably have to take everything out of the cabinet and snap some proper photos of them. Any tips would be more than welcome!

Until then - apologies for the quality - but here are the pathfinders, tyranid warrior and the 8 completed veterans.

Multiple sources of diffuse light. And lots of it.

This can be as simple as taping some parchment paper over desk lamps. You can use just normal paper, but be careful on how hot it gets on the lamps. Parchment paper is designed for oven use, so less spontaneous combustion. A dedicated light box, either purchased or constructed, is more ideal. You can get a nice one for less the a box of marines.

The first thing I see looking at that pictures are the harsh shadows. You get those from single sources of bright light. By having multiple sources you get light from one lamp into the shadow of the other. By diffusing the light you get it coming in from a wider range of points, and not a single harsh spotlight.

The crop on the tyranid is good. We are getting more of the subject in the picture, less of the backdrop. Dakka likes to resize the pictures to the same size on the screen. So if the minis are only a quarter of the picture, they are going to be real small on the screen for people viewing them. You can use whitespace/background intentionally to frame the mini, suggest motion etc. But in general to show off your work, tighter crops are the way to go.

Brace your camera/phone to prevent blur. Tripods and such are the tool of choice, they make adapters for phones. But just resting on a box to eliminate sway from just holding the camera in the air helps. Ideally, set a time to take a pic a second or two after you press the button. This way the jostling of your finger on the trigger is removed.

Sometimes you need to half click the button to autofocus. Make sure you let your hardware do it’s thing. Sometimes you get blur from depth of focus troubles. If you are hypers zoomed in right next to the mini, there is no way you are getting both the tip of a sword and the face in focus at the same time. The easy answer is to take the photo from farther back, and crop in to what you want. The long answer involves things like shutter speed and f-stop. I used to know that magic mumbo-jumbo, but everything is automatic these days, so I’ve forgotten how it all fits together.