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But too slow really .. never going to get an army done at this pace am I ?

Who cares how long it takes when the end result is so fantastic!?

Sublime Argos, your the second example of a drilled launcher I've seen in as many days. It seems everyone has had this idea except me .

The white on the launcher is excellent, especially when considering it comes from a black undercoat.

The base as we all know is superb.

In conclusion, you make me love and hate you equally, lol

The two bits that make me happy were the impact bumps on the back of the wall ... subtle but they feel right and on the front of the wall there is a a gathering of detritus in the corner between the wall panel and the post. I was looking for a realistic feel and they did it for me

I still have the same platitude as everyone else...these are amazing and inspirational! the more I see the more I want to emmulate your attention to detail! i have already ordered a few bits and things to ransack for my attempts later on this year! so plase keep me inspired and keep doing more work please!

Here is a current group shot ..



If you want to see closer there is a MUCH larger version here!

Not the best composition or lighting I could manage but at least it shows the work

AMAZING! JUST F#@K'N AMAZING!!! Brother Argos I can't wait to see more!!

Are you just using chipping to highlight the black?

Some areas are shaded first .. and then highlighting applied .. but primarily in areas where the armour would be likely to be chipped by contact with other things.

On mister Missile Launcher, shouldn't there be some debris in front of the wall? If the bullets didnt go through, then there should be bullets and metal bits there, along with whatever rust would get knocked loose. Just a though, they look great regardless.

I had a long think about that ... and actually none of the bullets penetrated (a look on the other side confirms this) ... most would be squashed and probably embedded in the steel plate/wall.

Thats why I did the dark mark in the centre of each bullet mark ... the rust would be blasted off as the bullet hit, as small particles and would most probably settle in a radius around the area, none of it large enough to see.

It was a good day today, I got the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle I have been working on for the last 15yrs. In that time I have often photographed miniatures, but it has always been a casual thing, I never had the quality of image I desired. I have slowly improved my camera till it did what I wanted, never the best as they cost a lot of money, but I have a reasonable camera for taking pictures of my miniatures. My wife has a better camera than mine in most peoples perceptions, it has 10 megapixels to my 5 megapixels, almost the same optical zoom and a slew of options for taking pictures on the fly and getting a good shot. What mine has that makes it work for me is a power socket so I can power it externally from a wall socket, therefore it never needs charging. It has a good macro option with a x5 optical zoom and finally I got a wireless card for it, so that when I take pictures they magically appear in my Pictures folder sorted by date for me.

So a camera I can leave on all the time, that transmits the pictures to my computer automatically and has a good macro ability is what I have, its a Casio Exilim Pro Ex-P505 for those interested (a bit old now). However one of the important parts about taking decent pictures is the lighting and in that area I lacked significantly for a while till recently I discovered a supplier of cheap photo studio lamps! They are a bit pricey at £30 ($45) each, but come with a very good 135w (light output not electrical drain) set of daylight bulbs. Over the last 3 months I have been buying one a month and the last arrived today, so I got to setup my "Studio"!

Here you can see the setup for yourselves: -



My Camera is mounted on a small Slik Mini tripod, the lamps surround the area and I do not need a light tent as I have diffusors that cover the bulbs (being fluorescent they are not that hot). There is a "Lazy Susan" turntable in the middle with some white plasticard stuck to it. I have marked the centre of the plasticard/turntable so I know where to put figures and it is aligned with my camera on the tripod. Behind the turntable and stuck to the wall is a sheet of plasticard to give a decent white backdrop. Luckily it in a position which is semi permanent, the only thing I would need to use there is the book scanner its sitting on top of, which to be honest is used rarely in these days of black library publishing electronically.

Here is a close up view showing what I see when I am taking a picture, Note I use the grid setting on my camera for alignment on my shots and have a Histogram display showing the light range so I could in the past try and adjust for poor lighting. The diffusors covering the lamps help to distribute the light evenly over the area and reduce bright reflections, my wife thinks they look like small shower caps <sigh>



The bulbs are an odd umbrella shape which you can see in the two pictures below: -

From the side:


They throw out a huge amount of light, approximately 405w into a tiny space and have the significant advantage of being a constant colour, unlike before where I had a mix of incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs and fluorescent. With that degree of diffused light, you can get a decent bright well lit photo without too much photoshop work being done after!

From on top:


Its taken me a while to get the components I wanted, but I am quite happy with the result.

You will get to see some of the results yourself in my next major post ... which will be a Green stuff / sculpting post

Glad your set up is finally coming together. I think its important for those younger dakkites to remember getting all this stuff does take time as you've pointed out.

Lennysmash wrote:Glad your set up is finally coming together. I think its important for those younger dakkites to remember getting all this stuff does take time as you've pointed out.

And money. Mustn't forget the money.

Now that I know what I am doing, I think I could get the lighting down to around £60 for all three lamps, which makes the cost more manageable.

Ikea Tercial Lamps : £8.16
Rocwing 135w Bulbs : £9.65
Rocwing 27cm diffuser : 1.89

Total : 19.70

3 x Total = 59.10

Rocwing can be found on

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Rocwing

I can recommend their service and delivery

Awesome, thanks!

Arakasi checking in. I *really* need to check out more SM blogs with quality like this lurking around. Love the attention to detail, especially the bases. Colour me inspired

this is really great! that missile launcher guy really kills it, i would love to see an army at the level of that model!

Hey BrotherArgos

It would make my month if you'd start back up Sorry for revival

Im really disapointed now. Please dont thread-necro BoA, its just annoying.

Sorreh, just wanted him to know we miss him D:

A PM would've sufficed.

Yea, I'm sorry I'll know better next time.

WOW!

Inspiring stuff.

Not only are you gifted in modeling and painting you also write up a very detailed blog, packed with all sorts of inspiration.

Kudos.

EDIT: Sorry for the thread Necro, saw the last posted date but not content and thought it wasn't that long ago :(

how do you do your amazing looking lenses??

Wow, thats not even close.

Thread is being locked due to thread necromancy.