Joining the FtW Blogger Group

So i just got an email from Ron, accepting my request to join the
++ From The Warp ++ Blogger Group! Im still waiting on more information about the group, but im just about to upload a new title banner with the FtW blogger logo on it! I have to say, i'm really quite excited to be joining FtWBG - At the moment, my interaction with other gamers is limited to my friend Chris and the guys in the local GW. I'd really like to meet and talk to other gamers, and it seemed to me that this was an excellent route to take!
If you want to read more about the FtW Blogging group, you can on this page - and here is the logo

STC-Defense Laser Turret Tutorial

Just came across this tutorial about making very nice STC defense laser turrets for 40K, or similar futuristic game systems...

Miniature Photography

So after my last post about miniature photography, i figured that i would try out some of what i had read, and try and improve the quality of the photography on the site.
The first thing that i did was to setup a sheet of white paper, underneath my OTT-Lite. OTT-Lites give out "daylight" (that is, light of the same frequency as daylight), so it gives a very natural look to the models. You can see this setup in the picture below

I decided to use the HQ from my Tau as these were the impetus for learning more about miniature photography - I really like my small Tau army and wanted to put it online for a few people to take a look at. Unfortunately the only photos i have of the Tau are low res phone cam pictures, not really suitable for a blog!
Once i had the miniatures setup, i placed the camera approximately 3-4 inches from them (on the picture above its about where the edge of the green cutting matt is). I then found the first problem - the OTT-Lite was casting very bad shadows, which you can see in the image below:

So i used another angle poise light that i had lying around and taped a piece of toilet tissue over it. I moved this around trying out various shots, which you can see below, in their "raw" state:

Once i had taken a couple of dozen shots, i pulled them all in to photoshop, and after consideration chose these two images to work with:

Ive only performed basic operations on these files - I've altered the size, cropping and adjusted some colour balance...

So, my first proper attempt at miniature photography is done, and i have to say, it went "kinda" well - On the plus side, the images i have captured are a lot better than the previous attempts. But the colour is still a little too blue for my liking (the greys are too blue in the images - in reality they are a much more neutral grey). Oh well! Practice makes perfect!

Photography of miniatures...

Given how bad my miniature photography is, as can be seen by the shots on this site, i decided to do some reading about photography of miniatures. And i came across this blog post on "From the Warp" - There are some excellent details on there about photographing miniatures which i will hopefully be able to apply to future pictures that i take..

Addendum! Ive also just found this very handy post about how to make a home made Lighting box for photographing your minis

New site design...

Well ive finally found some time to sit down and edit the theme for my blog... I quite like it at the moment, but im sure that in a few weeks ill decide that i dont like it and change it round again.. But for the moment, im happy

Imperial Flags

So ive been working on my imperial guard a lot recently for a big game i have coming up. One thing that i noticed that was missing was flags - I wanted to have a consistent flag style throughout the army, so ive designed on in photoshop, using the Aquila shape that i used in my last post.

It a generic flag design, i simply add the unit name and serial code in to the scroll boxes and then print it out.

Ive included it below. Feel free to use it for whatever you want. Its all my own work, except for the purity seals which came from here and which i subsequently scaled down. I tend to move these for each unit, so they dont look too uniform.
Ill include some shots of the flags within units once the game is out of the way!

Aquila custom shape for photoshop

Recently ive been working on flag designs for vehicles and units. My general system for working with flags for my army is to design it in Photoshop and then print it out. Whilst this doesnt look quite as good as doing a full flag work up, using thin metal sheet and painting the design in place, it does have the advantage that it is quick to do, gives a good uniform look to the army and means that i can have many chances to get exactly the design i would like without having to re-undercoat and start the design from scratch.

Anyway, the thing that i find myself needing a lot is the imperial aquila (the double headed eagle!). After a long time of simply drawing it again and again, i decided to create a Photoshop custom shape using paths. That way i can simply drag a single vector shape on to the flag and have it rescale nicely each time i resized the image. I figure that this would be useful to other people, so i have made my custom shape available here

This custom shape was created for use in Photoshop CS2. Im assuming that it will work in other versions of Photoshop as well, but unfortunately i do not have access to other types of photoshop to test this - Let me know if you get it working in other packages!

You are free to do as you wish with this shape. Obviously it is based on Games workshops IP (and i make no challenges to this), but the actual shape was entirely my own work, based on a sketch that i did. The only thing that i would ask is that you dont claim to have created this shape yourself!

Below is a basic version of the Aquila, to show you what it looks like. Hopefully other people will find this as useful as i have...