Imperial Armour Model Master Class Vol 1

I thought i would write a quick review of Imperial Armour Model Master Class Vol 1 which ive just recieved from my darling wife as a birthday present!!

First off - the presentation of the book. As usual for Forge World, it is an impecably packaged product, being presented in full colour and on glossy paper. As per the Imperial Armour books it is an 'oversized' book (roughly the same size as the Apocalypse book from GW), and the photos are lavish with detailed text accompanying each photo.

The book is split in to 17 chapters. Each chapter focussing solely on one model / diorama at a time. Each chapter is long enough to give you the key points with regards to this model. By doing it in this way, it forces you to read the whole book before you jump in, because techniques sometimes feel like they are spread throughout the book. However, each technique is demonstrated clearly and with simple steps.


Lots of the book focuses on the preperation and painting of rust and weathering (A good thing!)
Unusually for a Games Workshop publication it actually includes references to materials other than those manufactured by GW themselves, in this case specifically mentioning several brands of thinners and pigments to use.

At the back of the book is a small gallery showing a battle taking place over a custom gaming table with apocalypse size forces, including a couple of titans. These photos are simply stunning! Infact in many ways this book is worth possessing simply for the quality of the photos, even without the text (although the text is very good). Simply looking at other peoples work can inspire new ideas for working with your own models.

This book is clearly not aimed at the inexperienced modeller however. In several places on the book cover and in the introduction is clearly states this - with good reason! Without a good grounding in basic / moderate miniature preperation and painting it will be hard to make the best use of the information contained within.

I have absolutely no reservations in recommending Imperial Armour Model Masterclass - although it is an expensive book to purchase (£26), in my opinion it should be required reading for any serious 40K treadhead! The photos are excellent, the text is informative and well written and the layout is clear

Minature Photography II

Just came across a second post by Ron over at From The Warp - This time about lighting when photographing minatures. This is another excellent post, and well worth the time to read. When i get a chance at the weekend i'm going to try out some of the things that Ron suggests.. You can read the article here

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