Saturday, May 9, 2015

A quick side stroll over to Terrain.

I have always loved looking at game tables full of fantastic terrain. Whether home made or store bought. It really does pull a table together and helps immerse us in our games. I get tired of seeing green felt cutouts count as "forest" etc.

I had the chance to grab a peasant house that was made of resin from Novus Design Studios.



It came from Miniature Market and had a bit of credit in my PayPal so this wound up costing me about $3 out of pocket. My first mistake was not looking at the scale. I could have sworn it was for 28mm but its 15mm. Not a big deal as it will still be fun to paint and will look good in the display case.

Here is where things are starting to go off the rails.

Bubbles! I understand that resin can have bubbles. I get its a pain if you don't get it just right. But seriously? Bubbles on the sides. On the tops. In the middle of the gate?!? Please if you work for or know anyone at Novus, please ask them to review quality control. I don't mind bubbles on the underside of things, but come on man.





The other issue that I have is it appears that the resin was not fully cured. The resin is "slick", even after letting the piece take a nice long soak in warm soapy water and scrubbing with a brush.

We shall see how it reacts after drying when I try to prime it.

So overall its a really nice design and I can't wait to paint it up. I just hope that the little farm house is salvageable.

Oh and here are the rest of the pics.







Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Someone got a new camera!

Let's talk cameras. For a while now I have been using my iPhone to take the pictures you have been looking at on this blog. I have tried everything I knew how to do to make them the best pictures I could produce given what I had. I used a light box with good lighting. I would crop and adjust white levels as best I could and the results were just ok. Better then some but not anywhere near amazing.

My wife's uncle came to visit and he is a photographer, and in a stroke of generosity I was given one of his older cameras. I now find in my possession a Cannon Rebel T2i (if anyone cares can be found here Canon Rebel T2i).

Here is what the setup looks like now for shooting pictures.



Yes I just took a picture of my camera, How existential is that? 

I now have the equipment to take amazing photos. I just have to figure out how! I am also playing with Adobe Light Box and I might even dabble into Photo Shop.

So stay tuned as I work out the bugs and hopefully deliver much better content (picture-wise anyway). If anyone reading this has any advice/resources to offer I am all ears and would eternally grateful.

Until next time.