A recent scene on my Los Angeles Junction layout. My current focus is on putting a lot more thought and attention into the background sky/horizon photos that I crop in. The laws of physics being what they are, it’s impossible to look at our models and have the same sensory experience as actually being at […]
Category: Realism
LAJ ops Insights From the Professors
One nice aspect of modeling The Los Angeles Junction is that there are a few retired employees on the forums who are very generous with their time from the standpoint of explaining how they did things. Additionally, there are a handful of highly energetic young videographers who do a great job of documenting the routine […]
Color Palettes & Percentages
(Note: What follows is a copy of my December newsletter) The above image (taken in 2024) showing a quiet back street in Mankato, MN is about as unremarkable as they come. And….therein lies the point. It’s ordinary, it’s typical, it’s everyday. It’s what the eye is used to seeing when we’re out and about. The […]
Slow Your Role Dude!
Slow your role Dude….visually (sheen and saturation) I mean. In the November 15th blog I discussed the importance of understanding how atmosphere and distance de-saturate subjects and also remove any gloss. Vehicles are an important element of our scenes. However, out of the box they over the top in terms of gloss and saturation. We […]
The Elements of Skill
Decisions related to color strategy and composition make a far greater contribution to visual impact than manual dexterity, rivet counting, or “detail dumping”. The culture of our hobby would lead you to believe the opposite. There are two components of skill, manual execution and decision making. Decision making entails knowing “what to do” and, as […]