Next up are the distinctive cigar band banners. The artwork was created in MS Word using a dark gray background (as opposed to black). I set my HP printer on “Other Glossy Inkjet Papers” and ran MicroMark white decal paper through. I did this mid-week and allowed it to dry until the weekend. A few liberal coats of Glosscote sealed the surface.
Finally, a thin film of Micro Set was applied to the face of the structure and the decals were applied.
Painting the structure gives a better sense for what it will look like. First, the roof was painted, weathered, and masked off. Next up was a base coat of Rustoleum Light Gray primer. Finally, I dusted on a very pale gray.
Next on the list is creating the artwork for the distinctive cigar band banner and printing out my own decals.
More work this weekend on NCS. Finished roughing out the Atlas Middlesex structure on the right. Added an elevator shaft and smokestack. Added Tichy architectural details.
The primary center structure of National Cold Storage is fairly straightforward to build being essentially an exercise in creating a sheet and strip styrene cube. I have to give some more thought to what I want to do with the shorter brick structures that flank it on each side. In the mock up it’s taking on a larger footprint than I might want.
Our hobby is a visual one. It’s hard to overemphasize the power the camera lens gives us in terms of allowing us to experience our work in a way that is simply impossible with the naked eye. The only limits are our own imagination. When we are lucky enough to hit the mark photographically, the payoff is that of being transported to the time and place we’ve worked so hard to create in miniature.
To create a shot like the one above we need to have a strategy going in. There are two pillars that make up the foundation of what you see above. First, the camera angle needs to be low in order to create the sense of mass that is so captivating about our subjects. Trains and ships are huge, our models are not. (The N scale boxcars in the photo above are only three inches long). The advent of exceptional smartphone cameras opens up an entirely new world from the standpoint that you can get the lens so much lower than with the a traditional SLR. Strategy 1, use a smartphone. Second, it’s all about the lighting. In order for a shot to “snap” you need contrast. That means using photo floods NOT diffuse flourescents or room lighting. For most shots I use just one photo flood.
The final step of creating the image is some touch up. Blemishes, dust specks, minor modeling errors, etc. were lightly cleaned up with the clone tool. I bumped the saturation up just a hair (10 on the slider bar).
With experience we all learn that certain details just aren’t practical to model so be liberal in applying the old adage, “no detail is better than a crude or bad detail”. Guy wires and flags are no goes. If you try to model them, the eye will immediately key in on the fact that your subject is a model. To get around this, I photoshopped both in. The guy wires on the mast were edited in using the lines tool (medium gray not black). The drooping flag on the back was found on the net, sized appropriately, and cropped in.
This one image took about a half day to create but to me it’s worth it to have something you can enjoy looking at for many years into the future.