A Year in Miniatures 20: Death
Today’s miniature comes from Anvil Industries’ Daughters of the Burning Rose range. Imaginitavely named “Death”, she’s an ominous, shrouded figure with a scythe, looming above a pile of skulls. There’s definitely a theme here.
I picked this model up months ago because I wanted to try out the range, then dithered for ages trying to decide how to approach this paintjob without it looking like the Muppet version of the Ghost of Christmas Future. Ordinarily I’d structure the paintjob around the face as a focal point, but in this case I knew I wanted to go with the spooky empty hood version of the model. It was only when I was looking for opportunities to practice object source lighting that I hit upon the idea of the figure being lit entirely by the glowing scythe blade.
Actually executing on this idea almost immediately ran into problems - OSL is not something I’ve done much, and while I found getting the highlights in the right place reasonably simple, getting the relative brightnesses correct took a lot longer (I’m still not entirely happy with it, but it’ll do). The biggest barrier I ran into was actually entirely of my own making. I’d intended the scythe to be the only light source for the model, but I quickly realised that the side facing away from the blade lacked any visible detail. I went back and forth between potential fixes for a while, before completely incidentally taking a photo near a purple light. In retrospect, add a second, more diffuse light source of an opposing colour is such an obvious solution that I’m a little embarassed not to have thought of it first.
In retrospect, the green/purple combination is probably not what I would have chosen - it ends up looking a little bit Joker for my tastes. This is very much a problem of planning, and changing my mind about overall colours part way through the process. Whatever OSL-heavy project I end up doing next, and I’m sure it will surprise nobody to learn that I have one in the works, will definitely have much more carefully selected hues! I also need to give some thought to my photography setup as finding lighting that actually allows the OSL effect to be captured was a real challenge, and it still looks far better in real life than in any of these images.
This is the first of a few miniatures I’ll be posting over the next few days as I finish photographing and writing up the last handful from 2022. Up next, an actual comission for once!
01/01/23
Weeks Elapsed: 52
Miniatures Finished: 42
