Photoshop with Steampunk Backgrounds

We worked with Battleground Hobbies creating several cool Steampunk props. You can see how they were built on the Battleground Blog. There is the Raygun Pistol, sword and holster, Goggles, Raygun Rifle and Power Claw. Some of the posts show photos of the entire ensemble and many individuals asked where the location shots, like this one,  were taken.

Well, they weren't in any exotic location, they were all taken in a nearby urban neighborhood. The beautiful backgrounds were taken throughout Europe and supplied by Kosmograd.net. You can view his Photosteam on Flickr. Using the wonderful tool of Photoshop, we did photo composites of the individual photos.

Take the image above. The "Steampunk Vostroyan Guard" came from this photo:

And the Kosmograd background titled "Where's Waldo" taken in Belgium looked like this:

First, he background was flipped horizontally so the lighting matched better. The Guard was cut from the group photo, inserted and scaled to fit. His lenses were darkened and hat brim lowered to cover the space above the goggles.

Using the "levels" highlights and shadows were adjusted and the "dodge" tool was used to lighten the right side of the hat and shoulder. The final touch was a lens flare. Gotta love the lens flares.

This was another shot on the front porch. Not very appealing as a background.

So we found this one from Kosmograd. I immediately fell in love with it. The background  from an old plant in Germany, lighting matched almost perfectly

Once the guard was outlined we dropped him in and adjusted his color.

The last image is from a water supply also in Germany. The lighting was truly beautiful.

After cutting the guard out, he was inserted and the lighting needed adjusted. Adding in the orange glow to the guard was the finishing touch.

Have to say we had a blast building the props and compositing the images.

Enjoy!

Photoshop fun with Warhammer 40k miniatures!

Just a quick post on Photoshop fun because its been a while.

Joshua recently finished painting a Warhammer 40k Orc Warboss and we thought a nice photo of him in an environment would be groovy. We played around with three different images and settled on this one for the finished photo.

OK, here is the photo of the figure Joshua painted...

and here is the photo of "Urban ruins" we found via the internet. I'd give credit if I remembered where it came from!

We used the image adjust, "levels" to set the mood and then used the "Burn" tool in order to add the proper shading to the warboss. All in all the finished piece only took 30 minutes and most of that was outlining the warboss.

There is a blog post featuring the Orc Warboss on Battleground Hobbies blog with lots of images of Josh's work for you to check out!

Enjoy!

Finished Ork Loota and Burna Boyz!

Back in December we posted a few images of upcoming projects, you can see the post here. Well we never let you see the completed product.

Here is the finished Ork mob of Lootas and Burnas.

You can see additional images on Battleground Hobbies Flickr page.

Enjoy!

Finalized Warhammer 40K Dreadnought and forthcoming projects

Well it was a busy day with quite a few projects being started. All in all a great deal was accomplished. here's some work in progress shots as well as a few finished pieces. We'll post completed images when they get finished!

We started off getting a squad of ork boyz assembled and primed. They really are primed, just not in this image ;] 

The nob, or squad leader, received a barrel extension and in orky fashion, a crude bayonet.

A  squad of ork lootas and burna boyz was also assembled and primed.

And last but not least, we created a great city fight base for Josh's dreadnought. The details on how we did this are posted on the Battleground Hobbies Blog.

 Here's a few more images of this beauty.

Enjoy!