We’re starting part two with our full dry plinth and the modelling is all done. It’s now finishing time, and we’ll see this unlikely potato transformed into a useful and naturalistic looking plinth! Keep the faith!
In the Jon Hodgson Backdrops books we mention that there’s a guide to making a scenic plinth to use with your backdrops on our website. And here it is!
In all of our own shots we boost up the model on a small piece of scenery to more easily cut the bottom of the book out of shot. There’s a guide to setting up your shots here, which includes the use of just such a plinth.
In this article we’ll run through the initial steps of hand-making a plinth. We should say in advance there are many, many ways to make such a thing. This isn’t necessarily the very best, or quickest way – it’s just how we do it. And you are of course to alter any of these steps, replacing any you see fit, or doing things in a different order. We find this way works well for beginners and is quite inexpensive. It also makes a great project to try with younger gamers/modellers. It’s a very forgiving technique.
Let’s take a look at some tips for how to make good use of the Jon Hodgson Backdrops books. It’s actually amazingly convenient and easy to take some really good shots of your miniatures with these books. And once you have your set up in place, it’s simplicity itself to grab the book, turn a few pages and select a different backdrop!
So for this walkthrough we’re shooting outside. We’re using a digital SLR, but if you’re using a phone camera nothing changes – the principles remain the same. You might like to find something to lean your camera on to keep it as steady as possible. Here we shot hand-held because there was plenty of sunlight. Remember, the gloomier it is, the longer it will take for your camera to gather the necessary light, so you’re more likely to get shakey shots.
Here’s the equipment we need for maximum convenience. Technical stuff!
The commercial licence was something we offered during the Kickstarter campaign, and due to the runaway success of the project we’ve taken a little bit of time to hone the wording and make sure it’s the plain English, easy to understand document we wanted it to be.
