Fallen Comrade

I didn't break Trash-Talk just for this shot. That's a feature of the figure. I posed him, Cogwheel, Striker Manus, and Badcube Sunsurge on some desert panels from ToyHax.

I created the fire wth my custom smoke brush. 

The background is a shot of Hollow Bean State Beach. I tried to blend the two together. Damn, California beaches are so dreary, even in the summer. I need to make my way back to Hawaii.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVOS1PZnMzUUhPWDQ

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Our jet judo needs a little more work

This was a simple project to try out my new camera. I've been using a Panasonic FZ-200 bridge camera previously. Now I'm using a Canon 70D. My workflow needs some modifying. Although I haven't figured out how to do the white background easily with the Canon, the figures are still very easy to extract because the edges are so much sharper.

Masterpiece Sideswipe, Badcube Sunsurge, and the parachute accessory from Mastermind Creations Sphinx were all shot separately. I used layer masks to place the parachute ropes in the figures' hands. The parachute itself was the most difficult thing to photograph because it kept wanting to return to a flat shape. The sky was shot on a cloudy summer evening, using a Hoya FLW filter. A final Warming Photo Filter was used to tie all the colors together.

Got Masterpiece Hot Rod incoming. That can only mean trying to recreate a couple of iconic scenes with him as I try to learn how to shoot with the Canon.

Direct link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVUkMtbjFlaktnM2c/view?usp=sharing

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Megatron Must Be Stopped

Since I don't have a spaceship figure or runway to photograph, I thought I'd try simply superimposing the figures on a screen capture of the scene. I still had to use the clone stamp to erase where the cartoon characters were peaking through the figures

The sky is from a summer sunset with a Hoya FLW filter. The hill is from a local park.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVSnFFZ1ZtU0JkcVU/view?usp=sharing

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Brothers In Arms

Sunsurge and Sideswipe were shot together, and the background added later. I used a layer mask to hide Sideswipe's arm.

The cracks and smudges on both figures are the result of a Render Difference Cloud layer with levels adjusted to simulate lightning, and then overlayed in black. Some of the leg panels were deformed with the Spot Healing brush.

The background is a close-up of a castle piece from some board game.

Hi-res image - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwxl1QbH6hwVdWN6c0hXc21ZWjA/view?usp=sharing

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Badcube Sunsurge

He just arrived yesterday. It's a pretty fun figure that will do for my Masterpiece display. Wonderfully, his transformation is not a copy of the Masterpiece Lambos and features another fun new chest collapsing mechanism that I'm starting to expect from Badcube releases. I seem to be having trouble with the left side chest panel though. You have to mistransform his feet to get him to be the same height as MP Sideswipe.

I used my Canon 500D Close-up conversion lens to photograph the included Chip Chase figure, but the normal lens to photograph Sunsurge. I kept his bottom out of frame so I wouldn't have to spend time blending him into whatever he's sitting on. The background is a summer sunset shot with my Hoya FLW filter. The mountain is just a rock from my garden with a field blur applied.

The Chip figure is actually larger than what I'm showing here. I wanted to more closely match the scale shown in that particular scene of the cartoon.

Hi-res image: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwxl1QbH6hwVOFBEZEpIWE1Sczg

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