Subject: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:16 am
Sensing that I'm on the right track with my indoor dio building and my attempts at creating rocks and vegetation, the next step in the test process was to get something to simulate a blue sky. For this I selected a 4.5' roll of my favorite brand seamless paper, Savage #31, Blue Jay.
The photo was shot with a single camera mounted Nikon SB700 speedlight and bounced into the ceiling, at 400 ISO, f.8.0 I had to do a bit of adjustment in Photoshop because I only used one flash instead of my usual two. You can judge the results for yourselves, but I quite like the effect.
The next step is to build up a lot more rocks and vegetation for the background.
Last edited by Kimono Troop Command on Wed Mar 31, 2021 12:29 am; edited 1 time in total
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FIELD STATION 42 Admin
Posts : 4101 Join date : 2018-03-22 Location : South Central Utah, USA
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:13 am
The sky is superb, very natural appearing!
Excellent lighting, no trace of glare.
I am really liking the "rooted" look of the foliage! I wasn't sure going to such lengths would be worthwhile... but it was worthwhile!
Your artifical rock work is among the best I have seen anywhere! Adding the rooted plants makes it even better!
_________________ ... DAVE
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:16 am
SCU_HQ wrote:
The sky is superb, very natural appearing!
Excellent lighting, no trace of glare.
I am really liking the "rooted" look of the foliage! I wasn't sure going to such lengths would be worthwhile... but it was worthwhile!
Your artifical rock work is among the best I have seen anywhere! Adding the rooted plants makes it even better!
I find that it comes together as a whole, the whole...the rocks, the vegetation, the sky being more than simply the sum of their parts.
BAMComix Admin
Posts : 15348 Join date : 2012-11-07 Age : 52 Location : Birmingham, England
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:54 am
Fantastic Gary! as Dave says it looks very natural. I believe MiskatonicNick used something very similar too . Your troop will be off on many new adventures soon!
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:55 am
Only an alternative suggestion of course, but I've had success using this stuff, which comes in many other variations. I like this particular version because the sky is the major part and you can easily eliminate the land. Plus you can move along for different shots, thus avoiding repeating the exact same clouds.
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 12:59 pm
The Rocks and vegies do look superb , really well done . Not sure why but I am kind of reminded of a scene from vintage Star Trek episodes .
_________________ " There will be no Mercy ." Chip Hazard .
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 3:07 pm
Chip wrote:
The Rocks and vegies do look superb , really well done . Not sure why but I am kind of reminded of a scene from vintage Star Trek episodes .
You are reminded because the rocks sort of resemble those at Vasquez Rocks, where several Star Trek episodes were partly filmed, including:
The Alternative Factor Arena Shore Leave Friday's Child
The location was also used in subsequent TV series as well as three of the movies.
RealSarahdactyl Action Sailor
Posts : 496 Join date : 2020-07-30
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:24 pm
Great work Gary! It has come together nicely!
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:53 pm
RealSarahdactyl wrote:
Great work Gary! It has come together nicely!
Thanks, Sarah.
Guest Guest
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:00 pm
It all goes together very nicely and naturally. You really get the impression it is set outdoors. Like motion picture 'sound stages' you are able to control the environment, rather than rely on the whims of mother nature. It will also allow you to control continuity as you control the lighting. Nice work.
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:21 pm
If you compare to the real outdoor shots, clearly the outdoor shots are more convincing when properly set up.
This being said however, shooting on location involves a lot of problems, not least of which is dragging all the stuff you need with you. Added to that, travel time, changing lighting and weather conditions, curious passersby wanting to ask all sorts of questions, children wanting my figures, and so on. So while shots made indoors are fairly obvious, just as they most of the time they are shot on a sound stage, the advantages of doing it all at home where possible outweigh the less realistic look.
FIELD STATION 42 Admin
Posts : 4101 Join date : 2018-03-22 Location : South Central Utah, USA
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:31 pm
Action figure hair presents enough challenges without adding "wind" in to the equation.
To my eye, while I do like natural settings, placing obviously artificial figures in an artificial setting somehow looks right... or perhaps, less wrong or obvious than having real actors on cardboard sets.
Of course, there is, or was, a certain visual charm to programs and motion pictures shot on artificial sets; it is a look that I personally prefer to the overly-digitized motion picture backgrounds prevalent today. That's probably a generational preference more than an an accurate indicator of which approach is "better."
_________________ ... DAVE
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Tue Mar 30, 2021 11:46 pm
SCU_HQ wrote:
Action figure hair presents enough challenges without adding "wind" in to the equation.
To my eye, while I do like natural settings, placing obviously artificial figures in an artificial setting somehow looks right... or perhaps, less wrong or obvious than having real actors on cardboard sets.
Of course, there is, or was, a certain visual charm to programs and motion pictures shot on artificial sets; it is a look that I personally prefer to the overly-digitized motion picture backgrounds prevalent today. That's probably a generational preference more than an an accurate indicator of which approach is "better."
When you get down to it, there is something to be said about artificial sets for artificial figures. As for the TV sets of the 60's and 70's, they tended to lack a lot of small details for a couple of reasons. We'll take Star Trek (TOS) for example. It wasn't an average TV series...the per episode budget was $300,000 per episode in the first two seasons and $200,000 per episode in the 3rd season. (This was enormous for a TV show incidentally, and much of the money went into paying for the special effects) They used two sound stages for the production. One was completely taken up by interiors of the Enterprise, while the other was set aside for the planets they'd visit every week. So for every planet they visit, they had to create different sets and between episodes, these sets are torn down and replaced by new ones. So they were necessarily simple, as cheap as possible to build, and lacked a lot of the details and clutter you might see in real life.
The exact same could be said for shows like Get Smart, Mission Impossible, Dragnet, Adam 12, and many others that required the characters to spend parts of each new episode in some place that looked different from the places they were in in the last episode. I think this started to change in the 80's with Hill Street Blues into the 90's with shows like The West Wing which had sets with huge amounts of detail. But these shows has much higher budgets.
Kimono Troop Command French Resistance
Posts : 2191 Join date : 2020-07-25
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:07 am
SCU_HQ wrote:
Action figure hair presents enough challenges without adding "wind" in to the equation.
To my eye, while I do like natural settings, placing obviously artificial figures in an artificial setting somehow looks right... or perhaps, less wrong or obvious than having real actors on cardboard sets.
"
It just occurred to me now, looking at the photo again, that what it reminds me of, both in lighting and scenery, are the catalogue photos Hasbro used to shoot for their GI Joe line, and which I suppose Mattel used to shoot for Barbie and so on. That may be why it "Looks right." If you are a certain age and would go through the department store catalogues we'd get every September in advance of Xmas season, this is the sort of studio shot catalogue photo we'd see, so it may be that it's triggering old memories.
FIELD STATION 42 Admin
Posts : 4101 Join date : 2018-03-22 Location : South Central Utah, USA
Subject: Re: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:18 am
Kimono Troop Command wrote:
It just occurred to me now, looking at the photo again, that what it reminds me of, both in lighting and scenery, are the catalogue photos Hasbro used to shoot for their GI Joe line, and which I suppose Mattel used to shoot for Barbie and so on.
By George, I think you're on to something!
There's a topic here on the forum that features some of those old catalog images:
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Subject: Blue Sky for Indoor Dio 
Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:16 am
