My first attempt at OSL

[CreganTur]

Those who listened to the PVP/PA D&D podcasts know who Splugg the goblin is. I liked the idea of a goblin servant following my party around, but they also needed help on occasion, as my friend who plays our Wizard couldn\'t always come to gaming session. So I made Splugg into a Wizard, and much hilarity has ensued.

I found a great Goblin wizard Mini from Reaper\'s Warlord line. He\'s holding aloft a sphere, and I decided to attempt some OSL with this painting, along with a very small conversion and some fancy basing. I added the dragon\'s claw necklace, using 28 gauge wire for the leather thong and sculpted the dragon\'s claw with Epoxy Sculpt.

For the base, I mixed 2 parts Epoxy Sculpt with 1 part modeling gravel (a home blend for varied rock size); I also found an interesting looking stick to serve as an old log. The Epoxy Sculpt/rock blend was a little rough to work with at first, because it started falling apart. But after letting it sit for ~10 minutes, it hardened back up into a workable putty. After roughing it in place, I found that using a damp brush smoothed out the mixture enough to remove any stray fingerprints.

Here are the pics:

This is my first attempt at any OSL, so I would really appreciate some feedback. I ended up painting his entire body, clothing, etc. before tackling the sphere, mainly because I didn\'t decide on attempting OSL until after he was mostly painted. I also figured that the reflected light from the orb would look better if it was blended over the skin. As you can tell, I went with a bright, fiery glow. Does it work?

I created a custom blend of flock (woodland scenics- 2 parts Green Blend, 1 part Earth Blend). Then I added in some medium green static grass.

The pictures aren\'t as clear as I would like- I\'m using a Kodak Easy SHare C643. Great camera... just not for miniatures I\'m also having some problems with lighting and shadows.

As you can probably tell, this is my first post here. I\'m constantly impressedby the wealth of knowledge in this community, and I\'m looking forward to learning from all of you.

 

[Ritual]

First of all, welcome to the forum. If you study the contents of the photography section of the forum you may find useful advice that can help you improve your photography using the camera you already have. It\'s a lot more to miniature photography than having an expensive camera.

OSL is a tricky thing as it gives you so many parameters to keep track of. It gets more complicated if you have light with a strong colour (as you have here). It gets even more complicated if you have areas with a contrasting colour that the light will fall on (as you have here). You need to learn how a surface with a certain colour reflects light with another certain colour. You will find that green surfaces don\'t reflect red light. A pure green surface wouldn\'t reflect any light at all if the light was purely red.

In your case this would mean that the green skin of the goblin would only reflect the yellow portion of the light from the globe, as there is generally some amount of yellow in a green colour. Thus, you\'d have highlights shifting the green towards the yellow, but there would be no red in it. It is important, for OSL to work, that the light reflections seem like a natural part of the surface that causes the reflections. In this case, your reflections seem more like something opaque that has stained the green skin, I\'m afraid.

When doing OSL (with coloured light) I find it a good practice to start by highlighting each affected area like you would if the light was neutral in colour. Then, when the lighting part (the most important part, as it is a LIGHTING effect first and foremost) is finished and you have achieved a believable impression of light coming from whatever object it is that is casting the light, then you start introducing colour to your lighting effects. Tint the affected areas with dillute glazes of the appropriate colour (and keep in mind how the original colour of the surface will reflect the light you want to mimic). Also, be careful not to darken the reflections in the process. You need the light reflections to look LIGHTER then the area would if the light source wasn\'t there, not just differently coloured.

Another difficult thing with OSL is how to treat the ares that are NOT affected by the light source. Should these be shaded and highlighted as normal? Or, should they be darker than you\'d paint the miniature if you didn\'t do any OSL? I prefer to do the latter. Having the OSL object as the main light source will create a stronger atmosphere. You\'d probably want to have some slight general lighting, or you\'d be forced to paint certain areas more or less black (or at least, a very dull and featureless dark grey).

Hope this makes sense and I didn\'t get too technical. But, OSL really IS rather technical, so in order to do it really well you need to have some grasp of how light actually works.

 

[CreganTur]

Okay - it sounds like I need to brush off my lighting design notes from college (I graduated with a degree in technical theatre... but I work as a programmer lighting design was not my strongest subject).Everything you say makes sense - since white light would reflect green and some yellow, I probably should have highlighted the skin in increasingly light shades of green, blending toward yellow for the very brightest spots.

I think part of my problem was my source material- most of the reflected firelight photos I found were of real people... and orange would reflect on our skin more than on the green skin of a goblin.

Makes me wish I hadn\'t already varnished this piece, so I could fix these problems... maybe one day I\'ll purchase him again and paint an updated version or something

 

[Ritual]

Exactly! Caucasian skin (and lots of other skin types as well) would reflect both the red and the yellow light, thus taking on the colour of the light source much more.

But, see this as a learning experience and move on. We learn by doing mistakes and finding out what we did wrong. :beer: