Ok Help me improve. Please

[atacam]

I painted A Zeïren Miniature a while ago, took pictures and posted them up. I got a few comments on some other forums, that they would have scored the mini higher, but the photos looked yellow and over exposed.

So with this in mind, I did some jiggling and took more pics, in my opinion, much better ones, hoping to maybe get half a point more(8.5) maybe even my first 9(i wish), but all it has achived is th esame score.

Can you guys look at both pics, and tell me where I am going wrong on the second one. Maybe the pic isnt showing all the highlights, or colours, but if you give my your opinions, I can look at the actual mini and compare/take note.

Or if you think its underated please say, and maybe help me get higher.

Thanks for taking the time to look.

I have put them side by side, so it is easier to compare them.

If you would care to do the voting thing here is the link to the second version, as I will probably be removing th efirst version soon.

Second Version Voting Pics

 

[Ritual]

I think your new photos look better than the old ones, but at the same time I can see why the scores are a bit low. This is a large miniature and still the photos are quite small. Some areas still look quite impressive, the steel parts in particular, whereas other areas tend to look a bit nondescript. The skin looks very uniformly white and the dark brown show little nuances. Also, the gold parts lack in both shading and highlighting and, thus, look a bit flat and un-metallic (if that is a word? ). I also think the tree stump and the green flock is a bit of a let-down. The green flock looks very uniform in colour and not very life-like and the tree stump also look a bit \"fake\" (I\'m not sure if that is due to the painting or the sculpting of it, or a bit of both).

I don\'t mean to sound harsh here, but these are the things I picked up on. The paintjob is incredibly neat and smooth and if you can get the details I mentioned right (or show up better in photos) I think you\'ll see your scores rising.

 

[uberdark]

i actually like the second set better. sorry

this probably makes you go. wtf mate.

rock on though

uber

voted btw

 

[Ritual]

The second set IS the newer set, right?

 

[atacam]

Originally posted by Ritual
The second set IS the newer set, right?

Yes.

Thanks for your time Anders.
Some of the comment you have mentioned, are down to the photography, so there is one area I need to sort, the stump and grass are definitly down to my painting. This I will research a bit and maybe change/redo the bases on all my Devourers.

Thsnka so far.

 

[Legacy Account]

The pics are too small. They need to be twice the size I reckon.

It\'s difficult to rate a mini highly if you can\'t see exactly how well (or not) it\'s painted.

 

[NerdyOgre254]

:flame: i honestly think you should stop whingeing. seriously, if i could paint like that, i would feel better. Damn, i wish i could paint like that. making me feel all sad now.

 

[Ritual]

Originally posted by NerdyOgre254
:flame: i honestly think you should stop whingeing. seriously, if i could paint like that, i would feel better. Damn, i wish i could paint like that. making me feel all sad now.

No matter how good you are you still want to progress. It is frustrating to feel that you\'re stuck at a level, even if that is a high level, and, despite all efforts, your painting doesn\'t go anywhere. The better you get the more difficult it is to raise your level.

 

[War Paint]

Don\'t think there\'s a lot to choose between photos except that mini could be a bit nearer so details can be seen, especially if you\'re after that 9.

I think the paint job is excellent, but I agree with Ritual. looks as though some areas have almost been forgotten - for me weapon shaft and claws appear plain with little highlighting (Could be because can\'t get close enough though)

 

[Wren]

A couple of points about the non-difference in scores that aren\'t directly about the painting, since I think you\'ve already gotten more useful feedback on that from others than I can give...

The first is that I think a lot of CMON voters/viewers are pretty adept at looking past photos as much as possible in assessing minis. I\'m not saying the photo doesn\'t make any difference at all, I\'m more saying that the difference in score between an average photo and a good one is probably not dramatic as most people imagine. My own experiment of a crappy photo versus an almost okay photo yielded a vote change of .4, but I\'d venture to say the difference in photo quality and what could be seen/judged in the old versus the new was more dramatic than in your pics.

There\'s another important difference between your photo experiment and mine (other than you\'re also doing it with a much nicer mini, of course. ) Your original pictures were posted in August 2006, where I posted my two pictures a month apart. I think voter expectations, particularly for the higher level stuff, are always pushing upwards as the top level painters push the envelope of what can be achieved. It\'s a gradual shift, but once you start comparing the scores of minis from 8-12 months ago to ones posted today, it may be enough to account for a few tenths of a point of difference. (What I mean is the pictures might have scored a bit higher if they\'d been posted around the same time as the old.)

This is in the low 8s, so you\'re already getting votes of 9 (and probably a few 10s), which are counteracting the votes of 7. (And you are almost certainly getting some votes of 7 or less from very critical voters, people who vote everything other than their favourite company\'s minis down, etc.) Shifting up out of the mid-8s (something I aspire to myself) needs a piece that inspires a lot of votes of 10 in a system where a lot of people rarely or never vote 10.