Preferred Pic Size

[Ovus The Peon]

Ok. I\'m just getting razzed here because I posted some mini\'s and BAM! Somebody gave it a two. Now, look, I\'m not saying it\'s the greatest job in the world. Heck, even I gave it only a 5. But I think it\'s at least 4 quality work. lol

Anyhow, I\'m not going to sweat one vote, but we started talking about how the same mini posted with a smaller sized pic gets a better score. And whether or not that\'s in the spirit of the site...etc...etc.

For instance, here is the same mini painted by Viking Lodge (not that I strive to paint to this standard, but you can usually rest assured that if the mini is Reaper, you can find it in Viking Lodge\'s gallery):

http://www.coolminiornot.com/go.php?go=sendafriendphp&id=29803

And here is my mini

http://www.coolminiornot.com/go.php?go=sendafriendphp&id=30861

Now, I think the viking lodge mini is clearly better than mine. It\'s a cleaner paint job and the highlighting appears to be much cleaner. So VL is prolly a 7 and mine is somewhere between 5 and 6. Prolly 5.5.

But the observation was made: \"if you make your pic the same size as the VL pic, you\'ll be within half a point.\" And then the layout sofware came up...and the image capture...and it turns out that the VL mini is a 45% shrink...ie, it\'s about 55% the size of my mini.

So, I shrunk my pic, and sure enough all the goopy detail fades away & the mini looks much better.

The question is, at what point does the size of the mini get too small? I\'ve seen comments that \'any mini looks well blended if you make the pic the size of an icon\'. Is there a generally acceptable face size? (GAFS?) Or, maybe a GAFS range...like from 18mm to 25mm....or some pixel size.

What rule of thumb does everyone here use when posting their mini\'s?

 

[Sand Rat]

Hmm, I try to make the pic at least 55% the size of the mini - but then again I havent posted in a while - my advice would be dont worry about the comparison - hell, if I worried about that I would never have posted in the first place.

 

[Ovus The Peon]

Originally posted by steelcult
my advice would be dont worry about the comparison

Not worried, interested. If I wasn\'t interested, I wouldn\'t post the mini here (it doesn\'t matter to us soul painters, anyhow). But since I\'m interested, I find it devilishly interesting that a market of voters would price the same mini higher just because it has a smaller pic.

Which leads me to ask, is there a \'best case\' size for a pic? And if there is a best case size, I\'d want everyone to use it for their minis so I can eliminate a potential confound. Because...back to point the first...I\'m interested.

You Austin people....wait...where am I?

 

[Sand Rat]

There is nothing wrong with being interested in what comments are left on your minis. What I am trying to say, and doing so poorly, is that I wouldn\'t take the advice of one person on mini size. Pick a size of photo that you like to work with and go with it - just make sure that the picture is big enough to see, especially for us worn out old dinosaurs.


By the way, where are you located?

 

[Ovus The Peon]

Originally posted by steelcult
By the way, where are you located?

Right now, Austin. South of the River.

 

[Dr. Bob]

Someone suggested making pics about 400 pixels wide, so that\'s what I\'ve been using as a guideline.

I think it\'s a good compromise between too small to see what\'s what and so big that all the little flaws are magnified.

(p.s. It\'s all subjective of course, but I looked at your pic and feel that a 2 is unwarranted.)

 

[wightzombie]

your mini is darn near what id consider perfect size. and id give it at least a 6 since it is ABOVE table top quality.

but certain factors should be taken in. the better you are, the bigger you can post. the better the camera, the bigger you can post. for your mini with a nice camera id say your size is perfecto! take into consideration if it was a dwarf, scale your mini in comparison to this one. if its a dragon or ogre maybe go a bit bigger but dont go crazy in scale comparison. and testing sizes always helps a bit. maybe make 3 sizes and see which looks the best and offers detail yet not overblown. now for other people with say, a lower quality camera and not as much shading as you id say go a bit smaller. not much at all but just a bit. also you can reclaim lost details by sharpening your pic with photoshop under filters.

 

[Ovus The Peon]

Well, I posted a slightly smaller pic (#31043), and it looks like the corallary is: no difference. Both have 44 votes and virtually the same score. So....I\'m going to start posting smaller pics. It\'s easier (logistically).

 

[Trevor]

Pic size does make a difference to how it looks, but I will look very carefully at the pic to see if its having an effect. Certainly on the larger pics where its \"blown up\" I take the size into account. Often I\'ll know what the mini looks like in real life, so I can pretty well gauge if the pic is accentuating any errors in the painting. This was a problem for me with my old work digi camera, it had a very good macro and you could see everything (down to little specs of dust on the mini) things that were not visible even when you held the mini right up close.

Its interesting how photography affects minis, changes how they look and can be used to hide defects or make something look blended when its just layered. I\'m pretty sure that GW make use of this to improve the look of the rank and file in their armies, certainly looking closely at the pics, some of them seem to be quite coarsly lined, but they look almost blended if you don\'t look too closely (this isn\'t a criticism, just an observation and there are people here that would know for sure).

Its a bit like fashion mags, where most of what you see is a fantasy created by the photgrapher and a bit of airbrushing and photoshopping, same can be done to minis.

 

[Trevor]

oh and your mini: 7 for the painting skill level, but I don\'t like the colours so a 6 for that, gives you a 6.5

 

[Flashman14]

I\'m with Wight . . .size is fine - a 6 it is - (it\'s solidly over tabeltop)