Lighting

I'm currently setting up the photo shoot for the pirate box for my website and I thought I'd show you how I'm going to light this.

I like to keep lighting simple. I'm using my brightest light overhead and I've got a less powerful light on the left side to fill in any shadows. As you can see, I've rigged up some ghetto soft boxes for both lights.

A soft box softens the light making the shadows softer and much less ugly. Though you can buy them for hundreds of dollars a piece, you can also make them for free using a plastic bag, tape, and some cardboard to keep them away from the bulbs (you don't want to start fires).

This black board will be held up by my lovely assistant to darken the background and provide more depth to the photos. You're pretty much trying to do two things in a photo: provide adequate light and not flatten out the piece with that light. There are a thousand million rules beyond that, but that is what the real objectives are.

That worked well!

Here's the top relief sculpt all done! I've given it a copper patinia. Now I just need to put a frame around it to clean up the edges. It's 3/8th inch thick at it's thickest point (the coins). I've also finally purchased a handle that will be given the same patina and attached today.

Sculpt tight sketch

Here's the tight sketch for the relief sculpt that will adorn the top of my Pirates Box. The actual sculpt for this is finished, but I'll post those pictures another day. There will be negative space cut out for the lettering on the flag that will, of course, say "Pirates" in the Windlass font.

containers and such.

So I've got a lot of stuff here for my box. First of all, I'm working out the new instruments players will use to measure distances for their fleets. As you can see from the first image, it's just in it's template stage. In the second image you can see I've completed the treasure chest for coins, the terrain box for all islands and terrain, and the dice rolling box to help roll little and normal size dice (without it rolling off the table, or knocking over ships and things). I've also purchased a glass bottle for the dozens of little dice I have. I have to confess the treasure chest was purchased. I DID sand, stain and shellack the chest. I've also lined the bottom with felt. But, yeah, I didn't build it. The dice box and terrain box are completely made from scratch. The latch and hinges are lifted from cheap boxes from Micheals.

Stained, clothed, divided!

I've stained my box with a Mahogany Red and then shellaced with an amber tinted shellac. This worked extremely well and produced the results I wanted! I then lined the inside with red felt and created dividers for my cards. These too were stained and shellaced.

Pirates box update: sanded

Sanding is completely done! It took so much longer than I thought it would! I guess 74 hour work weeks don't help.

Quick drawing for my nephew

A quick drawing for my three year old nephew who loves all these things. ... don't we all though...