Photo Blog.

Hello there, I have recently started a Photography blog. 

How the other sized live.

go over and take a look, there might be something over there you like :) 

Star Wars Film Cell Light Box.

I love star wars and a while back i got a lot of film cells on ebay of the three original star wars films.

  I guess these are from the remasters from some times in the mid 1990s.

I got loads and chose 8 of them and backed them onto a piece of card and used to have them on a shelf. 

They weren't getting looked at as much as i really wanted, so recently i decided to see if i could make something more cool and useful.

This is how i went about making some film cell light boxes. 

I started with the film cells. 

Using my ipad as a back light i looked through the cells that i had to choose the ones i wanted. 

After i had chosen my favorites i started to work out how to go about displaying them. 

  

I measured all the film cells and found that i had six of one side and two slightly longer. 

I could have made all the display mounts the same size and just crop out the top and bottom of the longer one, choosing my favorite cells from the long sets, but i decided to show all of the long cells. 

After measuring them i drew them out and got a frame. The frame i got (i got two of them) was a deep shadow box style photo frame and was 12inch square.  

The reason i got a deep frame shadow box was so whatever lighting i put behind the film cells would have space to diffuse and spread out and illuminate the film cells correctly. 

After getting the frame i got some card to fit in the frame.

 I cut out the holes for four of the film cells. There will be four cells in each frame. 

I divided the cells in to two groups, one for the rebels and the light side and the other group for the dark side and the imperial fleet. 

 To mark out where to put the lights to illuminate the cells, i put the card into the frame and left the glass out so i could draw directly through the holes in the card onto the back board of the frame.

 Once i had drawn through the holes i marked a middle line for the LED strip. 

I sanded each frame down to make it nice and smooth 

 

Then i painted them a nice mat black. 

 

 While the frames were drying i started on the lighting.

 

 The LED strip i got had places for you to cut it every set of 3 LEDs so i cut the strip to the closest (but always longer) length to the holes cut for the film cells.

After Wiring the four strips together following the positive and negative markings on the LED strips, i glued and taped them into place on the frame back board.

 To fix the Film strips onto the back of the picture frame card mount i cut very thin (narrow) strips of clear tape and taped them to the very edge of the film strips. Also on some of the strips that extended more above and below the tops of the holes i used more tape to hold the film strips in place. 

Once i had them in place i then taped a sheet of Layout paper (pretty much tracing paper but just a little thicker) to diffuse the light from the LED strips. 

Once i had every thing set and fixed in place i added a small press button on the reverse bottom of the frame to complete the lighting circuit.

  

 I chose a momentary switch so the frame wouldn't always be on and run the battery out, also you have to interact with the frame when you want to view the film cells.

I like it because new people come to our house and ask/look at the frames they have to discover what they look like for them selves.  

Custom carded Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru Star Wars figures.

 Custom Star Wars Carded figures.

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru

As some of you reading this might know, I'm a little bit fond of the film franchise Star Wars.
I love the toys that were produced for the original films and have collected them i recent years (after my childhood collection went as dust to the wind in many house moves) i have been collecting the original figures, I'm not too bothered about the condition as long as they aren't broken in some way.
I have made a display case for the little fellas,  I had the pleasure to meet David Prowse and Jeremy Bulloch last year, knowing i was going to meet them i wanted to get something unique for them to sign for my collection so i looked into Re-carding my vintage Darth Vader and Boba Fett figures.  and doing so with the re-card kit i thought it would be fun to make some custom figures from the films using similar techniques.

Re-carding Boba fett. 

  Re-carded Original kenner figures signed by Jeremy Bulloch and David Prowse.

Custom made Lars figures.

The first step i took was to do some googling of card backs to make the custom ones as authentic looking as possible.

I found the highest quality images on the googles.

I also searched for screen grabs of the scene when luck comes back to the Lars homestead to see the burning skeletons.

In Photoshop i removed the original character from the card backs and replaced it with one of the two skeletons, and on the back of the card i replaced the bottom half with a screen grab and a little bio of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru from Wookipedia.

i printed the images out onto some high quality medium gloss paper. I gave each of the images a large bleed and very faint markings so if i misaligned them when sticking them to the card it wouldn't be so noticeable. 

After printing them i glued them to some thin Card, i started with the back side of the cards and then cut it out and aligned the front half and stuck it down, then i trimmed all the excess paper away from the card.

To make the figures i purchased two "fantasy skeletons" from a local toy shop.  These figures are great as they are almost exactly the same size as the vintage kenner figures. 

The axe/spear they hold is easily removed just by pulling it out of his hands, im pretty sure they are designed to hold a large variety of weapons. 

using a lighter and a knife i heated, bent , cut and glued the skeletons into shape to make them look less like the fighting stance they came in.
The singeing and melting of the plastic from the lighter doesn't matter as I'm going to paint them anyway.

Once the glue had dried and the plastic had cooled i used acrylic paint to darken the skeletons down to make them look like they had been burned by some evil stormtroopers. once the layers of brown and dark red paint had dried i gave it a little coat of bright red to make them look a little bloody.


The figures are almost exactly the same size as the original kenner toys.


I Purchased Two blisters from the same seller that i got the re-card kits from for Darth and Boba. He sells on ebay and sells loads of reproduction stuff for people to complete figures and retard etc.

 

I applied a thin strip of double sided tape to the edges so i could stick it down around the figures.

 

I placed the skeleton on to the coloured section where the figures sit and placed the blister over the top of the figure. this section was a little tricky as i only had one shot at getting it in place as the tape sticks it almost instantly.

 Side by side comparison to the re-carded vintage figures and my custom made figures.

Han Solo's ESB DL-44 Blaster build and paint.

For christmas my brother got me a doopydoos Han Solo blaster, the Empire Strikes Back version.

This is how i built it up and painted to my liking :) 

first off i got the kit out and laid it out and worked out how every thing went together, i also did a google search and got some screen used shots and some replica shot as references for the painting.

The main parts go together pretty well. some tiny little detail parts were a little harder to know where to put them (this is where the reference pictures come in handy)

The barrel of the gun slides ontop of the body of the gun (this will be glued later)

i drilled a hole in the right hand side of the gun to mount the scope bracket on. 

I also drilled a matching hole in the bracket and counter sunk the hole so the screw head would sit flush to the bracket surface, the screw head is hidden under one of the smaller parts of the kit.

the scope mount can be held with just the screw but i am going to fill the hole with glue and screw it together once everything is painted. I'm painting the the scope and bracket and the rest of the gun in two parts as its difficult for the paint to get into the gap behind the scope and mount. 

I used a epoxy resin glue to glue the barrel to the gun body and the scope to the mount. The elastic bands are to hold the parts in place while the glue set.

Once the glue had dried i assembled the parts to see what the gun would look like and to make sure it was all in the right place.

I gave the whole kit a coat of white primer and then a black coat. (i forgot to take photos of these stages)

once the black had fully dried (i left it for two or three days as the cold weather here slows the drying time and it stays tacky for a long while.) i masked off the rest of the gun and left just the flash hider and sprayed it with a nice metallic silver paint.

I glued the thumb screw part over the screw head after gluing it into the hole for extra security.

The white marks in the black paint on the main body are from where i hung the gun to paint, i retouched these.

I painted the handles with a light brown, the brightness of the brown will be dulled down in the next stages.

 I gave the handles a wash with black to dull down the brown. this gave the effect of a grain in the wood and aged it making it look dirty through use.

The scope and scope bolts were dry brushed with a gold. The bolts and screws on the scope were to be painted to look like brass fixings. the scope was dry brushed to look like a brass scope that has been painted black and the paint has weathered off over years of use.

The body of the gun was weathered down with a dry brushing coat of silver paint to give it a worn effect.
The flash hider was weathered with black to make it look like it had been fired and been smoke damaged and dirtied up.

I gave some of the silver a wash with black to knock it back down if it was too bright to make it look dirty.

I was tempted to paint it up and have it look factory fresh, but there were some little defects in the resin cast and in my painting so i went with a weathered used look, i feel that it looks much better used.

I will make a stand and it will be displayed with my E-11 Hasbro conversion.

Once i have i will take some better shots.