Holding Claws and Comfort in the Darkness are particularly dear to me because the story behind them is a somewhat personal one. Of the many stories I've written and thought up in my head, these two are about a story in which the characters, the terrorcon Rippersnapper (right) and the maximal Dinobot (left) were in a sort of romantic relationship. While Holding Claws is meant to be a typical romantic hand-holding scene, Comfort in the Dark is actually a reference to a piece of art I found in which the decepticon Cyclonus shields his partner, an autobot named Tailgate, from incoming blaster fire while simultaneously holding the Autobot close.
Open Mouth (Splatter) |
Tunnel of Plastic Teeth (Sprayed Strokes) |
Both of these photos of my retainers and their container were both instances of me thinking of what I could assemble with them. Open Mouth was certainly one of the most obvious due to the intended use of retainers. While Tunnel of Plastic Teeth is not as obvious, it was still easy to come up the particular pattern of assembly. Also, in regards to Open Mouth, there was actually a lighting issue on the left side of the photo which I rectified by brightening up that area, though the areas where the brightened section overlaps with unedited parts of the picture were noticeable enough that I had to experiment a bit with the blurring tool.
As much as I had more fun taking Still Life photos of my Transformers figures, taking still lifes of my DnD dice proved to be far more versatile. As a result of the greater variety of formations I could put these dice in, I decided that the dice would be great candidates to have distorted. The photo on the right was intended as a sort of vague spelling of D and D with the dice. I even considered making the intention clearer by darkening areas between the dice, but I ultimately decided not to.
Utilising some sort of whale plushie or model was pretty much a given in one of these Still Lifes due to my love of cetaceans. Now, Maybe She's Just Sleeping was a bit more random in terms of posing, but Whaleyback Ride actually has some basis in actual fact, at least in the sense that some whale mothers might allow their young to rest on their backs for certain periods of time. Despite the fact that Maybe She's Just Sleeping was a bit more random in what I decided to do with the set pieces, the use of the Poster Edges edit can add to the implied sadness of the photo's subject, as both the baby sperm whale and the mother are in a darkened part of the picture.
While the pictures of my pencils were taken on a shorter notice than anticipated, they were some of the easiest to figure out the positioning in such a short amount of time. While the images did require a little bit of brightening and I did have to lower the quality of TriPencilus Council so that I could put it in, overall it was a rather simple process. It was also quite easy deciding not to display a photo with the Underpaint edit, mostly because I felt like it wouldn't work as part of the images I was actually showing.