This page contain photos of creating photo shoot sets for the stories.
The 6th Scale Stories include a crime story in which there are two crime scenes. The photos below show how the second one was created. Window color works well as blood and you can use a plastic sheet (I used the window of a Monster High doll box) to make the splatter and when it's dry, move the pieces to the set. The third photo shows the empty set and the last one is one of the photos used in the story. The scene it is taken from is here.
Another scene in the 6th Scale Stories has a slighty different photo shoot at Jet's studio. The inspiration for it came from the movie Sin City and from having several doll heads without bodies. The first photo shows the pieces for hanging the heads. The second one shows the door with base coat, and the third one shows one of the panels with the seams painted.
Here the first photo shows the set painted, but before assembly, the second one is an overview of the finished set, and the third is a photo used in the story. The scene it is taken from is here.
In one scene, two versions of the same doll were required, so I used Gimp to duplicate the image. The first photo shows the different versions of the photo during editing and the other one is the finished photo used in the story. The scene it is taken from is here.
First, I took two photos: the main one with Joey on the floor and another one with Joey beside Freya. I mounted the camera on a tripod to keep the camera angle the same to make editing easier and to get the light fall correctly on "Joey 2."
Then I opened the second photo (the top one in the picture on the left) in Gimp and made everything, except Joey, transparent. The bottom left photo is the result of that. On bottom right, you see Joey placed in the main photo. He's on a separate layer, so I could adjust his position (it's not quite right in the photo you see here) and make that layer slightly transparent (I think it was about 80%).
Then I exported the edited photo and did the cropping in the program I normally use.
As you can see, I saved the different stages in separate files. That way, it is easy to go back, if you make a mistake you can't correct (i.e. don't know how to correct).
The lighting is a bit of a problem when the set has a roof, as is the case with the 6th Scale Stories sets, but I found a solution for that problem. I have these battery-operated lights, which were perfect, I only needed to figure out how to attach them. I thought velcro would be a good idea. I attached pieces of one half in the lights and pieces of the other on the undersides of the shelves. Now I can just move the lights to the set I want to use and even have several alternative places for the lights in the same set. The red pieces in the second photo are pieces of double-sided tape I used for attaching the velcro.
I remembered I had these Christmas lights and decided to see how they would work for the bar set. I used adhesive tape to fix the tube to the ceiling. The white velcro pieces are for attaching the battery-operated lights, which I first intended to use in this set.
This is the Radio house that is the bar Bastet in the Kitty and Riddick stories. The under floor lights stopped working, so I got new ones at -50% (the white ones on left). Replacing them was a bit of a hassle as I needed to turn the entire house upside down to do it. The other string of lights (right) is a mix of blue and white and replaced the ceiling lights.
There was a lot more wire with these electric LED lights than with the battery-operated ones. Tying everything to place took some time. I used cotton thread, because the space under the house is fairly small and there could not be any protruding wires.
Here is how the lights look from inside. A lot brighter than the old ones, but then there are 20 bulbs instead of the 10 in the old string.
Who needs plastic pink Barbie furniture when there are much sturdier alternatives? This is actually a tea box, but I removed the texts from the glass with acetone and painted the inside. Then I installed battery-operated lights inside the cabinet. For in-progress photos, see the blog post.
Here you can see the main problem in shooting the story. I need to keep removing furniture every time I want to get a closeup shot inside the house.
I use the 2-second timer for these shots. I focus on the item that needs to be in focus, press the shutter halfway down, compose the actual shot, press the shutter down, and take my hand off the camera to make sure it will stay steady (if 2 seconds isn't enough, there's always the 10-second timer).
