Skeleton Chariot
After painting the skeleton warriors and horsemen of the old Tomb Kings miniatures, I worked on the skeleton chariot. I decided to try a different colour scheme this time. The Tomb Kings Army Book has pictures of red chariots, and I chose red and black for my colour scheme.
I bought a new Havox lightbox which is much better than the old one that broke. The new box requires more effort to assemble but feels reasonably sturdy. It was more expensive, and I hope it is worth the cost. At least the lights are exceedingly bright. There are four LED panels, but two panels are sufficient to make the subject well-illuminated.
The box came with three different backgrounds: white, black and orange. White and black are good for photographing miniatures, but I probably won’t use the orange one. Making photos with a white background is easy. The bright lights make the background lighter than the model, and easy to make pure white using the levels adjustments when editing.
The black background should make the model stand out and look more vibrant, but it is harder to do well. With all the light in the box, the black surface gets illuminated and is not darker than the model. The plastic background is somewhat glossy also on the matt side, and there was a reflection in the rear edge. I solved the problem by using a foam background from my previous lightbox and adding a couple of Blu-ray boxes under the model to hide the back edge. I also put a black acrylic plate from a display case under the chariot to get a nice reflection. Unlike the white background, I used a masking tool to select to make the background darker.
Tomb Kings Skeleton Chariot on white background. The model looks fine but does not stand out like on the black background. This is one of the first test shots with the new lightbox, and the camera is a bit too high
The black background makes the Skeleton Chariot pop. The reflection from the acrylic plate adds extra flair.