BTS Toy Photo Shorts: The Ronin

The Ronin, toy photography. Hello and welcome back to another behind the scenes toy photography video! This week I'm going to show you how to use a splash of colour in a black and white shot to really stand out. I call this shot: The Ronin. I'll also show you my editing process! The action figure I used was The Ronin from Hasbro's The Black Series and Star Wars Visions. I've been re watching Star Wars Visions Lately, and while I enjoy most of the animated shorts, the very first one, titled The Duel still stands out to me the most. I think Lucasfilm agrees, since the animated short has spawned a companion Novel, a sequel short in the upcoming season, and this fantastic action figure that came in a two pack with his droid R5-D56. My goal for this shot was to recreate the classic “samurai training in a forest” trope. I also wanted to create a shot in black and white, with just a splash of red, to honour the art style of the show. I began by creating my ground surface, which was made of some fake grass on top of a piece of cardboard, propped up with some acrylic cylinders. I then poked pieces of real bamboo through the cardboard. The space underneath made it easier to prop the bamboo upright. Bamboo like this can be picked up at most hardware stores and gardening centres. After straightening up the bamboo, I moved my background TV into place and positioned my action figure. I used a peg stand to keep him upright on the uneven surface and tucked the peg stand under the grass to conceal it. In addition to my large soft box, I used a small red spotlight to create the lightsaber glow. Here's my starting image. This photo required a lot of editing, so I'll run you through it as quickly as i can. I started by blending together my two exposures to create the lightsaber glow on my subject. Next I added a black and white adjustment layer and then brushed in the red lightsaber glow with a layer mask. After that I used the pen and brush tools to draw in the lightsaber blade. I experimented with adding some motion blur to the saber but ultimately decided to go for a freeze frame. With the dodge and burn tools, I fine tuned the lighting on my main subject. Using some custom brushes, I added some special effects to the cut bamboo, and to finish my edit, I added a slight bit of motion blur to the falling log. So once again, here's my starting photo. And here's where I ended up! Thank you so much for watching. Music: Hiraeth by Scott Buckley |   / scottbuckley   Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...