Spitfire Supermarine modeling

Spitfire turntable animation, trying to get the detailed look of an early Mk.IIa

Supermarine Spitfire modeling - Work in Progress

One day an idea came to my mind and it’s now being realized through that beautiful airplane model. It reminded me as I was a kid I got my first plastic models. They were poor quality but  it was a great fun to join all parts into one shape. Recently I decided to switch from low scale 3D models to large ones. It’s a relative impression, because in virtual 3D space all objects can have the same size, no matter how they’re big in real world. However the perception still imposes the connotation that small is small…

One big problem I’ve encountered is a lack of truly accurate plans/blueprints on the internet, weird.  So 50% of detail I obtain through some reference photos. It takes  more time to get that proper look but… that’s the current chalenge.

Virus is back

Image above is a path of concept evolution for that final virus image below. I had to re-learn  Blender 3D because I’ve dropped it some time ago due the version and interface changes.

New renderer engine Cycles inspired me to get familiar with that changed interface and add more graphics to microstock portfolio. It took some time to recall the way it works, keystrokes and tricks. But it was pretty quick process.

The worst part was rendering, which took finally around 100 hours, two composite passes and some postprocessing. Cycles is physically correct renderer so it needs time to work, also it requires other tricks than Blender Internal to optimize the speed.

And this is the final image, available for download

Black Virus among the red blood cells

Paper and wall backgrounds

Yellowed and chapped

Brown and clean paper texture

Wall painted with grunge colors

From the cover of an old book

Backgrounds are available already to buy on DepositPhotos and other microstock agencies.

Here are some brand new, high resolution backgrounds created with my new processing technique. As typical photo textures, straight from the camera may seem easy to get, they need to be -found somewhere-  and differ from all that stuff which already exists in microstock libraries. And because in my work I use different tools to achieve some specific results I decided to merge several of them to create better quality texture with less camera noise or distorsions, higher resolution and more original look.

To create those four backgrounds I started with plain photos or scanned images of paper. Then in Photoshop I’ve created an Action to save the time. That action rescales the image to larger size, performs some cleaning and image enhancing operations. Then it scales back the picture to the previous size or a bit larger depending on the quality.

Normally I would stop at this moment. Thus to improve the picture and change the perspective to “could it look better?” I load it into Lightroom and try to use some of filters already created thanks to my Project 365. Few clicks and it’s clean and ready. Because all the new textures are also additionally digitally painted and textured, this step is necessary for me to mix between a photo and graphics look.

Now straight from the Lightroom back into the Photoshop, to check and balance some incidental levels or sharpness changes, switch to 8 bit,  sRGB palette and save.

Still I haven’t used my magic weapon ;)

Stock photos and January 2012 sales results

Microstock Earning reports |  previous report

January has passed and resolutions made for 2012 work well. I’m trying hard to take really big steps in organizing my time, workflow and task priority.

This month an average of 17 images has been submitted to all microstock agencies. Not everything got accepted but most of them.

Interesting fact is that what others don’t like (fe. 123RF)…. iStock likes. World changes.

January 2012 takes now the second place after October 2011 as the Best Month Ever. The difference is only -9%.

A real king of January was Shutterstock, which had it’s BME result over 23% higher than last one. Though there are loosers too.

Below is the first monthly graph showing the division of profits from selling photos.

Since iStockPhoto is now accepting editorials, I’ve submitted test batch of about 10 photos from Tall Ships Races and Living History Event – Battle of Grunwald. Need to try first what they want to have,  if the caption format is right etc. I have over 300 pictures to submit to iStock because I hate their uploading service so much;)…  I’ve stoped submissions some time ago.

On the other hand I’ve decided to not to push editorials to DepositPhotos. Now I submit editorial photos only to Bigstock, iStock, Shutterstock, Dreamstime and 123RF. The top seller is of course SS.

Nice surpeise is my What graphics pen tablet to choose  which started finally to sell some stuff and increase traffic.

Also I’m back to graphics now, thanks  to the introduction of time and job management. Got my new 3D virus image accepted, created in latest experimental Blender Cycles engine. Took me some time to recall all tricks and to know that new renderer, the rendering itself lasted over 100 hours but it was worth it. Now I’m doing graphics and photos together and switching back and forth. Will try to keep that workflow on.

My notepads with conceptual sketches are back on the table and new projects burning in my head. So it’s time to finish this post, cheers!

Small SWITCH: Depositphotos is now ahead of BigStock and 123RF ahead of Zazzle

Microstock earnings comparison since January 2009

Performance compared since 2009

Ashutterstock – the master of January

PS

Total income chart contains  CanStockPhoto and StockFresh earnings, although they aren’t included in monthly chart and they have no impact on the red progress line. Also earnigs going to StockXpert account (from Thinkstock) aren’t listed here.