I’ve always enjoyed painting minis but never really got the hang of taking photos (generally because I had friends who were better at it than me), but one of the things I picked up from numerous photo sessions at Wargames Illustrated magazine was simple: backdrops massively improve your shots.
Jon Hodgson has always been adept at creating landscapes that have a strong narrative quality – seen to great effect on his work for The One Ring RPG (Cubicle 7) and Beowulf (Handiwork Games) – so it was a pleasant surprise a few years back when he branched out into miniature backdrops.
Originally available as part of Jon’s Patreon, these were later made available as packages on Drive-Thru RPG and Wargames Vault. However, they all required the user to download and print them out; not a big deal for some of us, but definitely not as accessible as they could be.
Jon has a history of running successful Kickstarters and decided to put together a trial project – a spiral bound book of the backdrops that could be propped up and used for miniature photography straight out of the box.
With the project being wildly successful, I was pleasantly surprised when my copy turned up early, and couldn’t resist getting outside to get a few snaps on the next clear day.
The printing is absolutely gorgeous – unsurprisingly, these are better than the versions I was printing myself at home. Although the book is slightly smaller than I’d like (A4, but I understand that the logistics of a bigger print would have made the project and postage unviable),
The book is brilliantly easy to use. As you can see from the pics 0f the Elf Cavalry below, I had fun quickly changing the backdrop between shots to see how the atmosphere changed between different pieces of art.
There’s nothing fancy being used here – I just placed the minis on a small terrain piece in natural light, propped up the book behind them and got snapping using an iPhone.
As well as the 32 pages of art, the book contains two useful short guides to photography – one technical and one starter level.
There is also a Sci-Fi book currently available alongside the Backdrops book. You can find both books at Handiwork Games and also Bad Squiddo Games.
mogsymakes 