Making some progress with Ivan

I have finally had some time to sit down and get on with some work on "It Rolls for Ivan". The last week has been frustrating, starting with an IT failure when trying to run a game of "Taiping Era" (hence no battle report last week) and running through trying to work on two different presentations at once, whilst working on some Battlefield Society knotty problems and trying to get the smell out of my car after a bag of rubbish leaked in the boot. Not normally a problem, but I drive an estate car, so what happens in the boot affects the whole interior. It now smells of double strength Febreze and Vanish carpet mousse.

Before I got down to any writing, I took some photographs of my RCW kit to use as illustrations for the section I'm working on. 

About a month a go I bought myself a pop up photo booth, with an overhead ring light. It cost me £30, and comes with lots of different coloured backgrounds. I had got a bit annoyed with an inability to get the lighting right when I was photographing newly painted toys, and also when I wanted to do photo cut outs, as it seemed like regardless of what did, figures sort of blended into the background.

I spent an hour or so out in Shedquarters yesterday afternoon, popping figures in and out of the box. I had some focussing issues with the camera when I got really close up, and I found that some pictures were dark. However, because the ring light gives me an even light all over, it meant that it was fairly simple to alter the brightness with Windows Photo (which, incidentally, I notice has removed the "spot fix" button in the Windows 11 version for some inexplicable reason. It was a great tool, so, not happy Microsoft).

With the pictures taken and tidied up I was able to pretty much finish off the troop types and weapons section of the rule book. "For Whom  The Dice Rolls" has a bit of a cartoon-y look to the pictures, or at least photo-story, with colourful pictures and the use of "Crimefighter" font. I wanted to do something a bit different this time, and try to embed the images more in the text.

This is what the armoured car page looks like. I probably need to go back and re-do some of the pictures. I realise now that I need to do a photo of the subject from both sides, as I don't know where things are going to end up on the page. The vehicles on the left should all point inwards like the Austin at the top. Those on the right are okay. 

Other thoughts? Well, I'm pleased with the final look of it all, and it means I can probably start to work on a magazine advert as well, as I think it's time I put myself into the glossies. The vehicles have come out really well, and look better than in real life a lot of the time. That Austin Mk2 is a horrible model, for example. The pictures also revealed some problems I hadn't realised I had, like thin filaments of glue on some of the guns. The pictures of infantry and cavalry were okay, but the limited size of light box made it hard to show units in table top deployments.

Here's a unit in firing line, and as you can see it only just fits, and the MG is a bit out of focus. I seem to have lost the flag on the standard bearer too. Perhaps I need to use a slightly darker background.

For the cavalry, I couldn't really fit in the tchanka, but otherwise I'm pleased with the picture. I could probably take the tchanka separately, and then shunt the two together.

In conclusion, progress is being made, and late March is a possibility. Perhaps.