Dinosaurs in noir

My Intermediate photo class has 3 portfolio building assignments with some specific topics to choose from. Among them was film noir and constructed. I decided to go for both.

My current hobby, undertaken a few weeks before, was building miniatures, so I decided to leverage this and start in on something fun. I had been working in 1:35 scale, so I decided to keep to approximately that scale so I could share resources.

I started out with some simple cobble stone streets I printed out, some 3d printed miniatures, and an LED flashlight for lighting. I wanted to see whether I could capture some fun things, and landed on dinosaurs in film noir.

To be clear, I am not going for photo-realism. I am not that good of a model builder, an not that good at digital editing, and honestly, I think the images are fun with a degree of “toy like” quality about them.

Paper cards acting as a stand for the models, unpainted wall sections revealed some interesting possibilities. Small clay forms for street debris acting as a substute for final models.

Up to this point, the exercise is simple: is there something fun or interesting in this space to be explored.

Once I received the cobblestone street section I ordered, I proceeded to more complex vignettes. 3d printed trashcans and cardboard boxes, weeds crowing in cracks, 1930’s propaganda posters and cigarette rolling papers cut and folded into street debris help fill out the set.

Additionally, I have mounted a couple of white LEDs onto a coiled brass wire on a base as my lighting kit. It is worth noting I am painting everything in black and white so I can see what it will look like before I photograph everything.

At this point I am satisfied with the miniatures, but for that rainy wet look, I am still working out the details. I decided that no matter what, I wanted the street to look wet, so I applied a generous layer of acrylic gloss media to catch the light.

I have been trying to digitally create a dry for wet look, with some success. My work making the models themselves has not been entirely successful yet. I may try applying photoflo or some other wetting agent directly to the models, but I am concerned that it will soften the paint.

I have been playing a lot with making digital rain, as playing with water full scale and trying to photograph it and layer it in sounds messy.

My first digital ran attempt on an incomplete street section. The sidewalk is not weathered yet, and the street is not a complete section.

There are several layers here, wind driven streaking rain, droplets bouncing off the ground, a layer of ground fog, and layer of pooled water, and some very small droplets bouncing off the dinosaur and the cop.

A few more images with synthetic rain, and some attempts to add gloss digitally.

 

Some shots are nicer without the rain

At this point, I will shoot all my non rainy scenes, and then apply a wetting agent to gloss up the figures and props for the rain shots. I have some dinosaurs in different poses in process, and have added a baby dinosaur, and fog for additional dramatic elements.

The back lit look is very … “noir”

Right now the smoke process is unpleasant, I need to make a small controllable smoke system that doesn’t choke the family.

Also had some fun, adding some comedic elements.

The cops busting up a dinosaur trash party

Some fun construction notes:

My lighting rig was not sophisticated.

I tried white and green card stock as a first attempt at making a base. It was large and difficult to edit out.

 

I later settled on wires

This gives a measure of scale of the set