This Is A Weird One – Tale Of The Psychonaut (and Lego?!)

Transcript

All right, today is gonna be a weird one. This is due in no small part to my recent, a, tussle with a couple of viruses, and one of the results of,, tussling with him. We’re gonna talk about drugs, we’re gonna talk about other worlds and we’re gonna fuck around with something that’s part of my tabletop hobby, but may not be part of your tabletop hobby. But it’s still miniature!

So maybe grab a drink and a snack for this one because we’re going hard into the alchemy for this one.

Intro.

Greetings, good humans and welcome to tabletop alchemy, where sometimes your hose goes off the deep end and dares you to come along with him! And where we think our patrons for indulging The Alchemist in the room!

All right, I guess I should put a warning upfront for this one. I want to talk about psychedelics. I’m not promoting the use of any narcotics – prescription or otherwise – but I’ve got a secondhand story that has fascinated me from the first time I heard it.

And typically the fourth Thursday of the month is a crafting or painting video, so here’s my take on that for this month.

This is stud.io. It’s a 3-D virtual Lego building software. Now, some of you know, I’m into Lego, otherwise known as a certified AFOL Dash you can look that up – and when I got sick for half of December and half of January, I kind of go back into i. Because I couldn’t think or be energetics enough to get my personal creative project done, it was just super nice to build something or in my case quite a few some things from instructions and provided materials. And I just love how a Lego build magically grows from a pile of desperate pieces into something recognizable. From chaos to order right before your eyes, very satisfying.

I’ve never really used Studio before and some thing I am really curious about is how it handles creating instructions. But to test that we need a bill so I thought I just mock up my little mushroom, mock and use that to test out the whole program. To prep this I did figure out how to set up a separate project-based parts list and so I’ve already added most of the parts included in my little MOC for easy brick selection.

Now, while I work on that, let me tell you a story. A few years ago, my friend, Brian –, I don’t think he’ll mind me using his name I don’t think – did something he always wanted to do, and the day after he told me all about it. Because I was super interested in what this experience was like, especially from someone I knew really well.

So, he had a met a friend at the place he was working who knew how to distill or refine DMT, dimethyltriptamine. DMT is found in almost trace amounts in almost every living thing, plant or animal, including in our own brains. Brian had wanted to try a DMT trip and to be perfectly frank I’ve been very curious myself about that. I haven’t yet, but who knows. DMT is essentially the train ticket ingredient found in ayahuasca but taking in the form of ayahuasca is like an all-day event and the trip takes hours, from what I understand. Taking distilled or refined DMT results in a trip that lasts for 5-10 minutes and then you’re back, and from what I gather, once the trip is over, there’s no real lingering effects, no hangover, no nausea, you’re physically fine and operational. Mentally, you’ve just got this crazy experience to mull over for a few days.

So Brian and sets up a date with his buddy to go on this trip and his buddy has quite a bit of experience with DMT and will shepherd him through it from start to finish and Brian’s brother is also attending as another voyager but also as a chaperone during the trip, right. Okay, so the guy fills a pipe with whatever the appropriate amount of DMT powder is and helps Brian smoke it. Now this process right at the start has it’s own protocol – you need to take nice solid BIG hits off this pipe and you have take three hits in a row. The whole point of this is that DMT starts acting very quickly the human brain, but it’s also dosage-dependent on how far out your trip is gonna go. The term “breaking through” is used a lot, if you don’t imbibe enough, you don’t get the full experience.

Okay, so Brian, a typical cannabis user, takes three really big hits off this pipe. And he said that even after the first hit he started to mentally go, and his buddy had to really help him get the next two hits off the pipe achieved. Now, there’s a definite caveat here, which most people who try to describe their psychedelic trips will invoke – and Brian was no different when relating his story to me. Essentially, he’s gonna try to describe what he saw and experienced but that really he doesn’t have the words to express truly what he was seeing and feeling, because the experience is so beyond or above or past the primitive level of vocabulary I guess is one way to put it.

So Brian’s train is leaving the station, he’s like zooming out of this reality, from his perspective. And he arrives in what he describes as a sort of hallway. Maybe like being inside of a kaleidoscope. He gets the feeling of being in a hallway even though maybe visually it isn’t super defined that way. He’s seeing all kinds of shifting patterns and colors and texture, but he just has the feeling that he’s in a hallway. And a being, an autonomous living thing comes the hall to greet him. And the best he could describe it as was like a sort of silhouette made up of moving geometric stained glass patterns that kept folding in on itself over and over. And this being – which these entities are called, in the broader public colloquialism as “machine elves” – this being is talking to Brian, or communicating rather, without words. It’s like he said he knew what the machine elf was communicating but it definitely wasn’t talking or using like verbal words. And the machine elf was greeting him and was happy to see him and was expressing this like welcoming happiness of like, “hey, we’re glad you’re here, welcome, welcome!” 

Okay, time out – I know this sounds like I’m just going relate this story and it’s for fun or whatever, but there’s a very real kind of mind-boggling statistic? or fact? or property? something! there’s this one thing that brings up some genuine scientific questions that is super fascinating to me and I’m looking forward to what you guys might make it.

Okay, so Brian is in the hallway with the machine elf, he’s inside the kaleidoscope. And the machine elf wants Brain to follow it and it takes him to a doorway – again, the literal word “doorway” is only how he can describe it in verbal language, it’s not exactly what he sees or experiences, but it’s the best facsimile he has to describe it. And they go through this doorway and enter this really large “room” and it’s full of machine elves and strange “machinery” even. He said there were like hundreds of entities in this room and some were working with this weird machinery and a lot of them were maybe partying – I may be getting some of these details wrong, just from the passage of time since he told me about this – but he said it was pretty overwhelming, but again it was like he could hear them communicating ideas of “welcome, and we’re happy to see you and it’s great you’re here”. But overall this room and all of this activity was a little much. 

So the machine elf that greeted him takes him back into the hallway and they move down the hallway, they’re moving away from that one door way. And it takes him to another doorway and sorta bids him to enter that doorway. So Brian goes into another space and this one he describes as being like super vast, like the ceiling is way way way up and the room is just enormous. And in this room is another being, but it isn’t a machine elf. This thing is gigantic, and he said it’s really hard to describe but it was kind of like a giant tiki mask – I know, this totally bizarre – but it’s like this psychedelic fractalized, fractalizing tiki mask that’s like 40 stories tall. And Brian said he’d never felt so small next to another living entity. He said that this big dude didn’t really talk to him or hardly acknowledged his presence but that he was sure that it was aware that he was there. And there was nothing malicious about it but it was just kind of ambivalent about him being there. And Brian said I think that he just stood in this room with this gigantic entity for a while and didn’t feel afraid but understood that that entity could crush him or remove him from reality in the blink of an eye. And he was just experiencing these feelings and just hanging out in the room. I forget if he said that the entity looked at him or not, I think he might have said that initially the giant dude kind of looked down at him once but it never communicated with him like the machine elf did.

And then the machine elf eventually led him back out of the room in the hallway and back towards the way they’d come from and then Brian returned to our reality and his trip came to an end.

Now Brian is a proud atheist. And one of my first questions for him was, so did this experience affect his atheism in any way. Because both Brian and I were very curious about whether this experience was all internal, meaning generated by his own brain, or if he really met autonomous entities, right? And his answer to that was this was absolutely the most poignant experience he’d ever had in any way that could possibly sway his atheistic opinion.

Now, here’s the thing that trips me out the most. So after Brian goes on his trip, he’s telling his buddy about it and his buddy says oh, you met so-and-so. And Brian’s like, “what?” It turns out there’s a whole database online where people who go on these psychedelic journeys, specifically this DMT trip, which seems to take people to a common location, there’s this database where people record what they saw and what entities they’ve met and Brian found the description of the giant tiki head dude and there’s a name for it and many people have encountered that same entity. And there’s a whole bunch of entities that have been recorded and cross-referenced by psychonauts – I like word psychonaut. And this what fascinates me to no end. There are now university research teams trying to “map” the DMT world, this location that people go to on the drug. And it’s this fact that disparate people going on these trips are all seeing the same entities and describing them the same way independent of each other.

So what is going on here? Is there actually another space, another dimension, another location that you literally go to when you trip on DMT? And if so … well, what the hell does that mean for science and our universe and our reality? It’s so intriguing that I do want to try it myself, I would love to go on a psychedelic trip, but to perfectly honest, I worry that my own bad memories or feelings of nervousness or whatever, would result in a “bad trip”, that’s the one thing that has kept me from seeking out this experience myself. But nowadays there are entire programs that help people through the experience, where they guide you through some exercises and help you placate those inner fears so you can have relatively high odds of having a “good trip”. 

And then, to tie this all back to our little Lego build here, we’ve got lower tier psychedelics like “magic mushrooms” proving to be extremely effective in psychiatry and psychology. Clinics are using them to treat PTSD, depression, you know all these emotional and mental afflictions that typically would have been treated – poorly I might add – with synthetic pharmaceuticals. I have gone very lightweight trips with psilocybin and other than the nausea aspect, I’ve found those psychedelic affects to be quite nice personally. I’ve done acid once and would never recommend that over mushrooms. 

And also non-psychedelic mushrooms are a fantastic food to cook up! I got some lion’s mane from the store the other day, I’ve wanted to try lion’s mane for years and never saw it in a regular store til a couple a weeks ago and I just bought my second package of it. For like $5 I get what is as filling as a steak dinner and it just cuts up and cooks up kinda like tofu and it’s just super good! And you know, when I go to Five Guys cause I want to pay like $30 for a burger and fries – don’t get me started – I get sautéed mushrooms on it. Or when I get a baguette from my local French-style bakery and get a bratwurst or a chicken sausage from the store, I love just drowning that brat in sautéed mushrooms and onions. So good!

All right let’s see what this Stud.io does with the instruction thing. I have a parts list for this MOC on brick link so I think you could order the parts and build this yourself if you wanted to – if I can figure out how to get a link to the parts list for the public. One thing I want to point out here is I built this MOC I guess around 10 years ago, so in that time Lego has introduced quite a few new excellent foliage parts and other new bricks that would be super cool to introduce into this model. So I want to make a new little shroom forest with some of these new pieces, so when I do that I’ll call it Shrooms 2024. 

So this instruction builder is actually pretty cool. It’s definitely got it’s own learning curve here, like I don’t understand why the build is being illustrated from what I would call the “back” of the model, but it looks like I’ll have to go into each instructional step and turn the model around. Tedious but doable. I think creating instructions might take as long as building the whole thing, lol, but it’s pretty cool how professional it the pages look! You could make something that mimics actual Lego instructions fairly easily. I think is pretty rad.

And I saw this button, so let’s see what a render does, this should be interesting. Let’s go with high resolution and changing the light direction doesn’t seem to update in the thumbnail or live view so we’ll just have to run a render and see what it does. For this little build it didn’t take too long but I bet it would take quite a few minutes if you had a much bigger model in here. Wow, that is pretty cool! Check that out. I don’t know why the tan mushroom dishes don’t have the mushroom texture pattern like the red one, but I’ll have to explore this more. It’s pretty neat looking, pretty realistic, I’m surprised. 

I mean, building in 3d like this doesn’t hold a candle to working with actual Lego, but this is pretty damn cool nonetheless.

Man, there are just so many ways to express your creativity these days, it’s kind of astounding. So many things to get into and explore and geek out on.

Well, I don’t know, if you’re into Lego, maybe check out this Stud dot IO software, and if you’re not into Lego … what are you doing?! 

All right, yell at me about Lego or how I’m diluting the tabletop hobby content on this channel or your thoughts on psychically accessing new dimensions and going on virtual trips to places unseen and on the other side of the rain.

See ya!

Buying Too Many Cool Things Can Kill The Coolness Factor?!

Transcript

I went on Etsy and found this cool thing. It was so cool I was excited and inspired and then went on Etsy and found more cool things. And now I’m sad.

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we discuss how the collector module in our hobbyist brain is often working against us despite how it may seem. And we tip our hats to our patrons for their constant and uplifting support!

Ah, the collector module, that little engine of dopamine-powered consumerism tucked away in our little brains that feeds this hobby – actually, it feeds a lotta hobbies – and fills us with transcendent and often-fleeting joy. 

As you know, I paint some miniatures from time to time and from time to time we play games with those miniatures. But we also know that gaming miniatures are just one particular facet of the whole miniature hobby gestalt, right? There are all kinds of facets in this hobby, disciplines and factions and genres. We have gunpla, which I’d like to try out sometime. We have display painting, and busts, and larger miniatures like 75mm and 1/6 scale and there’s dioramas and inside all of those facets are more facets, more niches, there’s just a plethora of stuff to dive into.

So, with a combination of seeing other YouTubers and instagram artists posting some very cool display models online and my own possibly growing frustration with my own physical shortcomings in painting 30mm scale gaming figures, I was cruising Etsy one day just looking at the piles and piles of really cool 3d printed miniatures and I came across this figure, this elven … I don’t know if she’s a druid or what, but it’s a very cool sculpture. 

And I noticed in the drop-downs to place an order for this 3d print that there was a scale option. This is nothing new by any means, but I really just had never considered anything larger than “gaming scale” in these last few years since I’ve gotten back into the hobby. 

However, decades ago, back in the 90s, I had been a fan of and collected what were back then called “garage kits”. These were Japanese resin kits of like anime characters and manga characters and there was a whole hobby subculture of these things – but we’re skirting that rabbit hole for today. I’m gonna go more in depth on that in a future video. 

Suffice it to say that I’m not necessarily a stranger to larger scale models, just that in my current hobbying, I haven’t gone in that direction. Until I saw this scale option for this elven druid. Which was sculpted by Great Grimoire, link below of course, I couldn’t find any information on individual sculptor names, so Great Grimoire it is. Anyway, I saw that I could get this figure at 75mm scale, which is more than twice the typical gaming miniature scale. 

And I was like, yeah, I wanna paint a 75mm display figure! That would be awesome! And this one is just too cool, I really like it. So I ordered it and waited to see what the quality of the print would be like.

And here it is, it’s pretty great. It’s a little bit of a bummer that it’s not in more pieces because some of the areas are gonna be difficult to paint without being in subassemblies – which, yes, I understand the irony of that statement coming from someone who admittedly dislikes subassemblies – but anyway, I think it’s a super cool miniature, an excellent sculpt that has a lot energy and movement to it, in my opinion, and when I got it I was like, super excited. This is gonna be a great project!

And here’s where the excitement tripped that collector module into overdrive and I was immediately hit with this idea that, well, I wonder what other awesome large-scale 3d prints are out there. And just as weird coincidence, at the same time as this was happening, I had either seen some Brom art or something made me look up Brom art. I’ve always like Brom’s stuff and I was thinking that I could use a couple of his pieces as color reference for painting up a miniature. Not this elven druid necessarily but because I was kinda looking at these things simultaneously, Brom art and larger scale miniatures, when I saw this one on Etsy, I was like, BAM, that’s a Brom piece waiting to happen!

This model is from MythReal Games, which again doesn’t seem to list individual sculptor names anywhere but they have a patreon which I linked below. I typically like more realistic armor on my female miniatures but hey once in a while I guess some cheesecake is all right, as long as it’s Brom-flavored. I’ve been collecting some reference images from his artwork that I find inspiring and that I really want to try out when painting this model. 

Which is cool, but of course when I was on that Etsy store page, I didn’t just see THIS model, I saw more cool stuff, which is, of course, how the slippery slope works right? And this model’s cloak just sorta stunned me and I was just like, well, jeez, it’s only like $20 bucks for one of these at 75mm scale, I mean back when I collecting those garage kits I mentioned, those were hundreds of dollars. 3d printing technology, man, who knew! So I ordered both of these kits. 

I call ‘em kits but they’re really just single piece miniatures, right? But here they are and they are very very nice prints. So I’m looking at all three of these and suddenly I’m realizing that that first model I had picked out and so excited by, the elven druid, it’s lost some of it’s luster. That’s not quite right, it hasn’t lost any of its individual luster, it’s just that looking at it now, while I’m still very excited to paint it up, my excitement is a little bit tempered by the fact that I know I have two additional 75mm display figures to paint up. 

For the very short week when I just had this one on the shelf, there was a more concentrated feeling of excitement. Cause now having three on the shelf – which in fact qualifies as a whole new Pile of Opportunity growing right before my eyes – the Pile of Opportunity 75mm edition – because I have more than the first one, these collector module acquisitions have diluted the excitement somewhat. Cause now I gotta be excited about three models instead of just one. 

And I am, but I noticed this dilution and put a kibosh on my Etsy surfing right away. Cause I could have just kept finding more and more cool 3d printed miniatures to buy. But I really wanted to stay excited about the ones I’ve got. 

So yeah, I literally had to stop myself from continuing to shop.

Cause I don’t wanna dilute the coolness I feel about these models now. And if they become just three cool models out of forty-five cool models in a gigantic Pile of Opportunity, well, that’s just sorta taking a big spike of coolness and flattening it out into a tepid pool of coolness. Which is all still cool but you know … how many times can I use “coolness” in another sentence?

I think this phenomenon here I’m experiencing isn’t necessarily the same as when you buy a bunch of miniatures to build up say a warband or an army, but it might be similar to when you’ve collected multiple war bands or multiple armies. Which of course most of us have done.

So, I’m definitely looking forward to painting up these 75mm scale models as display pieces. I mean, I don’t know if the final paint jobs are gonna be worthy of display, but I’m looking forward to trying anyway. Each one’s gonna need a base of some kind, I’ve got a few ideas, and I think I’m gonna try to practice some airbrushing on these models as well, this scale of model is great opportunity for that I think. And even though the elven druid was my first purchase in this scale, I think I’m gonna work on the Brom-inspired gladiator woman first because I have a – almost guaranteed to be erroneous – feeling that that model will be an easier, quicker project to finish.

We’ll see. One cool thing about this whole 3d printing arena is how affordable these models are. I mean, if I completely trash the whole model somehow, I could easily get a second one and try again. But you know, it’s paint, and typically you can just paint over mistakes as many times as you need to.

All right, well, check out some larger miniatures. See what you think. I wonder if any of you out there have considered or worked on larger-than-gaming sized miniatures. 

See ya!

Writing A Custom Skirmish Scenario! (For Silver Bayonet)

Custom Scenario PDF

Transcript

EXT. MILITARY ENCAMPMENT – TENT CITY – DUSK

Orange glows, fires, dot the muddy paths between the canvas tents stretching toward the dark forest beyond.

EXT. OTTILIE’S TENT – DUSK

Voices heard from inside the tent, which is lit internally by lanterns. A barrel stands guard outside the entrance flaps, a pair of hatchets embedded in the splintered side where a rough target has been painted with whitewash.

JOLANDA (O.C.)

Madame, would you leave scorpions to run wild in your kitchen? We must deliver fire and salt and light.

GASPAR GAGNEAUX steps up to the tent door but hesitates before entering.

INT. OTTILIE’S TENT – NIGHT

JOLANDA stands, leaning on her staff; OTTILIE sits on the edge of a cot, repairing a tear in a boot with leather cord. A small lantern sits on a footlocker.

OTTILIE

They won’t give us more soldiers.

JOLANDA

There is no need for more men. 

Ottilie looks at her.

JOLANDA (CONT’D)

Not while we have those.

Ottilie follows Jolanda’s gaze to the footlocker, on which lies the shining silver dagger and the small golden icon she uncovered in the ruins. 

OTTILIE

They want that delivered, for something down on the front line.

GASPAR enters, but the women hardly acknowledge him.

JOLANDA

And they may have it. After we conclude our ritual. I have sent Vermont to my excardinated Sisters in Lyon for the additional components.

Ottilie sighs. She picks up the silver knife, flips it casually between her fingers.

OTTILIE

You’re right, we can’t leave a vampire unchecked at our backs. Folly. Gaspar.

GASPAR

Yes ma’am.

Ottilie flips the silver knife again and offers it to him hilt-first. It gleams in the lantern light.

OTTILIE

Go find Felice, she’s with the grenadier and the infantryman. Give her this. And tell them all … we’re going back.

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we’re setting up for Chapter 3 in an on-going saga where sometimes the characters we’ve created start demanding their own storylines! And we thank our patrons for all of their steadfast support in this crazy new year! I’m talking to you, you know who you are.

So this is kind of a story-heavy episode today. For any new viewers here we’ve been running Joe McCullough’s Silver Bayonet solo scenario chain, you can find the first two of those here <snap>, and I thought we’d just be jumping into the third scenario that’s in the book but the characters in our warband are starting to take the reins of this tale. Jolanda just wouldn’t leave me alone about  this whole thing.

Jolanda Scaletta is our resident occultist and she simply could not stomach the idea of leaving vampires roaming around in the French countryside. So she’s got a plan – well, let’s continue the story, shall we?

EXT. MILITARY CAMP – QUARTERMASTER LANES – NIGHT

VERMONT ESCOFFIER and CLAUDE CELLIER push through roaming soldiers, their blue trench coats somewhat of a contrast to the mostly white uniforms clogging the muddy lanes.

CLAUDE

You’re off to find a horse, lad, so you can travel to Lyon in search of what now?

VERMONT

Salt. And oil.

CLAUDE

Really? Are we making a roast?

Vermont spots the picket lines full of horses ahead.

VERMONT

I’ll be back in four days, tell my aunt. Three if the weather holds.

And the supernatural investigator is off in a flapping snap of leather coat.

CLAUDE

(to himself)

Well, have a nice vacation, Investigator. 

MALE VOICE (O.C.)

Is that Claude Cellier?! Who owes me several ducats?

Claude winces, turns slowly – but then his expression brightens noticeably.

A short, heavyset MAN waves Claude over to his massive pile of tents and crates and wagons. Hanging lanterns keep the shadows at bay.

CLAUDE

Quartermaster Lucille! You short bastard, I’ve been looking for you since Boulogne!

QUARTERMASTER LUCILLE

Yes, yes, I’ve been looking for you as well. If you have what you promised, I have what I promised. But first! Onion soup and goat cheese! Never turn down a chance to feast, aye?

Claude grins.

CUT TO:

EXT. TENT CITY – RAUCOUS DISTRICT – NIGHT

Fires blaze high in front of tents full of loud drinking and gambling. Soldiers stumble to and fro, bayonets flash in the firelight, laughter punches through here and there.

GASPAR pushes through the tassels and hats of the French army, searching. He frowns, noticing a clearing ahead, a tent the regular soldiers seem to unconsciously drift wide of. 

The tent is well-lit and out front are three rickety tables, but only one is occupied. The brawny infantryman BAPTISTE MOREAUX barks at the pale cook working sausages on a griddle over a small campfire. Grenadier BRIELLE PELLETIER leans back in a wooden chair, boots kicked up on the table. FELICE ARMAND pours Brielle’s metal cup full from a basketed bottle she holds.

Gaspar looks at the soldiers wandering past, noting that all of them slide brief glances at the trio but look away equally fast, nervously even.

Gaspar wrestles an empty barrel over to the table and sits.

BAPTISTE

(raising his cup)

You’ve outdone yourself, kid.

Felice half smiles.

BRIELLE

Bordeaux and sage sausages? You work magic much better than that Italian nun, or I’m a worse shot than this lug right here.

She laughs at Baptiste’s growl.

FELICE

Wine, doctor?

GASPAR

(shaking head)

I have something for you, Felice.

He unsheathes the silver knife, both Brielle and Baptiste tensing slightly at the sound it makes. Gaspar hands the weapon to the vivandierie, who takes it with a small frown.

GASPAR (CONT’D)

Ottilie says it’s yours.

Baptiste grins and claps Felice on the shoulder, a bit too hard in his tipsy state.

BAPTISTE

You earned that. 

BRIELLE

Aye, it shining just like your eyes. Make sure you keep em closed in the dark, lest you give us away,  eh?

GASPAR

Ottilie also gave me a message for everyone. 

They look at him, but a handful of drunk soldiers boisterously stumble over to fill in one of the empty tables.

SOLDIER ONE

Garcon! Wine! Oh and those sausages smell like heaven!

FELICE

That’s our meal, soldier, forage your own.

SOLDIER ONE

Oh, sweetheart, ain’t you a bright and shiny thing. Look, boys, we have guests to dress up our table tonight!

The rest of the soldier’s compatriots have grown silent. He notices their change in demeanor and wobbly tries to pinpoint what has soured the mood. 

The soldiers stand and start to leave. One leans over and mutters to the Nightmare Hunters.

SOLDIER TWO

Apologies. 

SOLDIER ONE

What is happening? Where are we going?

They drag him with them, all harsh whispers and mutters.

SOLDIER TWO

Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars. Idiot!

BAPTISTE

What’s the message, Doc?

Gaspar watches the soldiers go, their haunted glances over their shoulders not lost on him. One of them makes the sign of the cross as he slips behind another campfire. Gaspar looks at his fellow Hunters.

GASPAR 

We’re going back. To hunt the vampire.

Slow push on their reactions. Baptiste groans. Brielle polishes off her cup of wine and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Felice looks down at the silver knife, it’s shining reflection hitting her downcast eyes.

CUT TO:

EXT. LYON – LATE AFTERNOON

Sunlight slices across the city beneath dark heavy clouds. A bell tolls in the distance; smoke billows from fields far to the south.

EXT. COBBLE STREET – TALL GOTHIC BUILDINGS – CONTINUOUS

Winding tightly between stone buildings, sun cuts across the lane in slashes through which a figure approaches, coat flowing, tricorn hat punctuating the silhouette. 

VERMONT ESCOFFIER ducks into an arch full of shadow. He knocks on a stout wooden door.

INT. STONE CHAPEL – CONTINUOUS

A musty back room, splintered floor, crates draped in dusty drop cloths. Colored light splashes in from a doorway. VERMONT crosses to that threshold and peers into –

HIS POV: a small chapel full of colored light and stained glass windows.

WOMAN’S VOICE (O.C.)

Investigator.

Vermont turns to SISTER MARGARET, a nun, emerging from a dark stairwell in the back room.

SISTER MARGARET

We have what you seek. Downstairs.

She turns and descends back into the shadows. Vermont follows her down into –

INT. CHAPEL BASEMENT – CONTINUOUS

Sister Margaret crosses to a massive oak table set with lanterns and candles and long flat crates banded with leather straps. Vermont approaches. The nun lifts the lid from one of the crates, revealing three covered wooden bowls; the lids are branded with the Holy Cross and three hovering circles. 

Sister Margaret lifts one of the lids, revealing the bowl to be filled with salt.

SISTER MARGARET

These salts have been consecrated by the Archbishop’s exarch and his Gnostics. They must be sown into the earth by the hands of believers  and then …

She holds up one finger, turns to another table and lifts a stoneware decanter and offers it to Vermont.

SISTER MARGARET (CONT’D)

The cleansing fires can be laid. Your aunt will know the prayers, Sister Scaletta is … well-versed in the armor and wrath of God.

Vermont looks from the flask of oil to the bowls of salt.

VERMONT

Then I must ride, time is of the essence.

SISTER MARGARET

When is it not, Investigator? 

CUT TO:

EXT. LYON – COUNTRYSIDE – DUSK

A rider on horseback, silhouette, coat rippling in the wind, gallops into the setting sun.

SISTER MARGARET (O.S.)

When is it not?

CUT TO:

EXT. TENT CITY – DAY

Tracking with the long, narrow crate that we know holds the sacred bowls of salt; it’s moving down the lane between tents, obviously carried by someone holding either side of it. Soldiers approaching us (or being approached by us) look from the crate to the off-camera crate-bearers and step back to give a wide berth.

INT. OTTILIE’S TENT – DAY

Ottilie sits across from that small golden icon, studying it. She draws one of her pistols, turns it over in her hand, contemplating … then sets it down in front of the little saint statue. She draws the pistol’s sister and sets it down as well, arranging them just so before the icon.

OTTILIE

I shall anoint these with oil and bless them –

She looks skyward but with closed eyes.

OTTILIE (CONT’D)

and they shall speak with your wrath, if they speak at all.

CLAUDE (O.C.)

(from outside the tent)

Look what the mangy cat has dragged in off the boat –

Claude pushes into the tent, carrying one end of the bowl crate. 

CLAUDE (CONT’D)

– and on a horse no less, a horse he didn’t even pay for. How’d you manage that, by the way?

VERMONT

Madame. Is my aunt nearby?

The men set the crate down beside the icon and the pistols.

OTTILIE

She’s administering Communion in the blood tents. She’ll return shortly.

Claude unslings his musket from his back.

CLAUDE

Take a peek at this ma’am, it’s one of the finest things you’ll ever see is my bet.

He shows off a brand new, shining brass scope that runs nearly half the musket’s length.

Ottilie takes the rifle and brings it up to her eye, aiming through the tent flap. Surprised at what she sees, she looks at Claude over the scope.

OTTILIE

This … this is very nice.

Claude grins. 

CLAUDE

Yes it is. Brielle’s never gonna win any wager she puts against me now. Hah! Glorious.

So this is just super fun for me, I could just keep spooling out scenes kinda forever, so at some point, we just gotta, you know, move along right?

So while this batch of narrative has been fun and sorta free-for-all, what today’s episode is really all about is constructing our first custom scenario.

So we’ll use the existing scenarios as our template and I’m gonna use the same Pages document that I used for the House Rules home brewing extravaganza <snap> and copy the scenario layout from the main rule book. We’ll start with the scenario title.

The Cleansing

Hopefully the successful cleansing, right? And a little blurb that gives an overview of what’s going on. Something like:

Les Chasseurs de Cauchemars’ last encounter with the undead at the ruined chapel proved successful except for one nagging detail: they left at least one vampire roaming the ruins. The occultist Jolanda Scaletta convinces the warband’s officer Ottilie Bastarauche that they must return to stamp out the threat and reclaim the desecrated grounds with holy oil, fire and salt.

All right, now for the Set Up. We’re gonna have the same board terrain as the previous scenario, so that’s easy enough. Now, this scenario is all about a guaranteed vampire fight, there’s no way around it. And the revenants are still gonna be a thing too as long as the grounds haven’t been consecrated. But I’m going to adjust some of the numbers for the starting setup in this scenario versus the last one.

So the game will start with a vampire in the middle of the ruined chapel, that’s first. Second, we’ll place three revenants roughly circling the vampire at random tombstones. We won’t have any clue markers in this scenario BUT we’re going to have three markers for Unhallowed Ground and a fourth marker which is really just a reminder that goes in center of the ruins with the vampire, which we’ll call the Icon Marker.

All right, now for the Special Rules.

So, first off, we’ll keep the previous scenario’s special rule about sunlight being magically dimmed essentially and so Line of Sight is limited to 12 inches max and vampires suffer no penalty for being out in the daytime.

Next, the Unhallowed Ground markers. These must be removed from the table by sowing consecrated salts into the dirt. Salting costs 1 action and a figure must stand adjacent to an Unhallowed Ground marker to sow the salts. If any Unhallowed Ground marker is left on the table by the end of the game, the scenario has essentially been failed.

Now, the Icon Marker rules. So the golden icon – that little saint statue Ottilie found last time – must be placed in the center of the ruins, and that costs 1 action to do, and then holy oil must be spread across the ruins. This probably costs a figure’s entire activation, during which if they are attacked, the spreading oil activity is interrupted and requires another activation to complete. Okay I wrote that in there but then later I remove it, because it makes no real sense from a game mechanic stand point, there’s not really a way for anything to interrupt a figure’s activation. So you’ll see that bit get deleted in a minute.

Now we need some special rules regarding how enemies appear during the scenario, so first we’ll say that a new revenant appears from at a random Unhallowed Ground marker at the end of Turn Two and every turn after that.  

Now in the previous scenario, there was a rule that said a second vampire appeared on the board at the end of turn 5. So let’s say that if any Unhallowed Ground markers remain at the end of turn 5, a 2nd vampire appears at a random corner. This might be a little generous, let’s make it turn 4.

Now, once the icon has been placed and the ruins have been drenched in holy oil, Jolanda Scaletta must conduct a ritual prayer that will bless and re-consecrate the grounds. This will cost her an activation, so no other actions can be taken while she does this. And she must be within Line of Sight of the icon to conduct the ritual prayer. That means within 12” because of the sunlight rule.

And last but not least, the holy oil must be set alight. This requires either a torch or a firearm shot. Technically speaking, we need a firearm shot that strikes sparks off something but we’re gonna stop right there and not get too technical. This is just a fun fantasy game right? So, a figure can spend an action to set the oil on fire with a torch as long as they are within 1” of the central ruins or a figure can make a Shooting Attack with a target number of 12 to set the oil on fire.

Now this can all be done with figures in the ruins, so any figure that is inside the flames suffers damage from a Melee Attack type of dice roll with the Power Die functioning as the damage die and any Undead figure that is inside the flames takes damage equal to the total of both dice, not just the Power Die. And this damage happens at the end of any turn a figure is inside the main chapel ruins.

All right, that’s a big old batch of Special Rules but I think they’re pretty easy to understand. We’ll fix any snags when we actually play it, no problem.

But we do need to set some declarations at the beginning of the scenario. 

One: which figure carries the icon.

Two: which figure carries the holy oil.

three: which figure carries the bag of silver shot they found last scenario

We’ll just assume the sacred salts have been distributed amongst the warband members.

Now, there are some artifact special rules from the last scenario. The silver knife Ottilie gave to Felice functions as a Holy Symbol and lends +1 Courage to the wielder. Ottilie will carry the icon, which also functions as a holy symbol and grants a +1 to Courage for any figure within Line of Sight of it.

And finally we have the Rewards section! 

Units receive the following bonus experience points for this scenario, starting with 

plus 1 experience point if the warband kills 4 or more revenants

plus 1 experience point for each vampire slain by the warband

plus 1 experience point if at least 4 soldiers exit the table

plus 1 experience point if Jolanda completes the ritual prayer 

plus 2 experience points if all Unhallowed Markers are removed from the board

plus 2 experience points if the holy oil is set alight with the icon in place

I basically modeled these after the previous scenario’s so it seems generally in the same realm of possible XP gain.

All right, I think that is it! Scenario 3: The Cleansing is ready to play! I’m looking forward to it, should be fun.

Until then, well, better get your game on, build a warband, roll some dice and tell a story.  

See ya!

Physical Health Influences Mental Health … What?!

Transcript

So this is NOT the video I wanted to make this week. But hey, we pick up pieces and we hammer them into some kind of shape and we just keep moving forward, cause the world ain’t stopping for nobody. Game on!

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes, sometimes things go awry and we do what we do best – we roll downhill, with or without the punches. And we thank our patrons for keeping the faith on into this new year that may or may not be one of the best – we’ll have to wait and see, right?

And yeah I probably sound a little different today, I don’t know, we’ll get that.

So, this will sound like a familiar story I’m sure. Everything was going great, I was getting stuff done, day job had a break in it for the holidays, I had this one thing I was pretty excited to work on and then, wouldn’t you know it, I got the flu. 

Just from the folks in my own orbit here, seemed like a lotta people came down with this crazy holiday fever thing too. So, fun fact, I rarely get sick. I don’t know why, I’ve just been lucky. That may be changing, as things do, but rarely is not never. And this particular flu thing hit me like a literal Mack truck. I remember watching the clock on my stove when it happened, in literally 20 minutes I went from feeling absolutely fine to bone shakes and shivers. An hour later I was in bed with some kind nutso fever – I mean, it was boiling under those blankets. And I still wasn’t warm enough. And then like 8 hours later the fever broke and then I was just bed-ridden for like the next 36 hours. 

The weirdest thing through all of that is I was starving. I kept having to get up like every four hours and make a burrito. Black beans, salsa and cheese, only way to roll a burrito. Anyway, during this bout of illness, I observed something that’s always been there, I just happened to notice and pay particular attention to it this time.

So prior to being sick, I had all these projects I was working on, right? I got my photos I been working on, I got some Silver Bayonet stuff coming up, I’ve got some miniatures I’m ready to talk about, I got some other things in development, one of which I thought was gonna be today’s video. And I’m like pretty excited to be working on this stuff, to the point that I was kinda having trouble sleeping. My brain would be racing and I couldn’t wait to work on this or that, and not sleeping probably had it’s own detrimental effects on my health. 

But anyway, when I was down in it, I mean, down in the bottom of the barrel, I distinctly remember thinking that all this stuff I was working on, all this creativity and desire and quest for art, all this stuff just sounded like utter nonsense. I remember thinking how none of it was worth a damn, everything was a waste of time, I didn’t even like half the stuff I was doing, it was all just garbage. And it didn’t matter one bit if it all just went away. Cause I was sick right? I mean the only thing I wanted was to sleep and to just not feel like trash.

Now, as I came swimming slowly back up out of the sweaty sheets and I was able to get out of the bed and actually start feeling better, I paid close attention to those thoughts I’d had regarding all my projects. And I watched as those thoughts shifted and changed back to the way I’d previously felt, about those projects. Like my enthusiasm returned, I stopped thinking they were a waste of time, generally my emotional response to those projects returned to “normal”. 

And I find this super fascinating. It means a few different things, I think. 

Now, strangely enough, as I write this, I’m going on my sixth day of vertigo. Which is unfortunate. I’ve been lucky for most of my life, where I haven’t really done anything to “maintain health”. I was born thin and energetic and I’ve just never really had to worry about health issues. And I know that that’s literally just a win in the genetic lottery, has nothing to do with any choices I’ve made or anything like that. And now maybe there’s some damn chickens coming home to roost, I don’t know. 

But this vertigo nonsense is independent of the flu thing I had. I know this because I got my first bouts of vertigo a couple months ago. Feeling dizzy for no reason, it’s so bizarre. But there’s a difference between the psychological feelings about projects and creative enthusiasm as affected by the flu versus this vertigo garbage. In the depths of the flu, boy, I really felt like all the creative stuff was nonsense and just not worth pursuing and stupid and all kinds of darkness. With this vertigo, it’s not really affecting my mental chemicals I guess. It’s making it harder to work on things absolutely but it’s not causing my fundamental FEELINGS about those creative endeavors to change. 

One of the biggest bummers about this whole observation of my flu-affected mental state is that I’m coming to the realization that exercise and eating healthy may be an unavoidable necessity. Yes, we can laugh at that but what I mean is that it seems like to just be able to maintain artistic enthusiasm is going to require some level of physical health and physical health maintenance. Which, trust me, is not something I’ve ever wanted to consider. 

I was perfectly happy to be unhealthy as long as I would still be enthusiastic about making and doing stuff. And we all know how much of a pain in the ass exercising is and god forbid, eating healthy, jeez! It’s one thing to have dabbled in those arenas just on whims or cause I felt like it right? It’s another thing to have to consider HAVING to do those things. 

Forming new habits is one of the most difficult things to do – well, specifically forming new HEALTHY habits is one of the toughest things to do. I mean, it’s super easy to form unhealthy habits, we all know that.

Another thing this observation has made me realize is that my empathy for folks who are experiencing depression or, now, other physical ailments, is really deepening. Like, if we know that the physical chemicals or whatever is going on during unhealthy moments or illness or whatever, if we know how that physical ailment affects our own enthusiasm and ability to imagine and just positivity, man, it’s gotta suck to be under the influence of those chemicals all the time. And by extension, it’s just less of a surprise that some folks just don’t feel creative or inspired. 

And what do you do to fix that sorta thing? I have no idea. I mean, I just had a flu, which goes away on it’s own. I don’t know what you do when you have something that doesn’t go away. 

Now, speaking of something not going away, it’s been almost a week since writing that portion of the script and what happened is that the vertigo got pretty intense. There was one day I couldn’t open my eyes for more than like 10 seconds. That was the day I learned that my Spotify account includes audio books. I listened to Stephen King’s novel Holly. It was fine, I really liked the narrator, I thought she was pretty great. Now I’m onto Warhammer 40k’s famous book Xenos, which is the literary debut of the famous inquisitor Eisenhorn. 

Thankfully it was just that one day I couldn’t open my eyes but still, things have been fairly tough on the buck up and do things side. I was reading about how some folks get stuck with in this state for weeks and months and that was kinda freaking me out too. And of course everyone I know was like why don’t you go to urgent care, why don’t you go see a doctor, yada yada yada, right?’

I don’t like going to doctors, that’s about it. I have various opinions on certain things having to do with the US health care system but the bottom line is, if I’m gonna be perfectly honest, I’m basically a procrastinator at heart. I always just want stuff to get better on its own. And from a lot google searching I’ve done regarding this vertigo stuff, it basically seems like you end up just having to wait it out anyway.

But, one day my mom of all people – who doesn’t even live in this state – found a physical therapy doctor who specifically does house calls for people with vertigo. Now when was the last time you heard of a doc that does house calls? So I gave that dude a call and he was super cool on the phone and he literally came out the next day and examined me. And pretty quickly he was able to physically demonstrate and explain what I have, which is vestibular neuritis. Which in turn is universally believed by most doctors to be a viral infection of the inner ear, and it could have been triggered by that crazy flu I had. Even tho Doc Smith, the guy who made the house call for me, said that the fact that I’ve had these previous periodic bouts of vertigo is kinda weird. 

Anyway, he showed me some exercises to do to basically help my brain re-align with the infected ear signals I guess, I don’t know, but here’s two things are pretty fascinating – one, learning what I have, being able to put a name to it, vastly improved my … I guess will to persevere, maybe. And two, the exercises actually helped like right away. I did the exercises after he left and I did ‘em the next morning and then I was able to drive to the store to pick up some groceries and I hadn’t been able to drive in over a week.

Now as far as the symptoms go, they haven’t gone away, and I asked the doc, like, hey man, so there’s not like a pill or antibiotic or some kind medicine to kick this stuff outta my head and he was like, no, not really. It’s gonna wear off on its own but you can really help move it along by doing the exercises. 

So this kinda gives me something to grasp ahold of, right? So now I feel like I can fight back I guess for lack of a better term. So while I still feel dizzy even right now, I can get up and go do whatever I wanna do. I even got out my old rowing machine and dusted it off and now I use it every evening, like I did three years when I got it. And the rowing machine strangely doesn’t affect the vertigo at all. As long as I’m just looking straight ahead I don’t even feel like I have vertigo while I’m rowing. And I asked the doc if it would be okay to use that machine and he said yeah anything cardio I could do that didn’t make me feel like vomiting – of which I’ve had very little during this whole debacle – any cardio would just be great, helps get blood flowing to the brain, and of course is just generally a good thing to do anyway.

So now I know I just gotta push through this, wait it out. But since I’m breaking out the exercise machine, I guess I’ll be looking at my diet and see if I can foster some new habits on the flip side of this whole thing.

Cause losing my enthusiasm for my artistic and creative projects, that was just a stretch too far, I did not enjoy that one little bit. And to see it change so drastically from one way of thinking to another and back all based on just this physical virus attacking me, it was just startling and interesting. I mean, we’ve all heard the podcasts and news stories about how head injuries and other weird things can change a person’s entire personality but damn to witness it in action from the inside, even just a tiny fractional version of that, well, unsettling and fascinating I guess sums it up.

I mean, it’s a pretty weird concept to acknowledge, right? That you might find yourself wanting to paint more Space Marines just because you did some pushups in the morning. That sounds stupid and facetious but it’s crazy that it’s actually not. It’s pretty real. Which doesn’t make it any less bizarre, right? Although, it’s probably from a wider generally holistic view of life, it’s not bizarre at all, it makes perfect sense. 

So, I’m kinda looking forward to seeing what some exercise and maybe a tick healthier diet does for my hobbying. Such a weird concept.

So, again, this wasn’t the video topic I had scheduled for today but life sure likes to throw them curve balls, don’t it? So I guess, uh … keep an eye on your own creativity, inspiration and enthusiasm, see if you find any correlations to your physical well-being, and consider what that might mean.

See ya!

Editing Photos Is Kinda Like Painting Miniatures! Seriously!

Transcript

Greetings good humans and welcome Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we do some activities that are only hobby desk adjacent in my apartment and we find out whether or not we’ve wasted our time trying something new. And we thank our patrons for bearing with us during this niche-specific digression and bout of self daring!

So, for anyone new here, yes, this channel is typically dedicated to tabletop hobby stuff, as the intro implies. But recently I took on a little creative project that is … genre – adjacent let’s say. Meaning it has swords in it, and that’s about it. But I often encourage folks to follow their dreams, and I had to be ballsy and follow my own advice.

Also, when I started this channel, I reserved the right to, once in a while, just delve into something that interests me in the spirit of discovery and avoiding single topic burnout. So the ride sometimes veers off-track. But you know it always circles back eventually. And sometimes off-roading is fun.

So today we’re going to take a look at the results of that photo shoot <snap> and talk about some things related to processing photos, trying to make “art”, I don’t know, we’re just gonna look at and work on some photos.

Now that footage at the opening of the video is from the morning after the shoot. I set up a camera and I recorded my entire five hour session where I initially went through all the pics. Yes, talking to a camera like I was on a live stream. By myself. Yes, sometimes I question my sanity too. I kind of dared myself to do it, cause I was pretty worried I might have genuinely wasted everybody’s time and energy on that project.

But, I’m relieved to say that, at least from my perspective, overall for a first attempt at staged photography, I think we got some cool stuff. Anyone else might disagree, of course, this being an artistic endeavor, all opinions are valid.

Let’s take a look at some of the raw photos and then I’ll show you a couple of the treated ones. 

So let’s take a look at the process… Processing? Let’s look at the process of treating an image. Now I’m not gonna bore you with all the time-consuming details, like I said, there are thousands of videos about skin retouching, photoshop effects, stuff like that. But I can show you what I’ve done to a couple of photos by going through the layers I’ve created in building the final look. And you can see just how infinitely subjective this whole process is.

Of serious note is how long it takes me to post process one of these pics. It takes me hours. I’m getting faster with practice, but still, holy cow.

And I’ve been watching a ton of YouTube tutorials and learning way more about Photoshop than I ever thought I would. The interesting and frankly kind of overwhelming thing about this whole post processing activity is similar in some ways to sitting at the hobby desk with a freshly primed miniature. The possibilities are endless. You could literally do a 1000, nay a million different things. To be honest, there’s probably way more things you can do to a photo in Photoshop than things you can do to a miniature, but you get what I’m saying. You’ve got that monochromatic mini in hand and think, all right, what color do I start with, and you look over at your paints and you’ve got 100 different choices staring back at you. Right?

So I used the star rating system in Lightroom Classic to organize the photos, doing multiple passes and whittling down my selections to what I’ve categorized as the 4-star images, which is the collection of images I’ve determined are cool enough to work on. Now, out of my original 623 files I’ve slapped 70 with 4 stars and I still constantly go back and forth on some. Once I start working on a photo, it goes into the five star folder, so I can keep track of what I’ve worked on and what I haven’t.

All right, here’s one of the few medium shots I did, cause mostly I was shooting pretty wide to get full bodies in frame and I just did not have enough time to get closeups on top of everything else.  

I always start treating a photo here in Lightroom, I do some basic color correction and some very minor tweaks, and you can see in this photo there’s no smoke in the pipe. But that’s fine, cause hey, we’re gonna use Photoshop to pull the smoke from this previous shot and it’ll be perfect. 

After those basic tweaks in Lightroom I send the image to Photoshop and that’s where I do most of the work. Here you can see I added the smoke from that other shot straight away and merged the layers. I should have probably kept it separate, but, well, you know, we’re living and learning.

So the first thing I do is the blemish removal pass. All this stuff has one rule – subtlety is king. Like you could remove every freckle on a person but that isn’t what we want. The blemish pass and the next step are by far the two most time-consuming and tedious steps in the whole process. 

After the blemish removal comes the standard frequency separation thing and this where we smooth out the colors of the skin underneath the actual skin texture – again, thousands of video tutorials on that whole process out there on YouTube. 

Then I do some dodging and burning – which just means brightening or darkening – to further even out the skin – again, a very standard procedure – and I can also add any shadows and highlights I feel like putting in there. Like I touched up some of the highlights and shadows on the hat to even out some of the ripples in the texture. Again, pretty subtle stuff.

I also used some dodging to make her eye pop and then to make it pop even more, I went in with some layers to brighten and add saturation to the iris, again, trying not to go overboard but it’s all subjective choices right? And that’s large part of the time that goes into one of these edits – for me anyway – because I can sit here and look at different color treatments over and over and tweak it this way and that way and which is better and I don’t know and … well, it can just get overwhelming.

So then I masked just the hat so I could darken it a bit. I don’t know why, it just felt like making it darker would add more richness maybe? I don’t know.

And then I learned about contouring, which is something anyone who puts on makeup already knows all about! And there’s a ton of tutorials on that, but essentially it’s just a map of where to enhance highlights and deepen shadows on a human face. This is something I thought, wow, okay, I’ll be using this when painting miniature faces from now on. Actually, I can use all of this stuff when painting miniatures, because in the end, we’re ultimately just playing with contrast and color, and whether that’s in a photograph or on a miniature or in a painting, it’s all the same concept. 

So you can see what the contouring layers do to Laura’s skin here. Since I learned about this technique, I’ve started to use it in all kinds of places, not just the skin tones. You’ll see that in a second.

So that takes care of Laura, but now we gotta do the background. So I masked Laura and then started playing with the background to just find something that looked cool, felt cohesive and maybe make the whole thing more dramatic.

I tweaked the overall color of the background with this color balance layer and then darkened it with a curves layer. And then I just wasn’t digging the plain backdrop I had on set, but I can’t get myself to entirely replace a background, I’m just not good enough with photoshop yet to take something like that on and not make it look stupid. So I brought in a graphic with flowers I bought on etsy, which looks crazy of course, until you change that blend mode. I used the Multiply mode and that makes it settle nicely into the existing backdrop. In my opinion.

Then I added a radial gradient in black and white and set it to the soft light blend mode to kind of both separate Laura from the background and kind of replicate the actual flash hitting the backdrop.  

Then I applied a gradient map layer to color shift the background – and I literally just learned about this technique too a few weeks ago – and then I applied that same gradient map over the whole image but lowered to like a 70 percent opacity. 

Now I could go on and on and on messing with colors and contrast and shadows and highlights and backgrounds, I could literally mess with this photo for a year if I wanted to. This is what I mean about having too much possibility, it’s just nuts. But, at some point, we gotta move on!

So here’s the before and the after. My one artistic goal at the beginning of this whole project was I wanted to try to achieve this “painterly portrait” look that’s all the rage. I think that look just sorta jives with the costume aspect and so that’s been like my guiding keyword during this post processing phase. Whether I’ve been successful or not is really not up to to me to decide lol.

All right, let’s look at another one, which just might be one of the best images I’ve ever been lucky enough to have a hand in creating, with a lotta help.

So this is Lily and she just squatted down in that awesome dress Debradawn gave her and everything literally  just worked here. (lightroom footage) Her look and the tipped over cup she did on her own and the smoke element, all captured in camera in one shot, just super cool. In my opinion of course. (possibly cut to the reaction footage)

So I did the first round of tweaking in Lightroom, which got it to this point and then I sent it over to Photoshop.

The first thing I did in Photoshop was – well, I did it at some point in the middle of the process but it’s just easier to show you at the beginning here. I widened the image a bit and used the AI generative fill to stretch the background and it recreated the smoke at the edge pretty nicely.

There’s the original so you can see how much I extended it. Just makes it a better composition to my eye.

Here’s the healing slash blemish removal layer, I did that process and cleaned up the backdrop a little bit, cause my backdrop on set was full of creases from shipping.

Then I did the frequency separation and color smoothing, followed by some very tiny dodging and burning on the skin. I was working on such tiny areas you can’t even see the difference unless I zoom way in.

Then the contouring, which makes quite a difference. You can see I added some highlights to her hair and just sorta made her pop overall. 

Then some contouring on the wardrobe, again just to add some contrast and almost a glow to the highlights. But again, trying to remember subtle is the keyword, right?

This color match layer is just a layer where I used the Color blending mode to paint over some subtle color differences in different areas to make any color differences less noticeable, again, virtually impossible to see but here you can see the results pretty clearly with the purple shadow on the scarf. 

And then a final pop on her eyes with a curves adjustment layer and then she gets masked and we go to work on the background, just like in the last image.

I didn’t like these wisps of smoke up above her head, I thought they were distracting in the final image, so I tried to remove them. I had to add some brightening to get this big crease out and then some darkening (aka dodging and burning, right?) and then I wanted to pop the smoke a little bit, so that’s done with a curves adjustment layer, again, just more “dodging”.

And then I color shifted the whole background into the bluer side with a selective color layer – again, this is something you can just infinitely tweak.

I wanted to add some dramatic lighting and kill as much of that crappy background as I could, so a vertical gradient in overlay blend mode worked for that. I realize this probably sounds like a lot technical jargon but I think visually seeing what’s happening just kind of shows you that I’m basically just working on this thing like’s a painting – or a coloring book.

The last thing I had to correct was this little patch of smoke bursting around her arm which just had a weird color cast to it, so I had to paint over it with some blue in the color blend mode to get it to match a little better.

And now the most fun part, which is the global effects, stuff that’s gonna affect the entire image as a whole because we have a fairly coherent image to work with after all that previous stuff.

I started with a gradient map, you can see how it shifts the colors, basically it applies the colors in the gradient to the shadows and the highlights of the image and I think it looks pretty great, and basically everything is frosting at this point.

Now a very subtle shift in the whites, which are essentially just the highlights on her skin, I just made them a little more cream colored and a little less blue, again, super subtle. I mean based on YouTube compression you may not see any change at all.

Some curves adjustments darken the overall image and then this Lookup Table from inside Photoshop, some kind of fuji film emulator, I don’t know, there’s bunch and I just kinda slide through them until I find one I like. I don’t always use these but this time, this one worked pretty well. And this layer is only set to 25% opacity. 

And then one final layer, another look up table set to teal and orange, again something I just stumbled on and thought, wow, that is cool for how crazy the color is. And that’s the cherry on top. I really like how this one came out, I think it’s pretty rad!

And now something I do with pretty much every photograph is I wanna check it out in black and white. And you might think this is just a simple turn off the color sorta thing but there’s as much variation in black and white as you have in color, it’s crazy.

For example, just the black and white filter in the standard photoshop adjustment layer has these presets that all look pretty different. 

I’ve found that I typically like this weird formula that I’ll tweak on a per image basis. I use a combination of the infrared preset and the Green preset, two different layers masked to see the effects of one here and the other there.

But I think this image works super well in black and white too! I love it! And I don’t think I can pick a favorite between the color version and the black and white, I like both quite a bit! 

Okay, how about we just take a quick look at one more that I think works far better in black and white than it does in color.

This one, once I dropped it into black and white, I was like whoa, this is badass in black and white! I mixed a couple of the black and white presets again, using the infrared layer for her dress and then masking it back out to the brighter green preset layer to make all those folds in the dress pop.

All right, just like at the end of a mini painting video, here’s some of the images I’ve completed. Some of these have color and black and white variants and while I think all of these are looking pretty cool at the moment, I’ve noticed that every time I look at quote finished unquote photo a day or two later, I see something I want to change. 

So overall I’m chalking this whole project up in the Win column. There’s quite a few images I’m pretty proud of. And it took a bunch of other talented artists to help me get there, so I just keep hoping they’re all gonna dig the results as much as I do. And you’re seeing all kinds of different color treatments here and some backgrounds have images or textures added, and all I can say is I’m just having fun experimenting. I have no idea what I’m doing, other than just letting myself eat all the crayons in the box! 

I actually really like quite a few of the images from this shoot in black and white and, well, if you follow me on instagram, you’ll be able to see ’em as I release ’em. Which reminds me, I’ve been wrestling with this quandary of where to share the results of this project. Like, every marketer in the world would tell me to absolutely not clutter my miniature painting Tabletop Alchemy instagram with portrait photos. And they’d be right from a certain perspective. But dammit, I’m interested in too many things and I wanna do them all and I don’t wanna like have to run separate social media accounts for every little thing, which would be dumb anyway because I just don’t do like one thing all the time. 

Like, my brand, if I have such a thing, is probably at its core all about not having a brand – or singular niche anyway. It’s about engaging in all kinds of creative stuff. As long as there are swords involved, that’s a common thread, right? So at least I roll with a common theme. Sometimes. 

Anyway, let me know what you think of these pics or anything else! And, uh, go do something off-brand, cause what the hell, you gonna miss out on doing something you wanna do just cause other folks – or algorithms – think you should stay in a box? You decide.

See ya!

Storytime: Hollywood Television Commercial Shoot and The Question Of AI!

Transcript

For a very short time, I worked on a few commercial sets starring the likes of – you ready for some name-dropping? You better be. I worked on a few sets for a few days on which the key talent was Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel, and a couple of other top tier actresses. And today, I’m just gonna jabber at ya about one of those shoots. Because it’s Christmas and settling in for a little story time is just what I need. My sincerest apologies if that’s not what you need.

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes it’s story time and sometimes it’s an episode to listen to in the background while you hobby, because it has very little to do with anything actually hobby-related. But it does fit our apparently photography-themed December.

And we thank our patrons for sticking through and supporting such a wild momentary shift of topics in the alchemist lab.

Now, I’ve got two tales to tell from this brief section of my day job career, but the first has a much more universal and applicable anecdote we’ll explore in another video down the line. Today’s story is the second and is really only about one key detail that will open up some relevant discussion, maybe, regarding technological progress and creative endeavors.

So I don’t remember what year we did these jobs, but it was probably sometime around 2006-2007. My buddy was producing some behind-the-scenes stuff for television commercial shoots for cosmetic companies like Revlon and Maybelline. And he hired me on as a camera operator for a couple of those, and this particular one I think was a Maybelline shoot. I think. It might’ve been Almay. Anyway, the model in this particular commercial spot was John cougar Mellencamp’s wife, Elaine Irwin.

Now I wasn’t on the official crew or anything like that – in fact, it was kinda cooler than that, barring being on the camera crew of course. My job was to run around with my Panasonic HVX200 – which was one of the first prosumer cameras to record full 1080p HD on solid state media – and capture cool B roll of whatever was going on. The house the production had rented was amazing, of course – I mean, when your budget for a one day shoot is upwards of 1 million bucks, I guess you’re gonna get cool location.

Now, here’s a weird aside: I’ve never had as gourmet a lunch as I had from the lunch trucks on these shoots. I’m not kidding, the lunch plate was a shock. This is back before taco trucks became the culinary sidewalk wonderlands they are today, like, you know, before the movie Chef came out. But on a normal shoot, at least back then, you’d head out to the meal truck when lunch is called – if your production even had a truck – and everyone goes to stand in line for their, you know, typically you’d have a choice between like a hefty breakfast burrito or a decent tuna melt on sourdough toast or something. 

So when go to lunch on the first of these commercial shoots I worked on, I’m just expecting the typical paper plate holding a burger or something. But then I get up to the ordering station and I see this menu with filet mignon on it and, like, crab cakes and lobster and I’m looking at my buddy like what the hell is this? He just grins and when we get up to the window to place our orders, I can see there’s like this fancy chef guy in there plating stuff like he’s in a five-star restaurant and not really inside a taco truck. And then when I get my lunch, it’s on a ceramic plate and it’s got little colorful sauces drizzled over it and swirly designs and artfully placed asparagus and it was just sorta mind-blowing. And of course, very, very good. I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, television commercial jobs were where everyone made real money. Like you’d work for a day or two, and make as much as you would normally make for like a week on a narrative project. 

In other words, advertising is always where the money is. 

But anyway, back to the production. So they’ve rented this house up in the Hollywood Hills, it’s up there in those spiffy neighborhoods above the Greek Theater and the Hollywood Bowl – it’s a pretty spectacular location. Nowadays I’d guess a house up there goes for something in the neighborhood of say 5 to 10 million, depending on the size and the view. 

One thing I’ve never forgotten was, upon first entering the place, noting that the flooring was entirely poured from that epoxy composite stuff high-end countertops were made of back then. I don’t know why I remember that, it just struck me as … expensive. And there was a lot of floor.

But anyway, we break out our cameras and we start shooting. I’m grabbing B roll of all the activity, you know, like Elaine in make up, grips putting up flags and silks, electricians putting up lights, stuff like that. Camera crew building the camera, dolly grips setting up the Chapman dolly, et cetera. Eventually they start shooting and we’re a few hours in and the director has Elaine moving around this living room sorta space and he’s telling her to dance and do all these different little moves and, well, now I don’t know who the director was, he was probably a TV Director – but at one point the ad agency people kinda pull him off to the side and they start arguing because he’s shooting all these random things and he’s been doing it for like an hour and half. And this stuff was apparently not in the brief nor the storyboards and  the ad reps are like, hey, we need you to shoot what we need for the commercial, right? All this stuff he was having the model do was apparently completely unnecessary. At one point everyone’s just stopped working while the director and the ad reps duke it out. I remember the director was not necessarily a uh convincing figure.

Anyway, they finally move on to getting the next scripted shot and this is what was to me the coolest thing

I remember about that day. So this house is one of those houses that extend out over the hillside, so part of it’s on stilts, right? And it’s there’s a living room type space that’s projecting out into empty space. And it’s got windows on three walls, all with floor-to-ceiling glass, so you get this pretty epic view of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, just the whole area.

So, I know they’re setting up for a shot, I just don’t know what the shot is. Now this commercial was for some kind of eye makeup, probably mascara, if I remember right. So I’m shooting the crew set up this like nice leather chair near one of the windows and it’s got this kinda crazy device on it, kinda looks like some kind of medical or dental apparatus and they’re putting this big lens on the camera and they fly in this other model. Flying in just means they brought her on the set by the way. She’s blonde but doesn’t really look like Elaine Irwin, in fact, she doesn’t even really look like a model. But she sits in the chair and leans her head down into the crazy cradle thing. Then the DP the Director of photography, has the camera brought over on that crab dolly and raises the camera up on the little jib arm and tilts it down and starts to frame the shot. So the woman is laying like sideways in this chair her head tilted over into this cradle the and camera is angled down at her face. And now we can see on the video assist screens across the room what the shot is actually gonna be.

And when I realize what they are doing, I was like, oh THIS is freaking cool. So the model turns out to be specifically an eye model. And the lens is like a macro lens. And they’re using this chair rig to keep the model’s head and face positioned exactly right and without her being able to move – because on a macro shot like that, any movement is wreck your focus and frame. Because the shot is framing up just one of her eyes basically. And the detail this whole set up turned out to be for, was they were getting the image of the downtown Los Angeles skyline reflected in her eye.

And I just thought that was the coolest thing. I mean c’mon! 

But of course nowadays, no one would ever do something like that. You’d just do it digitally and it would take you like five minutes.

Which brings us to the point I wanted to talk about. We are living in what a lot of us old fogies would call “the future” because we grew up, you know, before the Internet. And all kinds of other stuff. So now, if I can just go to Midjourney – or any other generative AI – and type in a prompt and get a super cool, bad ass, artistic looking image in 20 seconds, why did I bother spending a bunch of hard earned ducats and time and energy shooting my own set of images in the real world? <snap> Images that are in the end, admittedly, digital?

But why bother going through all of that when there’s just no practical reason to?

My answer is, because I wanted to. I just wanted to do the thing myself. I wanted to collaborate with other human beings, I wanted that experience and I wanted to use my hands and my creativity – what there is of it – just because I wanted to. 

There are other times when I do just go to Midjourney and punch in a prompt and grab an image to use somewhere or do something with.

But I think that this might be the promise of the future – well, I should say “potential” promise. Humans are more and more becoming able to do things just because they want to.

Obviously, there’s all kinds of caveats to that and no, it’s never going to be super simple like that, but it is, at the very least, interesting. And interesting, to me, is  … interesting.

Anyway, it’s just a thought – and yes, I stole that from Beau of the Fifth Column. Good artists borrow, great artists steal!

Someday I’ll tell you about how I messed up real bad on a commercial shoot starring Halle Berry. Until then – go do something just because you’ve always wanted to.

See ya! Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Homebrewing 3 House Rules for Silver Bayonet!

House Rules PDF

Transcript

That’s what I said <snap> back in that video, so now we’re gonna do it. We’re going homebrewing!

INTRO

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we just go and make up our own freaking rules! And we thank our patrons for their oblivious support of such rampant hubris!

All right, a few videos ago, we played our second chapter in the Les Chasseur de Cauchemars Silver Bayonet skirmish saga and during that game, as you saw, I mentioned a couple of spots where I was inspired to brew up some house rules for three specific things in the game. So today we’re gonna do that and at the end you can tell me how many grave errors I’ve made.

Because I’ve never home-brewed skirmish rules before. Don’t act surprised, you know your host is like.

So we are coming up with rules specifically for Silver Bayonet solo play, these really aren’t gonna apply to PVP – although they might apply to co-op games. But hey, whenever you play whatever you play, it’s your game and you can play it the way you want to, right?

All right, so the biggest rule I wanted to come up with is simply called Stealth. Even as I am just now thinking about it, some form of this could possibly be used in a PVP game, I guess it would kind of be like implementing something like the convoluted obscured concealed order mechanics in Warhammer 40k Kill Team.

But the number one things we have to consider, in my opinion, is the elegant simplicity and flavor of Mr. McCullough’s game design. I have to admit that my initial tendency is to make things over powered. Because I want my war band to survive, duh!

The whole reason I want a stealth mechanic is almost purely for narrative story reasons. But also because I don’t think my soldiers would always just start out with full on attacks. At least in solo play.

So with Stealth in mind, I first just started listing things that popped in my head, just notes.

Like in line of sight vs no line of sight.

What stat? Speed stat, Courage stat? Defense? Out of those only Courage would function like offering a bonus to a die roll.

Stealth movement is probably half speed, but can a figure Sprint at half speed or not? Maybe movement is at minus 2 inches. And probably Sprint shouldn’t be allowed, to keep it simple and kinda “realistic”.

Figure activates, declares stealth, rolls for success. May shoot after movement? Now, X that. May not shoot or attack.

Success removes figure from “line of sight”, meaning it may not be targeted.

Is there an ability a monster could have that defeats or negates stealth?

Success must simply equate to “non-targetable”.

Failure equals targetable.

Success costs two actions – figure can only move, can’t do anything else.

Figure has to have some kind of cover to activate stealth? Yes.

Should there be a melee attack bonus for stealth?

You can see from my notes I just jotted down whatever came to mind.

The main thing I came away from this list with – keeping in mind the game’s simplicity – was that the result of a stealth check has gotta be simply deciding whether or not a figure is targetable. Because we also have to keep in mind that during solo play, enemy models are following a very simple AI flow chart to determine their actions. And targetable means not just of attacks but of movement, as monsters can simply move toward a nearest figure if it’s in line of sight. 

The next thing to lock down is whether or not this check is tied to a particular stat for some kind of bonus. But going over the Silver Bayonet stat line, I don’t think any of these really correlate. So it’s just gonna be a simple check, meaning roll and beat a target number.

Now what’s the target number gonna be, that is probably the most important thing to figure out. I think for now I’m just gonna go with a 50/50 chance, so target number 10? Maybe 11? One of those, cause the numerical spread on 2d10 is 2 to 20, not 1 to 20. Oh, if we look at the Sprint rule, it has a very similar check mechanic, so we’ll use that as the basis for our target number, which will be 11 or higher. 

Now one cool thing I like in D&D is how a player can roll a check but not know if they’ve succeeded until something happens to let them know. Now this is solo skirmish, so we can’t do that exactly, but we can kind of re-create the effect by making the Stealth action a forced action. This also keeps it from being too powerful, I think. So what I mean by forced action is that in order to use Stealth, a figure declares they are going to attempt to go stealthy, and then, regardless of the result of the dice role, they are bound to the Stealth action rules.

Which are: moving up to a specific distance and not being able to take any other actions, like Melee or Move To Attack or Shooting. At first I thought maybe a stealthy figure would move at 1/2 speed and still be able to Sprint, again at half speed. But then I thought maybe I am again being a little too generous, so how about a Stealth action means the following:

A figure attempting to be Stealthy can move up to 4 inches, which is slightly more than half the typical base soldier movement, but after that, the figure can’t do anything else, which in game rule parlance would be saying: once a Stealth movement is made, that figure’s activation immediately ends. And the kicker is that a figure is bound to these rules regardless of whether or not their check succeeded. 

So that’s pretty limiting – a figure can’t Stealth and make an attack or investigate a clue marker, or anything else – they are busy trying to stay hidden.

The last relevant question might be, are there any abilities a monster might have that would logically negate a figure’s attempt at being Stealthy? I think there is only one, at least in the core rule book: Ethereal, which states that a figure with this attribute can see and move through terrain as if it were not there. 

So, we got to add a tidbit about how monsters with the Ethereal attribute are immune to Stealthing figures, or something like that. Figures can never successfully Stealth against a monster with the Ethereal attribute. There.

Which brings us to adding a single prerequisite for figures trying to be Stealthy: in order to make a Stealth check, a figure must have a piece of terrain taller than 1/2 inch between it and all enemy models.

All right, I think that covers it. It seems pretty straightforward and easy to parse out, at least on paper. We’ll play test it in the next scenario.

Okay, for the second house rule, I want to address this issue of “discovered items “. Now this is probably not in line with Joe’s design overall or he probably would have included it in some fashion. But he also clearly wants players to have fun from the get-go, so, you know that’s what I’m doing – I’m having fun.

And remember, I’m kind of doing these homebrew rules to basically let me service the narrative aspects of solo play.

So this second house rule is all about allowing figures to hand off items to each other. But we’re not going to break Joe’s core rule for soldiers, the one that says they’re stuck with the items chosen at the point of recruitment. We’re going to limit this special rule to only items and artifacts discovered during a scenario by investigating clue markers and drawing cards.

Because, like in the last battle report, both warband members who investigated clues and turned over cards, found items they either already had or couldn’t use. And I think special items should maybe have a better chance of helping the unit that found them. And I don’t think it’s too unbelievable that if a figure can pick up a clue or an item or something, that they could easily toss or drop, say, a bag of silver shot or a silver dagger they found on the ground or to another soldier in the warband.

So this one I think is pretty simple:

Item Hand-off

A figure can use a free action to “hand off” an item or artifact discovered via scenario special rules (i.e. via clue markers and drawing cards).

A figure can choose to hand off an item to another friendly figure up to 3” away OR may drop or toss a discovered item to the ground up to 3” away.

Super simple, moving on.

Now this third house rule I want to write up has to do with the monster expert ability, which can be chosen for any soldier in a warband during recruitment. As written, this ability only functions during a PVP game, because it affects only the monster die in a player’s Fate Pool. And in that capacity, it functions perfectly well. But in solo play, as written, it doesn’t function at all. But I still want to use it, because I think it’s a cool character attribute.

Like in the Nightmare Hunters, Vermont Escoffier, the supernatural investigator, for example, it’s just cool to think he’s had to study up on these fairytale monsters they tangle with, while he was at University, which is part of his backstory. So, let’s make it work for solo play.

The first thing we should declare is that using this attribute must affect the figure with the attribute – or if not affect, it must at least involve the figure in some way.

See, this attribute is meant to cause a monster to increase its damage against or target your opponent in PVP. But for a solo players, it will allow an attempt at making a monster decrease its damage against the figure with the attribute only.

So the figure can use its Monster Fate Pool die to re-roll a monster’s Power or Skill die, and the lower result takes precedent. But this can only be used during a monster’s attack that is targeting the figure with this attribute.

Alternatively, a figure may use their Monster die to modify a monster’s action. They can force a monster to target the figure themselves during a shooting attack or become the target of a move or move to attack that would have originally been made against or toward another figure.

You know, this is kinda like they know how to bait a monster into targeting them. Basically spamming aggro, right?

There is a third option, which would be similar to the first, but the figure could re-roll a Power or Skill die in their own attack against a monster. But we’re kind of getting into the normal Fate pool stuff here. So another thing we could say is …

A figure can burn their Monster die to gain a +2 to their Melee stat in a single attack action against a monster. Now, I am not sure what’s over powered without play testing, so … I don’t know. 

All of this is easily justifiable from a narrative perspective. A figure with this attribute has either studied monsters in some way or learned through encounters and thus they know some monster’s weak points or eccentricities or whatever.

So I’m gonna go with the plus two for now, I don’t think that’s too OP at least on the surface. One attack getting a plus two, doesn’t seem like much.

All right, let’s take a look at our brand new sheet of house rules for solo play. Because, you know, design makes everything better, right?  

I can link this document as a PDF in case any of you wanna download it and use it in your solo games or, you know, you can print it and roll it up and use it to start a fire in your Christmas fire place!

So, go brew up some house rules! You could make a whole new game that way, if you wanted to. And let me know what you think of these.

See ya!

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is, Trying Something NEW!

Transcript

So I often serve up pep talks in one form or another on this channel, all geared towards encouraging folks to be creative and not only get stuff done but to try new things they may have considered but never pulled the trigger on. And my own personal view of philosophical concepts is that they are best when they’re universal. Meaning, for example, “sit in the chair” <snap> can pertain to many things in life beyond a hobby desk or gaming table.

And sure, I often squeeze or stretch stuff to make it pertain to our hobby but that’s because they can, and  they do.

So this time I’m putting my money where my mouth is and I am taking my own advice and I am tackling something new to me and I’m getting something done. And, of course, who would I be if I didn’t bring you along with me?

Intro

Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes I take you on a field trip that’s only vaguely related to tabletop gaming! And we thank our patrons for their considered and sophisticated indulgence.

One quick note here, there’s gonna be a lot of b-roll that has no audio because I played real music in the studio even though I knew that’d be a problem for YouTube. It was a photo shoot, c’mon man, we had to have some cheesy get-in-the-vibe tunes. Right? I mean, that’s what they do in all the videos I’ve seen of photo shoots. 

So this whole thing started, well, to be perfectly honest, it probably started back in 2013. I had wrapped up my little cheesy fantasy dungeons and dragons inspired, no budget web series and one of my actors was asking me about season two. I had written up an outline, so I knew two things: season two would require real money and real locations. And thus, I was never confident we’d get to do a season two.

Trust me, when I spout off with advice on this channel, I do so well aware of how difficult it is to follow any kind of advice.

Anyway, my actor friend, who had moved to Sacramento, had found a winery there that is essentially a real castle, and they do rent out to productions, like I know Disney has rented that place before. So we went to check it out and they gave us a tour. Now, the third act centerpiece in my season two was something I’ve never stopped wanting to do, cinematically-speaking: a masquerade ball that devolves into a pitched sword fight and magic battle, with a heist running in the background D&D style.

And on another hand, I’ve always really liked photography, but I’ve only ever shot, you know, like candids and landscape type stuff. I’ve always wanted to shoot portraits, but I’ve never had any confidence to try such a thing.

I still don’t have any confidence, I’m just old now and have fewer fucks left to give.

One thing is, I’m pretty introverted. Life has tried to beat that out of me but it’s definitely a core stat. Or flaw, as the case usually is with my core stats. So, one on one with a person I don’t know, that’s a tough deal, couple that with a lack of experience, self doubt, self consciousness –

You see how all this “self” nonsense kind of adds up to form a kind of narcissism, like in some kind of inverted way? Yeah, so do I.

Anyway, I never tried portrait photography and I’ve never tried flash photography and I’ve just always wanted to learn how to do it. Now a lot of people I know are quick to point out things like, “dude, you shoot video all the time. You work with clients and actors and subjects all the time, it’s the same thing. What are you worried about?”

And it’s hard to explain that it really isn’t the same thing. It’s in the ballpark yes but it ain’t the same game. In our tabletop hobby terms, it might be like having speed painted armies forever and then deciding to try out painting a bust or display model.

But back to D&D and photography. I really like certain aesthetics. One of those is obviously swords and high fantasy fashion. Duh.

So with this idea of the masquerade ball scene never quite leaving the back burner – and yeah, it’s still bubbling back there – another friend of mine was making a stop motion feature film in his garage, and one of the actors he hired to do some voiceover was our mutual friend, Debradawn Shockey, who is not only a fantastic actress, but is also an incredible wardrobe designer.

Look, she help me do these! <insert freelancers clip, insert Dust and blood clip>

So I was hit with this idea to do a photo shoot with Debradawn and women in medieval dresses with swords. Yeah, I know how original that is, you ain’t gotta tell me. I also have an idea for a companion series, but we ain’t gonna talk about that right now.

So I called her up –  

And so earlier this summer – which was 2023 if you’re watching this in the future – we all crewed up on a TV show production and neither Debradawn nor I had forgotten this photo shoot thing, so we planned it out.

On our TV production, we met … Lily Luque … and on a whim I was like, hey Lily, would you be up for doing make up for a photo shoot? And Debradawn was like, hey, Lily, would you be up for modelling for us too?

Lily was a little taken aback by that, but she walked that plank in the end cause she’s gracious and badass – 

Now something I’d originally asked Debradawn back at the beginning was if she could also find me a couple of actresses to shoot. Debradawn is heavily involved in the community theater scene, so I figured she might know some folks. Plus, I work with actresses but I’ve never worked with models.

Hey – introvert with a lack of confidence, we done talked about this, remember?

So Debradawn found a couple actresses and she herself would be my third model. Good to go. But you know what the universe does – it takes your plans and laughs at you. Right in your face, every time. But at a certain point, or a certain age anyway, you just expect it. And you suit up and ready yourself for battle/get ready to go to guns, ‘cause that’s what it feels like every time.

So, I had the crew all on board, I had Debradawn, Lily, a third actress, my friend Jared to assist me and my production partner Brad to help on set and shoot some BTS while we did whatever we were going to do. I scheduled the studio, everyone was good for the date, and then two weeks out our main actress couldn’t make the date through no fault of her own. Of course, right?

But another thing we learn about the universe is it likes to pull the rug out from under us so it can give us a gift. That always happens and you just gotta have faith, you gotta keep moving forward, you gotta show the universe you ain’t stopping so you can receive that gift. You got a look up at the sky and say, “What else you got? I’m hungry.”

So, I started asking around, trying to keep the franticness out of my voice, and we go through a bunch of almost-maybes, and the main photo session slot is still empty.

Then I remember we used to use this site called Breakdown Express to cast actors in our projects years ago. It’s called Actors Access on the actor side. Now, you’re probably thinking – if this guy works all the time in this industry, how does he not know people? Well, I used to but of course there’s a story there that I’ll tell you one day. Anyway, our old account was defunct so I had to make a new one and had to jump through some hoops to get verified so I could post the gig and this is now like seven days out from our studio rental date. 

And wouldn’t you know it: I got over 200 submissions in 24 hours. I’m sure the SAG strike had a little something to do with that.

Anyway, I ended up meeting Laura Dromerick through that process. And you know the universe is helping you out when your top choice not only responds right away with her availability, but turns out to play D&D as well. Get the hell outta here, right? Come on!

<Insert clips of Laura, talking, D&D>

And on top of all that, Laura is super cool, gung ho, fun to work with, and talented. And those are the four most important facets you want in a collaborator. She fit right in with our group, although I’m positive she’s used to much higher quality sets.

So, what’s it like trying to pull off a day where you’ve clearly bitten off more than you can chew?

Here are some things to note when you’re putting together a project. When you’re putting together a project, you’re producing. And when you’re also directing that project, you’re also directing. Most indy or low budget or no budget creators are doing this all the time. And it’s tough. But, you know, if you want to do anything, it’s going to be tough.

Mostly what I was trying to do throughout the day was:

1 – make sure the other folks helping me produce this thing had their space and time protected so they could do their thing.

2 – make sure we stuck to our schedule as best we could, which is always a top imperative, at least to me.

3 – do my best to protect my actual shooting windows, of which there were for one hour blocks. Meaning, I really wanted those hours to be all about working with the talent and firing those flashes.

And to do that last one, well, the first thing you gotta do is try to plan. And a big part of that is making the schedule. And the things you cannot forget when making the schedule is lunch and prep time.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to pull off the day. There’s always two things at war in a creative project – the producer and the creative. Now I don’t mean to imply that actual producers and creatives are in battle with each other, even though that happens sometimes. In fact, there’s no better pair of allies on a project than a hard-core producer and a great creative. What I mean is most creative projects is a battle between efficiency and creativity – or the creative process maybe. And when you’re wearing both hats, well, you’re playing solo skirmish against yourself.

Some things I did prior to the shoot include:

Not only thinking about, but acting out some of the poses I thought I wanted to shoot. And from this, I generated a shot list of sorts.

I set up and ran tests with the flash equipment because I’d never used it before. This involved setting up soft boxes and umbrellas and light stands and diffusion panels and reflectors in my apartment, and making sure I knew how to operate the remote flash trigger with my camera.

I thought through the day quite a bit, and tried to imagine all of the details of the production in order to make the schedule. And I tell you what, nothing screwed up my schedule more than figuring out when to work in that damn lunch! Here’s the schedule I sent out to the crew and talent, in case you’re curious.

Now on the actual shoot day we all worked really hard to try to stay on that schedule. And I have a tendency to sacrifice some creativity in order to hit my days. Some would argue that this is not how an artist is successful. And I might agree. I generally always want people I’m around to be happy, and I’ll tend to forgo sometimes my own artistic or creative desires if it’s gonna cause discomfort to someone else. I really struggle with it, believe me.

So once a day starts, it’s always a whirlwind. You just gotta go to work and let everything you spent time thinking about sort of percolate on the back burner and focus on the tasks at hand.

We unloaded five cars worth of gear into the studio. That sounds dramatic and it was. But one car just had this crazy chair Debradawn had and one car was just Lily’s make up gear, but the other three cars were packed to the gills so you couldn’t even see through the rearview mirror. Not recommended by the way – and probably illegal in most states.

Once we had everything set up, my first model, Debradawn, became my first test subject. And I cannot overstate how completely out of my element I felt. Like I said, I’ve literally never taken a flash photo of someone before, let alone someone who has put time and immense effort, along with a bunch of others, into a project and who is trusting me to not waste her time or make her look bad it. “Freaky” is an understatement.

But because I did my tests at home, I had something to kind of rely on, so I just did what I always do. You just gotta jump off the diving board, results be damned. So we started shooting and I tried to remember all the things I’d been studying and wanted to do and, well, we just shot a bunch of pics.

Debradawn makes most of her wardrobe with the ability to add and subtract pieces, so that looks can be pretty versatile, which is awesome.  

Now again – I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s definitely one thing to watch a bunch of tutorials and a whole other thing to do the thing yourself. But it’s also the cool part, right? I mean, we were doing the thing!

Like this, I used this little micro fogger exactly one time – a few days before when it showed up in the mail. I knew I wanted to use that pipe I got in at the Ren faire and this silver chalice thing I got on Etsy as props and I thought maybe both the pipe and the cup might look cool with smoke coming out of them. Figuring I could use this little fogger on miniature photos, I bought it and tried it out once beforehand to make sure I knew how it worked. And it worked pretty well on set!

When Laura arrived Debradawn and Lily got her made up and dressed up and we started shooting with her in the red dress. I pretty much let Debradawn just choose the wardrobe she wanted to use, and I took care of props. And then we just tried to get as many shots as we could. 

Which is not necessarily the best way to do things, but I realize that’s kind of just how I work. As much as I want to be a “planner” and know exactly what I want ahead of time, I just don’t. I definitely have ideas, but a lot of the time I have to see something to know if I dig it or not.

Anyway, Laura was super fun to work with, and game to try all my dumb ideas and added her own too. And Debradawn would jump in there every couple of shots to add something like earrings or change something like hey how about this sheet of gold cloth, which at first I was kind of horrified by, but in the end she knew what she was doing it, because it actually looks really cool on camera.

After our first hour of shooting with Laura was up, we broke for lunch, which Brad had to drive an hour for, and then Laura got into the green dress for a second look Debradawn had picked out for her and we got right back into it. 

For the second look, I asked Lily if she could mess up Laura’s eye make up, smudge it up and … 

Let me call out my two buddies here too, Brad and Jared, they had my back the whole day. Brad owns black bunny media, which is basically our day job where we produce video for all kinds of clients, and he spent the day shooting behind the scenes for you and me. And Jared was essentially my right hand out there on set, moving lights, running the smoke machine, swapping props, making sure talent didn’t fall down on our ridiculously slippery floor, helping Debradawn with all her stuff, he’s always there when you need him, which you know is a priceless thing to find in an individual.

So we had this crazy cool chair Debradawn brought – in Jared’s car actually – and we did some shots with Laura in that and at the end of that sequence, I asked Laura what she would do in the chair. And that’s what I’m talking about! Being creative, being fun, being willing to try weird stuff, game on!

Then we lost the chair, which means we removed it from the set, and I switched up the sword. Now that sword, which is currently dull, used to be razor-sharp, and it is for all intents and purposes a genuine weapon. It’s really well-made, probably one of the coolest things I own. And there’s a fairly terrible story about this sword that maybe I’ll talk about one day.

But anyway, we did some more poses with that sword and we went back to the rapier and we did a bunch more stuff. And in the last five minutes Laura was going to be on set, we tried out that boot on the camera shot.

And then it was time for Lily, who came out of the green room all decked out in the blue princess dress and promptly showed me her shoes and said look I brought my Lacey shoes to go with your lace and blades photo shoot! Which I thought was super cool. Because Lace & Blades is the working title I put on all the call sheets and emails and the Breakdown Express ad. I know it’s a silly title but you gotta have some kinda working title, right, so that’s what it was.

Now, just like me, Lily hasn’t done this sort of thing on camera before and she was telling me how she needed some direction. 

Now this is the last hour of the day and I’m well aware that we have a hard out on the studio rental and we’ve got 7 acres of stuff to pack up and the clock is ticking.

We hadn’t used this katana I’d brought yet, so I started her with that. I feel pretty bad because by that time of the day I was failing her I think. I really wish I just had more time – but we’ll talk about the things I learned from the whole experience in just a bit.

So I brought a cheapie fan and so we tried that out – which was cool but now I know why you really need a powerful fan to move someone’s hair around. Then we switched props so we could have fun getting more poses and shots. 

One of the best pics I got was Lily playing up her reaction to an empty wine cup.

OK, I know one of the most frustrating things about this video is, I’m not showing you any of the actual photos. There are a couple of reasons. One is that that’s how it was on set. We didn’t really look at any pics other than on the back of the camera. And that’s how it is for most of the low budget shoots we do. We have to wait ’til we get home to dump footage – or in this case photos – to a home computer to review at full resolution and see what we captured. Of course, on bigger budget productions you have monitors and ways to check what you’re doing as you go but that wasn’t this project.

The second reason is that reviewing and working on the photos is definitely worth its own video. There are some surprising correlations between miniature painting and photo post-processing and things I’m learning from one that apply to the other.

So yeah, I’m just a tease. 

But on set, we finished Lily’s session with that bastard sword – which is the technical nomenclature, even though it’s also called a hand and a half sword, because you can operate it with one or two hands.

And that was it – 

All right, so some final thoughts. I think everyone had fun – and we got some, uh, well, I didn’t know what to expect from the photos but I desperately hoped I got at least one cool photo to make the day worth it. 

That’s facetious of course – even if I’d shot total garbage, the experience was worth it. There’s plenty of stuff for me to take away from the experience, but probably the biggest thing is actually just the experience itself. I’m super happy I did it. 

And of course I learned a bunch through this experience – I told you, gaining XP left and right, double XP on failures. I learned quite a few things that are photo session specific, of course, and I’ll learn even more when I go through the pics. But one thing I learned is that, yeah, I think I like shooting portraits, or at least doing studio photography. I mean, I have no desire to shoot like normal family portraits or corporate headshots at all but the act of taking staged photos, I think I really connected with it. I already wanna do it again. 

I love working with the costumes and props and talent, it’s just too cool. I learned that I would prefer to shoot only one or two models on a day with two hour windows blocked out instead of single hour windows, so I’ll know that for next time. I don’t need nearly as much gear as I thought I did, so that’s good to know. I don’t think I like just shooting into a plain backdrop as much as if we’d decorated an entire set, but that said, I still need to try taking photos on a location, which has it’s own batch of logistic issues. But I could go on and on about stuff I learned on that day.

Ultimately, while planning and researching and studying is a super important part of any project, I think the most important thing is just doing the thing, whatever it is. That’s where all the value lies. 

And of course, someone will say, well it’s easy for you do something, you got all this equipment yada yada yada but hey, I got into filmmaking with a point and shoot home video camera, that’s what I started with. Yes today I had a bunch of resources I tapped for this little project, but a lot of the time, it’s easier to lean on any kind of excuse not to do something than it is to pony up, drop your cards on the table and actually do a thing – trust me, I know that intimately and fall victim to my own excuses every damn day. 

The point is, the reward for trying something new, even if the first attempt is outright failure, is gaining experience, and gaining experience just might be the only thing of actual value in this life. 

I don’t know, I’m just a crazy old dude on the internet.

See ya!