Red Skull Portrait — 1

Red Skull — 1

This is the Iron Studios 1/10 Art Scale Red Skull. An imperfect version of the Super-Soldier Serum gave HYDRA mastermind Johann Schmidt enhanced strength but left his face horribly disfigured. He became known as the Red Skull and was a bad guy that Captain America had to deal with.

I worked pretty hard on this one and most of that work was watching the character in various Marvel-themed movies and reading some old comic books. I came up with this idea of setting him on a mountain top is a red sky full of fire and lightening to sell the story that his life has been turned upside down by the failure of the serum to make him a super hero.

I literally THOUGHT UP this background and then generated it with AI. Then had it printed 20x30" at PRINTIQUE.COM and I mounted it to foam core and photographed the character against it.

I used two Lume Cube Panel Pro LED lights — one on either side to create the red light. (You can dial in any color you want on the Lume Cube app on your smart phone. Very convenient. No more gels!)

I made this with my Fujifilm X Series US #X100V mounted on a Platyball and Platypod — I used a combination of Photoshop and Topaz Photo AI to edit in post. I also added particle effects in BorisFX 2022.5.

Remember, toys are joy.

For a list of my toy photo gear and props go to:
bit.ly/toyphotogear

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Roughly 90% of my photos are finished in Topaz Labs’ product called Topaz Photo AI. It is a one click sharpening, noise reduction, resolution enhancement tool that uses AI to see what your photo needs and only applies as much correction as is required and only to the areas that require it. Check it out at bit.ly/TopazLabsPhotoAI