Today's word: Ice
This was the first image I created for this round of the hunt, being made within days of the list first hitting my eyeballs.
For a geek like myself, ice immediately brought to mind Captain America being frozen in ice for 50 or so years starting back in World War II. So the concept was simple: show Captain America frozen in ice.
My first question was should I use an action figure, or LEGO. I had both in my collection already, so either one was readily available. The action figure version does offer more detail. However I decided to go with the LEGO version as I was not sure how plastic would hold up to being frozen. I knew the LEGO plastic was pretty cold friendly, and if I was wrong was cheaper to replace.
So LEGO it was.
I put Cap face down in a 9x14" baking pan, weight it down (LEGO floats), then filled it with water. I also filled a cookie sheet with water, and stuck both in my deep freezer. A few hours later I had the base for my ice scene.
I then broke up some of the ice from Caps half, and made a wall of ice, and attached it to the cookie sheet using more water. Back in the freezer for an hour, and I had a completed set.
I sprinkled on some baking powder onto the ice to give an arctic mix of ice and snow effect. Then I set up a couple Lume Cubes to light the scene.
I had to work in 5 minute spurts to keep the ice from melting too much. Pull out ice, add baking powder, refreeze. Pull out, set up lights, refreeze. Pull out, take some shots, refreeze. etc. It actually only took a small handful of iterations to get a base image I liked.
Then I grabbed a couple polar bears from PixelSquid, comp'd them in, did some textures and other basic adjustments, and I had a completed piece.
If you are curious, the LEGO survived the freezing process just fine.
