For nearly as long as I’ve been collecting, I have been curious about bootlegs. Could they pass for the real thing? How do they compare in terms of paint, materials and sculpt? Up until this point, I’ve mostly satiated my curiosity with other YouTubers and bloggers. And now I want to throw my hat into the ring, and do some blogging of my own!

Thus far, I’ve acquired some bootlegs of my own, ready to do the first set of blogs and produced a new and “improved” backdrop. If you just wish to vote for the bootleg you’d like me to cover first, feel free to skip to the end of the blog.

Creating of the backdrop
First things first, my old backdrop was just not large enough. It was already problematic for certain larger figures, but now I want to do some side-by-side figure photos, it just wouldn’t do.
My husband agreed to knock up a new wooden frame, and I cut apart an old duvet cover that we weren’t using any more to cover it.

Here it is from the back:

This partially showcases the first attempt for the backdrop fabric – I thought the stripes might add a bit of a background. Here it is from the front:

However, when I did a test shot with two nearby figures, I wasn’t entirely happy:

The lines are hard to get straight-ish, which I expected, but the lines are too “loud” in the image for my liking.
So I decided to make a new backdrop with the back of the duvet:

… and the corresponding test shot:

I think this one came out much better, though I did give the backdrop a wash and another iron to get rid of more of the creasing…
One mod I’ll have to do before taking photos is to counterweight the frame. Husband didn’t account for the weight of the fabric on it, so it has a tendency to tip. For the test shots, I made do with some placemats:

The poll!
Now is your time to vote for which comparison you’d most like to see! There may be some variance in the order I do them in, but I’ll aim to do the most voted-for first.

Here is the poll. Answers are presented in a random order.

Hoping to put out my inaugural blog early in the next year. Watch this space!