I like the paper and pencil much better, they really look much more realistic now.
Looking fantastic! I’m going to say you have way too much negative space on the top of the image though.
Frakkin’ amazing dude… amazing sculpt, amazing detail, amazing concept!!!
Just for that +5 to dexterity!!
That’s much better now 
No matter, wether this will work for BWC. It’s definitely a great project.
Btw: did you export those to scale?
Because the focal blur and such is influenced by the reference size. And the export size is 1 BU = 1 m by default, afaik…
Still, for BWC it doesn’t look much like a stop motion movie. (Or like a movie in general, for that matter)
Man I am sooo envious of this…you should definitely upload this to shapeways.
The pencil looks better now though the paper seems to just kind of overexpose everything. If you are using the pencil and paper to determine scale you may consider using something a little relevant to the character. This dwarf/wizard/gnome holding the die is from a completely different era than the pencil and paper. A quill and ink jar would be more relative. It’s like putting blue, red, and green together, they don’t match so well. More appropriate might be a broken chess piece or even just a nice piece of faded paper. (nothing to try to add more to the story than what you intend) I hope you do not take this offensively, as it is not intended to be. or not to be? 
What about just doing some general terrain in the background? I mean, wargames have molded terrain sometimes. I’d suggest making it realistic in comparison to the figure though.
i think you should add a hand in the top of the image reaching down to pick up the figure…
Hmm… an actual true terrain would probably work indeed.
The more realistic you set up an environment, the better it will look, even for parts that aren’t seen at all: The light gets reflected in a different way, changing the general appearance. Maybe just slightly but it usually it works. Realism in Modelling and Materials is very important with an unbiased renderer…
Also, if it becomes an outdoor scene, you could light it with a sun. There would be way more direct light and the whole thing would end up rendering one or two orders of magnitude faster…
You could also try a halfway open scene, where you basically blend the room into an environment. - One half the actual room, the other half, the imagined environment of the game.
That’d change your current concept entirely, though…
KeithM, I’m pretty sure that’s a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet printout the miniature is standing on, so it works for me! If anything, that table is -far- less cluttered than most of the D&D gamers’ homes I’ve ever seen.
I agree with gregzaal, I really like the idea of a hand reaching down to pick the figure up.
yea, it’d add that sort of ‘this picture tells a story’ feel to it… its not just an object, but something is hapenning… like its actually doing something
Thanks for the comments. Great ideas out there. It’s true that the upper space is empty. I wanted a vertical composition with some space to insist on the small dimensions on the character, but I think it was overdone.
I like the idea of a hand coming down to pick it up. It would insist on the figure being imaginary. As for terrain, I’m not sure I get it : fake miniature terrain or really outside?
In any case, my time is running out on this project. I can’t spare working much more on it, I’ve put many other things on hold! Modelling and creating the SSS materials for a close-up photorealistic hand would be very taxing. Even more so in case of a realistic landscape. I don’t brush these aside, there’s still a lot of time until deadline, but I prefer to have another plan which is more realistic for me.
What do you think of this? I like the fact that everything is still on the plane of the mundane : the warrior dwarf is an unpainted miniature, the gem is a 10D, and the dragon is but a shadow. isn’t that the essence of pen and paper RPGs?
@keith : don’t worry to say what you think, it’s the point!
@kram : you’re right, it’s not typical feature film stop-motion, specially the framing… but someone could have made a small film animating a miniature by stop-motion.
@Alter : yes, it’s a bit minimalistic… lacks the chip crumbs, and such.
Jonathan Lessard
It’s good as is.
Anyway, for the terrain, I either mean fake terrain in-scale with the character, or real terrain in the figures world and scale.
It would be amazing if you could do a kind of fake miniature landscape on the hand’s side that smoothly transists into a real one behind the character.
So to say, as viewed by the owner of the hand and as viewed by the character
That current solution is nice aswell, though
kram: you’re right. That would be nice! I’m not sure how I would do that, though… it’s worth thinking about it.