Pip and Mo

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet my miniature friends, Mo and Pip. Mo is the little green dude with the big eyes. And Pip is the littler blue dude with the big eyes. These are the products of my latest brainstorming session for stock. Will they sell? Jeez, I don't know. But it was fun!
I did a couple of pencil sketches before building these little guys out of clay and little googly eyes. Their heads are held on with toothpicks. The finished product didn't look much like my sketches. They took on a life of their own - as these things always do.
I used my standard setup for shooting on white. Fire a flash at a clean, white paper backdrop... a second flash is bounced off an umbrella to illuminate the subjects... and voila. The objects are sitting on a glossy white tabletop - which provides the reflections I want. Very simple. Very little Photoshop work is necessary. In this case, I removed a few spots of dust here and there, made sure my backgrounds were clean white, and deepened the black in the eyes to make them stand out a bit more.I shared a bit of my birthday cake with them - that's chocolate cheesecake with fresh raspberries, and it was delicious! :)
When it comes to stock, I try hard to do something different every time. I generally try to keep the image very simple. Too much detail or color would take away from the image in the end. So I chose to use extremely simple shapes and colors - and a bit of repetition... to minimize distractions as much as possible. I want their facial expressions to tell the story.