Tag Archives: photography

It was a Saturday afternoon and chaos had erupted in the garage at my house. This sort of chaos is typical when we get together with mates but today everyone was pitching in to set up for a photoshoot. The God Of War/Kratos character portrait had been planning for the past month and now it was coming together. Most of us ran around creating the set while Dylon got his clothes off. Yes this is normal for Dylon, but this time he had a reason! Our makeup artist (the wonderfully talented Abigail Bartlett) was about to arrive and turn Dylon into a roman killing machine.

After 3 hours of hard work the set was together, the lights were set, Dylon was painted up and running about slaughtering invisible minions.

How to photograph a Kratos:

• First up, find a muscle man, your Kratos won’t look very Kratos like with a scrawny 13 year old. We chose Dylon because he has big guns and is easy to get hold of.
• Secondly you need to find a good makeup artist. Abbie was brilliant and easily capable of creating a realistic looking Kratos. Without the makeup it would have just looked like Dylon in a skirt.
• Make your own costume: A Kratos outfit was unobtainable. The costume was made from $2 kids toys, spotlight fabric and op-shop items by Alanna and myself.
• Props are important. Huge boulders and limbs were part of making the hell scene in which Kratos slaughters poor souls. We used Jake and Alanna for limbs. Don’t worry, no dismemberment occurred.
• Lighting: The most important part, the lighting had to be of a high ratio and very directional. The lighting setup doubles the size of the muscles and red gels over flash guns added to the hellishness.

Is Kratos a winner? I think we did alright on this one. Let us know what you think! And if you think this character looks great, wait until you see the rest of Abbie’s work! She has a page here (reader beware, it gets gory!).

Many thanks to all our readers :)

Alex