How do they do it right???

[Subvert_Citizen]

I have always loved the painting aspect of the game as much as the playing but lately i have been seeing more and more non metalic metallics and i was just curious how do you do it??

i mean i know how to highlight and all that good stuff I was just curious what colors make for a good start??

[Vaxillus]

The key to NMM is 1/2 the recipe and 1/2 the contrast. To make metal look good, it's essential to know what colors will work. You can steal a pro's or experiment to find out what works yourself. The highlights must also be extremely stark, in that you will go from very dark to very light. You also have to pay very close attention to the light source, as metal will be very light where the light hits it. You also have to be good at blending.

To get you started, I recomend starting with a neutral gray and highlighting to Vallejo Aluminum. I use Aluminum for all my white metal. Gold and bronze are for more difficult to find recipes for, but the Conf forums have a ton of stuff on this (everyone uses NMM there). Good luck!

[Death Angel]

What brand of paints are you using? I might be able to give you some starting recipes...

[Subvert_Citizen]

i use vallejo's and citadels
i have been painting for a long time i have just never attempted this technique.lol

[DarkHost]

While NMM looks great in photos, I have found that it loses some of its appeal when seen in person. YMWV.

[Wayne Rogers]

While NMM looks great in photos, I have found that it loses some of its appeal when seen in person. YMWV.
True! Especially the 'shinier" or more chromelike you make the NMM, the worse it translates to real-time viewing. NMM on minis is ideal in photographs.

[m0nk3yb0y]

I do what you may call "half assed nmm." I'm not really a fan of how metalics look, at least not my metalics. So what I do is use the nmm colors but I don't go all out on highlighting from a light source really. As soon as I finish up my golab I'll post a picture of it, my bane, and my ratchet.

As far as colors, the Reaper Master Series (http://reapermini.com/Paints/master) line has some great triads for pulling off nmm. For silver, use 88, 89, and 90 with white for extreme highlights. For the more golden look use 73, 74, and 75 with some lighter mixings for highlights. I'm sure our resident expert (wap) can correct me if my color choices are wrong.

[Chopa]

Didnt AlexiZ have a NMM gold article in the darksons designs book?

[SpawnovChaos]

i must say, while NMM looks cool, and vaxillus' was very nice, i just dont like it! it either looks grey to me, or super over exxagerated. i like the grittier look i guess, but NMM just never does anything for me

though alexiZ 's model is an exception

i prefer to bastardize both techniques and combine them, i give my metals a natural color base, like grey, then silver, and sometimes i even mix them to get that inbetween look.

but thats me

[Yoritomo Jiriki]

play brood, no NMM or metallics necessary it appears :lol: the NMM vs metallic debate is so old though, paint whatever style makes you happy is my painting philosophy (ofcourse if it takes forever for your to paint one mini like I do, then just being able to paint is good enough :lol: )

any fluff on the brood that might help me paint my murtros better? ty

[SpawnovChaos]

brood are spawns of deranged bio experiaments introduced rather quickly to the samarian environemet. meaning, maybe look at some animals that you enjoy and translate a scheme over to a brood model

maybe check the insect world, specifically beatles and tarantulas ( sorry im obsessed with spiders) but both of those often come in dazzling colors

and frogs of course!

[maveric7717]

go with the frog theme cause it is always cool and green and bright colors and some dark ones.
If you fail to find inspiration in those things you can always look at a platypus for inspiration. those magnificant creatures they are.
:)

[Wayne Rogers]

Its not easy being a green brood!

And that magnificent platypus! Just the thought of it sends shivers of fear and wonder down my spine. :rabbit:

[Chopa]

go with the frog theme cause it is always cool and green and bright colors and some dark ones.
If you fail to find inspiration in those things you can always look at a platypus for inspiration. those magnificant creatures they are.
:)

Just what I was thinking for my brood

though newt and toads can have a wide array of colors too (dont forget those poisonous tree frogs)

[DarkHost]

I did my Brood skin in shades of green, because I thought green fit well with living-in-a-swamp fluff, I have a fair number of shades of green, and I like painting green. I did their gear in shades of brown for the same reasons.

That said, pinks and/or veinous blues would work from a fleshy/biology expermiment run amuck. And I am sure that there are many other colors/color combinations that would look great and could be tied into the fluff in some manner.

[gunslinger]

in the wild, animals and that have time to evolve to their surrounding and create natural camouflage.. i would see the brood as not able to do this or maybe better able to do this.. so either way works.. i tend to see in the light of them not being able to adapt and their color markings are all wrong.. in otherwords if a treefrog has greens and yellows to warn others to not touch it, well the brood would have colors that would be more like, hey this is pretty harmless looking and whammo.. oops.. shouldn't have touched that..

or if it should normally be camouflaged, it would have wild color tendencies.. and usually ones that don't look right with each other.. (just my take)

[maveric7717]

so your saying since they live in swamps that they have to be like all swamp colored... which is like brown, puke green and more brown..... platypus still better option... :lol:

[Vaxillus]

I googled 'swamp' under image search and this is one of the results that came up:
http://www.eitangrunwald.com/SC3-04/SC3-04p2_files/SC3-04p2%20Large/603_Cypress%20Swamp.jpg
I think I'll use it as a source for my Brood, since I like how it's still swampy, but the colors are not vey typical. Plus I want to paint something more whitish for a change, as opposed to my usual green. I'll probably throw in a lot of other colors though.

[gunslinger]

so your saying since they live in swamps that they have to be like all swamp colored... which is like brown, puke green and more brown..... platypus still better option... :lol:


actually i am sayin the opposite.. they would be in the sense of the picture. bright yellow, orange or blue.. in no way conforming to the natural environment.. jsut the opposite of what one would expect in an environment where camouflage would be appropriate.. kinda like evolution gone mad, but also the natural ability to hide.. would be gone too..

[maveric7717]

so we'll just say there mutated animals/humans that were exposed to radiation and underwent rapid evolution. :mrgreen:

[DA_Magpie]

Don't see why they wouldn't be camouflaged. After all the Brood Mere would want them adapted as well as possible to their environment. Warning colours (like the tree frog) tend to be found on smaller animals with more risk of getting eaten. Frankly if you're the kind of creature that regularly tucks into sawblades then bright colours aren't likely to put you off.

I've done my brood in browns and greys. It seemed right for a swamp habitat, and I thought everyone else would probably go for green. :roll:

[gunslinger]

Don't see why they wouldn't be camouflaged. After all the Brood Mere would want them adapted as well as possible to their environment.

let us remember the brood mere doesn't have control of that.. she was barely able to stabilize the things after many many many attempts and sanity loss.. she no longer cares if they are correct, just as long as they don't die.. it was in their deaths that she lost her mind in the first place..

[SpawnovChaos]

i think either could stand

gunslinger i like your opinion of brood looking unnatural

yet at the same time, the twisted science that went into the brood could support a claim of rapid evolution, god knows what happens in the samarian enviroments.

or you could do both. make the brood look unnatural, but have some colors similar to their environment as if they are in a middle stage of evolution

i..e dark and bright!

i personnaly am doing that when i pick up brood

[Subvert_Citizen]

The brood are some great models and they take to paint quite well. do some watered down paint glazes on them and they look quite nice.
although i think brood would also look quite cool in unnatural colours. imagine a sawblade with bright orange skin and andgreyis h brown armour. not very swampy but hey it would be quite cool!

[gunslinger]

you guys are both leaning to what i was trying to explain.. (just wasn't able to very well i guess) parts of them would be "natural" and other parts would be "unnatural" hmm maybe i can find some time to paint a proxy of what i mean..

[SpawnovChaos]

i understand what you were saying now, and im just reinforcing it

by the way skylyn, my brood will blow everyones mind with their brightness!

[Yoritomo Jiriki]

I have always loved the painting aspect of the game as much as the playing but lately i have been seeing more and more non metalic metallics and i was just curious how do you do it??

i mean i know how to highlight and all that good stuff I was just curious what colors make for a good start??

I can tell you the colors I use, not the best examples of NMM around but you can see samples of my stuff on:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/artist/Yoritomo%20Jiriki

for steel I use VMC Intermediate Blue to VMC Pale Grey Blue and VMC White for the highest highlights

for bronze I use VMC Flat Earth to VMC Dark Flesh and VMC Ivory for the highest highlights.

those are pretty much the only NMMs I've tried... well there's copper too but I can't remember what I use for that (I know I use VMC Vedigris Patina for weathering copper and bronze).

it does invovle blending well and knowing where your highlights are going to fall. I need a lot of work on both of those still though. For a novice like me, it takes a lot of time and patience as well.

One of the reasons I choose brood is the relative lack of metallic areas.. mostly organic, so hopefully I can turnaround a mini faster than my usual one to two weeks per mini (even a small one like R mid-nor hehe)

[Yoritomo Jiriki]

Its not easy being a green brood!

actually master of all things green, kermit, has changed his stance. i saw a big billboard (along 101) where he says that it is easy being green now hehe (mini cooper advertisment hehe)... people can be bought off for just a few greens ($$$) apparently, even dear old kermit :sad: