How to copy that cool color scheme you found one mild midsummer morning.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Greetings, beings!

I feel kinda silly. Quite often, in fact. Sometimes I do something for the longest time, thinking the whole world does it like this, and then I find that almost noone does or even knows about it.

So, if you already do this - thanks for stopping by, move on, nothing to see here! But if you don´t.... Stay a while and listen! (4 more days!)


So what is this all about. Its a very simple tipp.

When practicing techniques, I often time dont wanna be bogged down with choosing the right color scheme. Well, truth is... I cant
So what I often times do is to go to sites such as CMON and look for a great looking miniature (why is "sort descending by score" not default?) Or I use the box-art of the miniatures I bought.
I then used the picture and the simple tool MSPaint (who would have thunked) to pick mid-tones, shadow and highlight colors. And that is pretty much it.

Here an example of what I mean:


Boxart Image (c) JMD Miniatures

There is a more detailed writeup on my blog - both in english and german.


Stay hoopy!
Zaphod Beeblebrox

 

[me_in_japan]

tip of the hat to you, sir - a simple, yet effective technique.

 

[Kretcher]

Nice tip, thanks

 

[ktooloo]

You can also try Reaper's Power Palette. You can upload any pic you want to match. You only get color matches in Reaper paints, but I don't think that's an issue at all.

 

[AllTerrainMonkey]

I helped develop the Power Palette, mainly because 1) I knew I'd use it all the freakin' time and 2) I'd never have to make a laundry list of paints used whenever anyone would inevitably ask me about them. Ok, ok, 3) was I was getting paid to do it, but I kinda felt guilty while the paychecks came in. Ok, fine, no, I have no guilt reflex. Or shame.

I like using photographs of people to get new ideas for skin tones, taking other people's minis and reverse-engineering possible color combinations to recreate the same mood, and sometimes even webcam shots of me with flashlights shining different directions just to get light saturation effects on skin.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

I thought about using this little trick a little more. Well, I was forced to...

I had to paint a face yesterday and did not have my Andrea Flesh Paint set ready... So I copied the colors from a product box on the internet - just like I wrote in the OT - and mixed them myself:

E voila! Now I know which colors to mix!

HL 2: Pallid Wych Flesh mit etwas Pink Horror
HL 1: Cadian Fleshtone mit Pallid Wych Flesh
Base 2: Pallid Wych Flesh with Cadian Flesh mit ner Spitze Bestigor Flesh
BAse 1: Bestigor Flesh und Bumans Glow mit einer Spitze Pink Horror**
Shadow 1: Bugmans Glow mit ein wenig Cadian Fleshtone und einer Spitze Bestigor Flesh
Shadow 2: Doombull Brown mit nem Schuss Thunderhawk Blue und eine spitze Rhinox Hide

P.S.: ** this is too orangy. Replace Bestigor Flesh with Cadian Flesh and you should be good to go

You might be interested in my new blog which I started a few days ago. I put up tipps like this about once per day.
Since I went fulltime with this you can expect much more content to come over the course of the next couple of days!


Stay hoopy,
Zaphod Beeblebrox