Something of an \"Egads!\" moment...

[Amazon warrior]

Because I want a painful, miserable life I have decided to paint my *huge* collection of Wolfen using the NMM technique...

I hate painting NMM. Mostly because I\'m not very good at it yet, especially on large, smooth areas like those huge Wolfen blades. I can get the colours rightish, but the placement of those colours eluded me. I\'d finished most of the work on my fang warriors and just had the steel NMM to do, and was wondering how to do it and get it to look semi-competent. I\'d already painted the base colour and inspiration hit me! I held each figure directly underneath my painting lamp and highlighted what I saw. I\'m still working on it, but it already looks a lot better than my previous attempts using guesswork alone.

Did everyone else know about this, and I\'m the last to tumble to it? Because I\'ve read quite a few NMM articles/tutorials, and they tend to describe a lot about colours and contrast, but almost never *where* to put the colours/contrast, which was the part I always needed.

 

[supervike]

Yup! I\'ve heard a few others use that same technique...but, I\'ll claim it\'s your invention if you\'d like!! lollol

Egads indeed!

 

[Amazon warrior]

Originally posted by supervike
Yup! I\'ve heard a few others use that same technique...but, I\'ll claim it\'s your invention if you\'d like!! lollol

Aww! You definitely know the way to a girl\'s heart!

I just never saw it mentioned before. The only thing close to it I\'ve seen is a suggestion of taking a pic of the bare-metal mini before painting, which seems far too much like hard work and organisation to me. Other than that, everyone assumes you know where it\'s all going.

 

[matty1001]

If I need to know where light fall il prime the mini black and then shine a torch in the direction of the light.
Once i\'v got the photo I take it into photoshop or iphoto and up the contrast so you get clear whites and blacks, I find this is a great way of doing it.

Then I just reprime the model white.

I reckon if you are doing NMM the best angle would be about 30 degrees from the top of the model, so the light is falling at an angle and will give more interesting patterns for NMM than just straight zenithal lighting.

 

[squig hunter]

I now always \"polish\" the metals to a certain degree, especially if I\'m painting NMM then I put it under a light and take loads of reference pictures If I\'m painting metallics the reference pictures come in handy aswell

Squig

 

[Amazon warrior]

Ah! So that\'s how you do it! Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I\'ll try and use some of those on my more showpiece-y bits.

Here\'s what I managed using the \"hold it under a bright lamp\" method:

Not the best NMM ever, but good enough for government work, and certainly better than my previous efforts!

What do you think?

 

[freakinacage]

very nice too! i would increase the shading to make it look more shiny

 

[Amazon warrior]

Thanks! I probably should shade them a bit more, but at this point I\'m heartily sick of looking at them and want to finish so I can do something else (I hate incomplete projects).

I figured that if I start off with the rank-and-file figures, by the time I reach the leaders I should be able to pull off some more impressive stuff. The standard I\'m aiming for is very good gaming quality.

 

[freakinacage]

Originally posted by Amazon warrior
The standard I\'m aiming for is very good gaming quality.

then relax, i would say you have succeded!