Topic: SE-NMM Color Recipe

[XCrusaderguy01]

Well, I checked all the stickies, and gave the search tool a whirl (hopelessly, I know), but only found regular NMM color/gold/silver color recipes. I'm looking specifically for a chrome SE-NMM color recipe, as mine is turning out looking far too much like blue and brown, not nearly the chrome I want.

Here is the kind of effect I am going for. This may actually have been a sticky here, I can't remember. You'll notice that at the top he lists the colors he used for his gold and silver, but conspicuously leaves out the recipe for the chrome SE-NMM at the bottom of the page.

It looks like a fairly simple Ice Blue to white blend, but the bottom I'm not quite sure. It's not quite brown, not quite gray. It looks very close to Charadon Granite, but I'm not sure, and I'm a little leery to start experimenting with blending foundation paints. Can they even be used like that? I've only ever used them for base coating.

Anyways, what color recipe/progression (with current GW paints only) do you think I could most easily replicate this?

[DJ-of-E]

http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/metal2/Reflective1.htm

http://www.blackmoor.ca/articlesnmm.htm

There's no "secret recipe" you needed to make a chrome look.  It's a concept which you have to look at and practice.  This is where understanding the color palette becomes really important.  Also, I've always think that GW is quite appalling in color selection to make a good "chrome" look.  IT IS IMPORTANT that when dealing with GW's limited palette of colors, you have to continuously "mix" colors to get the right color when layering darker or lighter.

From the look of the link you've gave me, I could only guess that graveyard earth will be the base.  However, I have to mix graveyard earth with chaos black to make it darker, bleach bone to make it lighter, and bestial brown for some extra "earth" details.

I will also disagree with Ice Blue as a good base blend for "sky" chrome as it's too strong in "white" pigment.  Enchanted blue is easier to work with as a base so that you could work your way up depending upon how much of a mix with white you added on with.

[XCrusaderguy01]

Hm ok I had a suspicion that ice blue was betraying me in secret. I'll try graveyard earth again, but it just ended up looking too brown I think...

[Dux Aurelius Elysius]

I would suggest scrolling down a smidgen to the point in the article where it says "colours for NMM".

As writ by DJ-of-E a chrome affect is 90% the intuitive positioning of highlights and the smooth blending used to paint it.  You'll never pull off a "genuine" NMM without that smooth blend to extreme white.  There's a rather nice CMoN article in the stickies about the theory behind it and another one with some colour recipe.

You have to remember, however, that though they may photograph nicely what you're looking at is a matt flat colour that will only appear genuine in one or two angles and the rest of the time look unnatural.  It's for this reason I tend to champion TMM, especially if you're going for a SE or a chrome effect, because when correctly painted you can still have flat dark colour for shading but as you twist and turn the model it will still catch the light in new places and new ways.  Another reason I'm not a fan of the NMM look is I tend to think it makes the models look more cartoony, though that's more a personal aesthetic.

Those sites are all good, I'll add them to the stickies in a bit.

[XCrusaderguy01]

I would suggest scrolling down a smidgen to the point in the article where it says "colours for NMM".

Right, but that specific article's "Colors for NMM" section gives only gold, steel, and silver recipes. 

You have to remember, however, that though they may photograph nicely what you're looking at is a matt flat colour that will only appear genuine in one or two angles and the rest of the time look unnatural.

I've been honestly considering this. It was pretty ambitious to start with a Grey Knight Terminator as my first SE-NMM (and really, any NMM) experience. I understand the concepts, but I wasn't able to blend the colors well enough. Both my sky and my earth ended up too dark, and thus it just looked like his armor had a weird pattern of blue and brown, rather than any kind of metallic sheen.  I also seem to have none of that intuition as to where the highlights should go, nor do i think I can get the silky smooth blending that the pro's do (although I am getting better).

I'm curious how you propose to do a SE/chrome style painting with metallic paints. I've never seen this used, at least I don't think I have. Can you give an example of the results and the process? This might serve me a little better.

[Dux Aurelius Elysius]

I would suggest scrolling down a smidgen to the point in the article where it says "colours for NMM".

Right, but that specific article's "Colors for NMM" section gives only gold, steel, and silver recipes. 

Chrome, in painting, I find to be more a concept than specific colours.  If you want a brown earth/blue sky chrome scheme I'd suggest painting as standard steel SE to get the correct impression of shadow and horizon, and then doing some very light glazing with blues and browns to give the impression of reflection.  The second link I posted does show an example but IMO it's OTT and cartoony and would be better served by a very gentle tinting rather than overt painting with block colour.


Look at the helmet as reference, it comes out best in pictures compared to the body.  Also keep in mind that this was my first time having a serious attempt with this technique and, as with you, intuition as to where to place certain levels of highlight could do with work.







The bottom picture pretty much shows the helmet without specific light catching it away from my "imagine" light source.  You can see in the upper two the way that the surface responds when the light is caught.  Nothing especially long or complicated has been done to achieve this, the only thing I used which you might not have access to is my Vallejo metal medium, which is a lot like mithril silver but lighter, and I only used it for the extreme highlights.

I used standard metallic paints (boltgun metal, mithril silver and Vallejo metal medium) and when shadowing I simply mixed the boltgun metal in with progressive larger quantities of greys and, for deepest recesses, black.  I only used flat paint with the metal for the lower, shadowed surfaces because I wanted the upper surfaces to really catch the light regardless.  Use of the flat paint mixed into the metallic means that when the surface isn't directly catching the light pretty much all you see is standard shading, and (as the middle picture shows) when it is in the light you get a good amount of response to give the impression of metal.

More time can (and at some point will) be spent smoothing out the blending, and also tinting the shadows so that they reflect their immediate surroundings (skin tones and glow effects).  I don't like the concept of blue/brown SE on stand alone models as I find it looks (as I mentioned) a little cartoony, a little showy and doesn't serve much purpose.  A lot of effort for a negative result.  Within a diorama it can be much more justified.

Edit: High polish (chrome) reference pictures.  IMO there isn't that much colour that would translate into blue, considering a lot of the sky at any one time is largely white fluffy cloud.  Also green is more predominant than brown by a long shot.  When selecting tint colours for chrome you have to be mindful of the surroundings to convey that into the model, mainly why I only like it on dioramas.