I agree with you on NMM, While i can appreciate it and the skill needed to do it; it's not really my style as well and in some cases i think its become a bit overplayed in painting circles. another cool basic thing you can add to the list is with your silver metallic mix it with clear,contrast or inks to get a colored metallic
I'm no where near good enough a painter to keep pace with the new hotness at any given time. Be interesting to see if NMM is still a thing in 6 or 9 months time.
@@willcorcoran NMM has been a thing for years, and part of the hobby well over a decade... It'll still be around. The reason that you see it all over RU-vid and Instagram, these days, is because the approaches and theory are understood well enough to be easy to proliferate to the broader community. Ditto for Blanchitsu, oil and enamel washes, makeup brushes for dry brushing, and a plethora of other tools, techniques, styles, and approaches to theory. It's been a kind of interesting thing to watch, honestly.
I mean many artist paint minis not to play games with them. If you want to paint an army you go as basic as possible, using techniques that look the best in the least amount of time. I don't want to paint a 1500pts Necrons army with NMM. I might fo a single miniature to stand out and sometimes the cartoonish look is great but it has to fit with the rest of the army as well.
I enjoy NMM and am using it with my current project, but honestly it takes a lot of time to pull off and is the end result so much better than doing TMM or just simple metallic paints? Not sure...
@1:08 Mica is a type of mineral that has this sorta shiny look and is also somewhat easy to break down in small parts. It's also very heat resistant, which allows it to be used in applications such as the windows of ovens. As far as paint goes, they mix very small bits of mica with bog standard acrylic paints in order to give them the shiny, metallic look.
Contrast over metallics is one of my favourite uses for them, I've mostly done metallic colours so far like red and I'll definitely be trying out that soft brass look you got on your AdMech.
Thanks for the video! I have been really struggling with NMM, feeling like I needed to do it to because it seems like the thing to do. I just tried your wash and contrast method, actually used both and I love the result! Thanks!
Washing and glazing metals is so much better than NMM tbh. Like, not just from a time saved perspective - I just think it looks better. NMM has a tendency to make the models look real cartoony - even when it's done very well. Not strictly a bad thing, just not my aesthetic.
Micah is a rock and it's a really cool rock if you can find it because it chips apart in smooth layers and you can actually see through it when you get it thinner enough it kind of looks like rock candy but it breaks apart in sheets
In addition to NMM and TMM there's also NMF - natural metal finish. This is a name for various techniques used by scale modellers to replicate shiny/reflective metallic finishes found on some aircraft. NMF can be done by applying metal foil onto a model, with certain paints that can be buffed after they have dried, using airbrush specific paints like Alclad (which I think do include actual metal flakes rather than mica) and probably in other ways too. If you have a look online for scale models with NMF finishes you'll see that they can look very impressive - and shiny - indeed.
A while ago I asked a confusingly worded question about cloths and metals that are the same color, but different textures. You actually answered my question here 3:59. So you mean that if I wanted a dark green metal, I'd take a metallic paint, probably silver, and then put on Dark Angels Green overtop
For painting gold on my GW minis, I use (admittedly, very old GW paints) Shining Gold (early 2000s) with Mithral Silver (mid 1990s) highlights, then a layer of Yellow Ink (remember when GW used to have inks in their paint line? I snapped up a bunch at a local hobby shop when they were discontinued). The yellow ink is the key to giving it a nice golden shine while bringing the gold and silver paints together. It also helps if you can find photo references for polished gold bars (or can see some in person... I used to work for a bank).
I used Cryptek Armorshade Gloss (i believe) on my Necrons to make the Runelord brass and silvery parts look rusty and it worked wonders. Currenlty practise drybrushing.^^
I think a good silver base, and then using inks, washes, contrasts to add colour is a great method. It also lets you get metallics in colours you could never buy. Just have to use it sparingly. I've went overboard with this. :)
One trick that I like is mixing a solid colour like brown with gold, or grey with silver as a base coat and work up highlights from there. I saw it in a WD tutorial on the Space Hulk SGT and it works really well!
Some paints like silvers, gunmetals, etc are made with aluminum powder. Sometimes they are made with mica if the acrylic base can react with the metal pigment causing it to corrode. A classic example is gold which often uses ground brass which reacts with the acrylic base causing the paint to go bad and turn green.
Contrast over TMM is so dang good! I haven't needed to get any gold or brass paint thanks to Skeleton Horde and Guilliman Flesh, and if you thin out the lighter shades like Aethermatic Blue, they work great for Earth/Sky reflection techniques! Another thing I've found works great is to paint NMM… but with TMM paint. For instance I have Vallejo Metal Color Magnesium, which is dark, and Pale Burnt Metal (I love the way those two are slightly tinted already) which is light, and I'll use them both as shadows and highlights respectively, which gives a really excellent sense of depth to armor, and for blades it helps to paint the flat part dark and then the sharp edge light, and for chainmail you can paint it all dark first, then do a drybrush of the light metal color to really emphasize the 3-dimensionality. Metal that has a lot of engravings and/or sculpted nicks benefits a lot from this style as well. So much fun~!
Interesting topic. I used too paint a lot of watercolour paintings and regularly painted " NMM" with those paints, but it never occurred to me to paint a 3D object that way. Why bother when you have metallic paint? I can see the challenge, but outside of a display peice for perhaps a shadow box, it's a technique that someone who's just trying to get an army together to play games with, doesn't need to worry about. Your advice about washes and glazes and inks are spot on. I have yet to try any of the contrast paints so I can't comment on those. Thanks for the video!
I purchased some Robbed Cyborg minis from Ramshackle Games to use in Stargrave and This Is Not A Test. I want to make them look worn and rusted. I don't want them to look like your typical machine men, so I'll be using your tutorial on how you painted up your Necrons as well as suggestions from this video. Hoping to give them a nice look of dilapidation to make them stand out.
Eventually I’ll be able to do some. Working on painting up some good cabals now, actually. However, there have been several good battle reports put out there already. Go check the @snarlingbadgers Twitter account for links to batreps. Thanks watching!
It seems to be everywhere these days (and this might be a bit of a hot take), but I don't really like non-metallic metal. IMO, there's not really all that many people who can make it look really good. It does look great when it's done well, don't get me wrong, but for the effort invested:outcome ratio, I far and away prefer true metallic paints tints, washes, contrast and all that.
@Tapio Piuva Art I didn't say what I mean very well :) Mostly it's the style of NMM I don't dig if that makes sense. Even when it's executed really well, it's still something that usually doesn't wow me, even if I can appreciate the skill and time that went into it. I really do respect the people that devote the time to mastering the technique, but it's just not my thing.
Haha amazing, I love it when you clang your metallic hands against each other :D Very true what you said about washes. I recently experimented with some more unusual colours: I slapped a purple wash over some Ironbreaker metallic paint and I gotta say it looks awesome and more interesting. Also, this purplish metallic colour happened to go very well with the mostly pink paintjob of the rest of the miniatures. I would say going crazy with weird washes is definately worth a shot! :) Anyways, great video as usual Uncle Atom! :)
Mica is a mineral. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica Wiki says it is used in paints and also in cosmetics to add 'shimmer' or 'frost'. Wiki says it is even used in some toothpastes. Barry
I'm with you. NMM has never been my thing, it always seems like something meant for a display piece which is viewed from only one angle. I know its not, but it just doesn't feel quite right to me.
I've gone so far as to just mix contrast with metallic paint before putting it on the model for some great results. Silver or Gold with Wyldwood Contrast looks great!
I'm not a NMM fan either Adam. It's supposed to be easier than painting metals by the conventional technique , or so I hear but I've been using the standard process for years so I'm good with that . NMM is a process I might try one day but it's not a priority. Getting myself a "PACHOW," Teeshirt is though!
I’m painting up a necron lord using contrast ork flesh over silver. Looks fine but I’m not sure how to give it depth. I’m not sure what highlight colour I should use since I don’t have a true green metallic paint
Have you considered real true metal? Like laying thing metal on the metal parts? I've done that a bit. It's not as bad as you might think. It's done fairly often in automotive models.
Interesting! Is this done with electro plating? I remember back in the day some plastic kits had chrome over plastic parts, but truthfully I don’t know how that was done.
@@kalisthenes6650 Actually, very thin self-adhesive foil. It's a bit fiddly, but not as hard as one might think. Gilding with metal leaf is also an option, but harder to get that polished mirror look. The foil is thick enough you can get it nice and shiny.
I’ve never really attempted it, but I’m sure I’d be no good at it at first. Over time, I’m sure I could learn to do NMM to some degree, but I’d rather spend my time doing something else. I’ve never seen a NMM result that made me want to learn it, so why would I bother? Thanks for watching.
For metalics I used different tactics First I was priming metallic silver and then shade with army painter until I as happy with the result layer after layer.... Now I simply use metalics from greenstuff world (yeah a shitty company, bot no bit worse then gw) Only their red I feel like using bloodletter glaze to make it really red mettalic... Soon I will have to make my own red glaze
Where your Mica actually comes from ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Cdy1-6g_RCc.html tl;dr use metallic paints that use aluminum powder instead.
Most of this stuff is rookie stuff to me, thanks. I've been in the hobby long enough and painting models badly to know most of these processes and procedures . This is all a good reminder and motivator to get back out there behind my paint station and even try out that coctail stick trick (I'm a stiff ass Brit from The UK so I'm not so familiar with the american term. In fact I don't think I even knew that they're not called "coctail sticks," in the good ol US of A. So if I've taken nothing from this episode , at least I've been educated in as much as that
Sorry Uncle A, I love your vids, but couldn't the first 75% of this vid be summerized by; Just paint metallics exactly the same way as normal paint? Basecoat - Shade - Highlight - Details? =)
