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Hye guys, this is my first attempt at NMM. Pictures are from my iphone, so not the best. I am looking for feeback as to how I can improve and if the effect is "believable". Thanks!

ohh its golden, like the colours and the highlighting is a bit think but better than mine and better with than without. the base looks really good can't wait to see it done.

So far looking pretty dam good. Want to see some more

PS: do you use a airbrush? with you do what model airbrush?

Nice golden scheme.

Nightfall wrote:ohh its golden, like the colours and the highlighting is a bit think but better than mine and better with than without. the base looks really good can't wait to see it done.

So far looking pretty dam good. Want to see some more

PS: do you use a airbrush? with you do what model airbrush?

I have an Iawta Eclipse airbrush that I use mainly for basecoating.
Do you have pictures of yours? would love to see them.

Saelan wrote: ...Do you have pictures of yours? would love to see them.

I post my Terminators and Dreadnought up soon as I can.

thanks for the info on the airbrush, I need to get one as soon is I can.

I would like to see more of ur guys when they are ready!

I really like that, nice work.

Besides a lot of masking and airbrushing each plate of armor individually, I'm not really sure what you could do...

It doesn't look BAD, in fact it looks quite good, but I'm not sure it looks like metal.

It looks good and quite unique, wish there were better pics, though!

Thats an awesome start. I'm no expert on nmm yet, but my advice based on my own efforts/research is to try and layer/build it up more. While the sharp highlights are nice an all, you sort of need to build up to it in order to get that true metal feel.

I know I was vague (since like I said, I'm no expert), but hopefully that can help some.

Edit: Also, try to figure out where your light source is coming from. A big part of nmm is obviously the highlighting/building of layers up to a single bright spot. As is, you have every raised edge highlighted to the brightest point, which doesn't work exactly. So try to base it off a single light source. It might also just be your pictures, as it is quite hard to tell at the moment what all is actually highlighted to the fullest. I definitely want to see more though!

Buttlerthepug wrote:try to figure out where your light source is coming from. [...] As is, you have every raised edge highlighted to the brightest point, which doesn't work exactly.

This is an important point. With NMM, faces are as important, if not more important, than edges. Right now, you have a bit of a gradient between what would equate to your shade and midtone, but then there's a huge jump to your highlight, which is applied solely to hard edges (and essentially all of them, at that). With the natural reflectivity of metals, one might expect some rather sharp color transitions, but the arrangement of tones that you have isn't quite right. Horst is correct, in that airbrushing the entire effect would be difficult, because you need to run the full range of colors you've used on each distinct surface, not a small, dark range on each surface, plus a bright edge highlight, like you currently have.

The key to NMM, as far as I can gather, is compartmentalization - you have to treat each surface (e.g. each abdominal cluster, each pectoral, etc. in a musculata, a la Sanguinary Guard) as a separate entity, painting a convincingly reflective finish for each. If each is painted to reflect the same horizon/light source, the entire model will appear clad in uniformly reflective material.

Thanks for the tips guys. I need to stop trying to make it look realistic from every angle, and just pick one. Each highlight has 5 shades and then skull white, perhaps it doesn't translate as well with crappy IPhone pics. Back to work!

Well after a week of frustration with NMM, I caved and went with a metallic scheme and I am MUCH happier with it. Even though I really wanted a NMM painted squad. Will try on smaller areas on other models in the future. I just couldn't get the lighting right.

Anyways, here's what the squad looks like currently. Probably another week of detailing and they should be done.

They are looking great dude... you know it's not too late to do Metallic-NMM hah. In other words use the NMM shading/highlighting principals with metallic paints... check out mine: http://atticwars40k.blogspot.com/2011/10/great-gold-rush-quest-for-best-gold.html