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Hello, I am wondering what eyes I should put on my tyranids if any.

i'd say leave um... they look awesome aready

I would say a bright yellow or possibly a very bright orange. It would really contrast with the armour plating and skin.

I would say a bright yellow or possibly a very bright orange. It would really contrast with the armour plating and skin.

Id agree yellow came to my mind too.

I am afraid the yellow/orange is going to be to many colours. I am trying to reduse the pallete.

How about mithril silver?

Honestly Niiai, your kind of in the same boat I was in when i was planning out my color scheme. Unfortunetely, as a matter of psychology, colors only look good in odd numbered arrangements. Don't know why, but even numbers throw the brain off and make things look unappealing. So, if you really want to keep your color range down, I recommend you use one of the 3 colors you have, or possibly simply use that particular colorless glaze that shines up the eyes. It will make things pop, if what you are after is brightness and contrast.

Nope, Yellow first came to my mind. I wouldn't do metallic eyes. If your trying to have a similar colour to the rest a milky white would look good, but I would try and make it really stand out.

I would clear gloss the eyes (and maybe the talons) but otherwise I'd leave them alone. The gloss would be just to change things up a bit. That's just me tho

 Niiai wrote:
I am afraid the yellow/orange is going to be to many colours. I am trying to reduse the pallete.

How about mithril silver?

In that case I would actually take them back to a glossy black. Simple, alien and adds nothing to the color palatte.

barnowl wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
I am afraid the yellow/orange is going to be to many colours. I am trying to reduse the pallete.

How about mithril silver?

In that case I would actually take them back to a glossy black. Simple, alien and adds nothing to the color palatte.

That was my first thought too. If you want to limit the colours black is probably your best bet, though I think adding yellow to the pallete isn't as bad as you think. If you try a metallic colour, I suggest gold instead of silver. Could you do some tests and post them?

Personaly i like green but if your worryed about color a dark glossy jetblack would be cool.

Here is mithril silver on my tervigon (under construction).

As you can see in the original photo the outer shading layer on the shells is done with mithril silver and slaneshi grey on the top shells (head and back) so sort of make a rippeling effect omnce you get then in a swarm.

That seems to work. It doesn't look out of place/draw too much attention, I just get the impression that it is a bit bland :-/

I agree. However, I do feel it will look nice with all the shells en-large. Usualy one should use clever colour to draw attension to important parts on a moddel. I just do not know hod to do it on tyranids. They are so homogenic.

 Niiai wrote:
I agree. However, I do feel it will look nice with all the shells en-large. Usualy one should use clever colour to draw attension to important parts on a moddel. I just do not know hod to do it on tyranids. They are so homogenic.

Sorry, I was only talking about the eye colour! The scheme you have chosen is good, it is actually quite close to the GW Hive Fleet Leviathan scheme. In the codex, nids with that scheme have yellow eyes. Nid miniatures generally have 3 core colours and 2 spot colours. The core colours are split up into what I call "shell", "skin" and "claw/tooth". Shell and skin usually contrast well: you have blue and white/red. The claws usually contrast against the shell, without clashing with the other colours in the scheme: you have solid red. All of that works fine. Spot colours (eyes, biomorphs, tentacles) clash with the skin but contrast/go well with the shell (and vice versa for the second spot colour). GW frequently use yellow and green. Yellow would clash with your skin but go with the shell (yellow is opposite blue on the colour wheel). For you the second spot colour would, again, probably be green (opposite red, your "skin" colour, on the colour wheel). This formula seems to work for most Nid schemes.

Confused yet

Using silver works but it doesn't really pop. Black would also work, but again, you are really just skirting the problem. My suggestion is just be bold and try something different. Nid miniatures have too many components to limit the palette to 3 colours.

Anyway, that's the theory according to M4cr0Dutch! Here is my latest Nid, painted yesterday, which bends all the rules I just said and has an even number of colours

Holy smokes that is a good model! The trygon is impressive to begin with but one can just loose onself in the details of those ribcages. Good indeed.


When I started changing my old colour scheeme (that unfortunetly ended up looking like Mc_Donalds or burgerking) I decided to go for a solid well established colour scheme. Leviathan seemed to fitt the bill. I wanted to use a very conservative pallet inspiered by this homepage: http://theback40k.blogspot.no/2010/05/little-color-theory-part-iii.html he had an articel that I found very good. On hindsight it apears I have missunderstood.

Purple does not apear so mutch in the wild so I thought that it would make for a good "alien colour". As you can see I am trying to not go for to mutch saturation (how pure a colour is) in my models. I have also tryed to restrict my pallet as you can see I am using colour that are all on the same side of the colourwheel. Also I make good use of the neatral colours: black (crevises) white (teeth) grey (shell) and brown (base). While I do know that grey and brown can also be in different colours I have made them tinted purple and red respektivly. The purple I paint dark and the "feather" (smal strokes besides each other) my way up. The skin colour is a yellowish/desert with a solid brown/black wascoat with a drybrush of underhiveash/terminus stone/tyrant skull/eldar flesh in a helathy mix to get some small pigment variations. The "hard weaponised bone" like the tallons are just korn red as I think doing mutch else, at least on the little once, will take up to mutch time. The "pink" bits are whenever there is a muschel crevis on the arms etc. and also in the joints. I imagine that on the tyranids the skinn colour is more like a soft exoscheleton and the joints you can se inbetween are attached more like on a crab. Therefore you get pink each time those joints are ataching.

But I think I have "painted myself into a corner" as the norwegian expresion is. Because as you say it does not pop, it is a "colours inspiered by the red side of the colourwheel." bland shade.

I have experienced on two models as you can see.

M4cr0Dutch I liked what you told me but I did not fully understand. Could you advice on colours or walk me through it again.

I have done som seraching on tyranids leaviathan and I think I have spottet something: My colours are all very warm. The original hivefleet leviathan has a mutch coler skinn colour that lets it get a warm cold contrast as well as a dark/light contrast.

Mine are all warm and all the colours are to grey, not bright or dark. Perhaps I should have chosen a different colour then red?

all rights to the other pictures belong to veritas on devian art and blizzard entertainment.

Honestly...I would use those cool little googlie-eyes that people use for puppets

No just kidding.

Eyes are hard to get right. If you make em stand out too much they look fake. But if you dont make em pop, you cant see em.
Andyman

Hi Niiai,

Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you: crazy week at work. I really like the work you have done on the Tervigon brood sac. Very cool!

The "warmth" of colours can be hard to define, as sometimes cultural expectations are different. Traditionally, the chromatic colours purple, blue and green are cold. The chromatic colours red, orange and yellow are warm, with some overlap at yellow (it can also be a little bit cold). Achromatic colours (white, black, gray, tan, bone, brown) are harder to define this way. They often appear warm when directly next to a cold colour, due to the way our eyes and brain perceive colour.

GW Leviathan "shell" scheme is purple (cold, dark and saturated). To contrast against it, you need a light "skin" colour: they chose white (warmish, light). The claw colour needs to either contrast against the "shell" in some way, or it needs to be achromatic. GW chose red (warm, saturated). Red and purple are next to each other on the colour wheel, so they are "analogous". Basically, they offer your brain a similar experience perception-wise (they are easy to look at). So, good choices so far! Ideally, the eye colour should be bright green (opposite both purple and red on the colour wheel). For some reason GW chose yellow! I guess nobody is perfect. It does contrast in warmth, but I like green better.

Now let’s have a look at your scheme. Your “shell” appears purple (cold, but lighter and unsaturated). The way you have done this makes it hard to contrast against. Your “skin” is mostly achromatic bone. The pink “muscle” is just added detail that looks quite good. The whole shell/skin combination doesn’t look quite right though, because the shell is so light and unsaturated! The “claw” colour is red, which works, just like in the GW scheme. Ideally, the eyes should be bright green, for the same reasons I stated before. Green is opposite both purple and red on the colour wheel. Yellow would also work, because it contrasts due to its warmth and is opposite blue on the colour wheel (your purple looks blue due to the technique you have used). If you do the eyes black or silver, you are choosing an achromatic colour, which is just avoiding the problem. This isn’t strictly a bad choice, GW do it a lot in their Tyranid schemes (i.e. Hive Fleet Behemoth Nids have black claws).

I would suggest three things:

1) Try to make your brightest feathering finer. You can do this by using a finer brush, loaded with less paint and using smaller strokes. This will return some of the saturation back to the shell.

2) Paint the eyes green! Your skin colour does look warm due to the pink muscle detail, so the green should work well.

3) Your Hive Tyrant does not look the same as your Termagants (scheme-wise). The skin appears darker with no pink musculature. The shell is also different. This changes things a bit. You may want to add some more highlights to the skin and add some brighter feathering to the shell, to make the scheme consistent across the army.

I would try these things before adding any more detail on the shell, such as stripes or patterns. Good luck!

That spawning sac is really impressive. Hideous, but impressive.

What is going on with the Tyrant though? The skin looks messy and the carapace looms completely different.

Thanks a lot for tips and comments. Especialy you M4cr0Dutch. I will post some pictures of the tervigon and the hive tyrant as they get finished.

stefanbrill wrote:

I would say a bright yellow or possibly a very bright orange. It would really contrast with the armour plating and skin.

Id agree yellow came to my mind too.

I agree too. I would use Red but seeing as yours already have red on their skin Bright orange or yellow would look good. or you could leave them as they are, They look great!