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The miniature bellow will hopefully soon be arriving in the post and I've been thinking of a challenging scheme that I could use some advice on.

First is about placing the hot points of the fire - as I feel if I make it in the obvious place near the orbs - I struggle to see how I'd get enough contrast between the orbs and fire - unless I made the translucent orb very dark right next to the flame and very bright directly opposite for the light shining through - although being so dark near the flame could look weird imo.

Second is what natural colour to make the orb, that much orange light shining on a green / blue / purple orb would make it very desaturated - whilst on a yellow / orange / red orb it would tend to look orange anyway and I wouldn't get a lot of contrast from the flames.
Right now my inclination is to go for a red orb with a more yellowy light shining through it with a very short blend to avoid the orange stage?

And thirdly is about painting the OSL going onto the rest of the model - do I only consider light coming from only the brightest points? Because although it may be more realistic I can see painting OSL coming from the entire flames potentially looking a little too busy. E.g. The underside of the wrist brace on the left of the pic - should that be hit by light?

Sorry if I haven't explained it in the clearest way, but hopefully I can get some of your opinions

If you are trying make the orbs contrast with the fire, you could always go for some kinda super reflective orb to do some NMM type thing to it.

Reflecting off the other orbes and the guy near by

Though thats gona take a TON of work.

Other option is to do a nega orb and paint it pitch black with stars or something shining from the other side which would contrast well.

As to the OSL it depends on how crazy you want to go.

The armor depending on what it is can absorb and defuse light so you want have to do too much OSL glazing. while metal items will reflect sharply.

make orbs fiery, make the trails smokey. use only the three fireballs for OSL.

the color wheel suggests going blue/cyan/turquoise colors for the clothes.

I was thinking of NMM for the armour although I may use TMM with kind of manually added reflections.

That's a good idea actually womprat, making the orbs firey, instead of them being separate orbs I'll try to paint them in like they're enveloped in the same fire. Although, I don't picture this magical fire having smoke, particularly as its not burbing fuel.

For the clothes I'm going for an olive colour - and red for the cape. Given he's a fire Mage red and orange will be the main colours with blue to green just as spot colours on a few parts.

Start with ambient light as normal. If this is a tabletop piece then that needs to be quite bright; your OSL will be subtle and for the most part barely noticeable. If you're going arty, then it might be interesting to paint ONLY using the orbs as light sources. Technically, very challenging. :-) You gon' have some fun, boy.

I'd suggest working the whole trail / orb in black->red->orange->yellow/white progression. It looks flamey, and it simplifies the OSL and what you need to do with it. A bit.

Begin by working the red/orange OSL from the trails, and increase intensity in spots and blends to yellow white. Remember to illuminate the trail as you go.
Remember the cardinal rule 'light is additive'.

This was just gonna be an 'in my comfort zone' high tabletop job, but then again this model is more for display and the idea of light only from the OSL I can see looking awesome if pulled off properly.
It would be a challenge and I'd really have to brush up on some theory, I imagine if done not quite right then the whole effect is lost and it looks worse than a solid table top job would.

If I don't get any commissions over the summer I think I'll go for it.

And with that, you curse it. Every time I've said 'if I'm not booked up I'll paint that Perry unit/Forgeworld dragon/space hulk/dread fleet ' something comes up and in the process my internal distractibilty means I go on to another project. I have many, many personal projects at the primed and ready stage, lol.

It just arrived - making it my fourth project on the go! As I do actually want to finish this one by October I think I'll keep the OSL simpler and also go for true metallics

Wuss! Push it! You know you want to!

I've been issued a challenge! So I had better do it now - I just hope I finish it this decade