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Well I took a trip out to my local hobby store and decided I would pick out somthing to paint just for fun. I decided on a box of empire state troops, and from that I give you my first try at nmm.





comments and advice would be greatly apreciated

what is nmm?
and good so far, however the sprue might hinder construction...

The lighter areas of the sword need to be much lighter than they are now with a nearly white line running down the center of the blade. You also want your dark & light colors to be opposite each other on the blade. Right now you have most of your light grey in the middle.

Take a look at what good NMM painters have done with their swords and use that as a guide for where to place your light grey and your dark grey on each side of the blade.

NMM generally should go from pure white to pure black through grays or a more natural hue added to the gradient. You also want there to be sharp contrasts on either side of the object. NMM isn't realistic but it tricks the eyes in to making something look mirrored or reflective. Not a bad try for a first attempt though.

looks a little on the grey side...but i can see the effect and it's ok for a first attempt. more tweaking and your second try will be perfect

Bobo, have a look at this

http://www.youtube.com/user/GirlPainting#p/search/5/WJkPRxOH7m8

Alexandra aka GirlPainting looks at the theory of nmm. You might find it helpful.

Good luck mate and don't forget to post up attempt 2.

Hangfire wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GirlPainting#p/search/5/WJkPRxOH7m8

Alexandra aka GirlPainting looks at the theory of nmm. You might find it helpful.

It might have been helpful if I could sit through it. The voice sounds like a female impersonator. Sounds like a dude in drag. Alex, who now wants to be known as Alexandra. Maybe does a mean Liza Minelli impersonation... Whatever the case, it's far to distracting to sit through the video, much less pay attention.



Ghidorah

That really is not bad at all for your first try, not bad at all. NMM though is a very 'practise makes perfect skill', I don't believe it is something you can watch tutorials on and be good at.

Thank you all for the quick replies! I will try to go over the blade tonight and make sure to keep solid white at one end and black at the other end.

@Breotan
I'm not sure I understand about the light grey. where should it be?

@Hangfire
I watched maybe half that video but I have to kind of agree with Ghidorah. The voice is too distracting. I have been looking through alot of the writen articles and a few nmm tuts on youtube.

Ill try to redo this side tonight and maybe try on the other side of the blade as well. pics later hopefully

It's because she is German, listen and you will hear the accent, that's what the odd sounding bits are.

Well, I actually think this looks more like metal than the over-the-top contrasts you often see when people paint swords and the like. I'm not saying I prefer one over another, but if you consider realistic over 'eye-candy', My vote goes to your style

There once was a tutorial on nmm in a white dwarf magazine, I'll try to look it up for ya

yours looks quite nice though

winnertakesall wrote:It's because she is German...

No. It's because she sounds like a dude trying to sound like a chick. Her accent has nothing to do with.

Anyway, I went back to the link and paused it until the entire video downloaded. I was able to skip back and forth without having to listen to her talk very much. I must say, I was rather unimpressed. It was 8 minutes of filler that had very little to do with actually painting NMM. The examples of the swords were pretty handy, but all the "invented by..." stuff was next to useless. Also, when she got to the NMM chrome, she lost all credibility with me. Her example that she said she made on her computer was TERRIBAD. Awful. Fugly. It looked nothing like metal at all, let alone chrome.

Any sky-earth tutorials you want can be found easily enough by just searching yahoo. That's where she got most of her examples anyway.


OP - It's a decent enough start you have there. With more practice and more questions and research, you'll have some kick ass models, indeed.



Ghidorah

I revisited my sword and not theres abit more contrast. sadly I had to use a diffrent camera and the pics are not showing what the sword looks like IRL. But anywho, here it is.





the two white spots on the left hand side have been taken care of since this pic so no worries about that.
I also have yet to add a wash to bring it all together so theres that too.

any comments and advice is welcome

That's looking really nice. A little goopy near the handle, but otherwise it's quite convincing. Very nice work for your first try!