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What colour do you imagine it is? I think it is a sort of luminous electric blue colour? And speaking of plasma, Me and my mate were playing our own version of Space Hulk recently and we thought of a cool cinematic: a PA marine rounds a corner with his auspex blaring out alarms o movement in the area. raising his PG, he fires. The Plasma bolt arcs down the inky black corridor, revealing a skittering mass of writhing, screeching flesh...

Purplish blue, by the looks of it




But really, it should depend what it's made out of.

Electric blue.

Any color of the rainbow that compliments the colors of your army, which is usually green for me.

Officially Games Workshop seem to alternate between blue and green, though the blue colouring is more prominent. However as has been mentioned it can really be any colour you choose (who says that your plasma is the same material that others are using?). Also the bits on Imperial plasma weapons that are usually painted these colours are actually heat sinks of sorts, thus should only really be painted anything other than the base metal colouring of the weapon if the gun's actually being fired (though repeated use of the weapon and overheating may perhaps stain these parts).

The human eye would see it as white. A combination of all color.

However, it burns the retinas.

Imperium plasma: Really light blue (electric)

Tau plasma: a bit darker blue (less hot)

CthuluIsSpy wrote:But really, it should depend what it's made out of.

/thread.

Argon plasma is a blue-purple, while oxygen plasma is a light blue color. As these are the two elements most commonly made into plasmas, most people assume that all plasma is some variant on this color. In truth, the color of the plasma is entirely dependent on what is being made into a plasma.

For example...

Ailaros wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:But really, it should depend what it's made out of.

/thread.

Argon plasma is a blue-purple, while oxygen plasma is a light blue color. As these are the two elements most commonly made into plasmas, most people assume that all plasma is some variant on this color. In truth, the color of the plasma is entirely dependent on what is being made into a plasma.

For example...

Oooh, I think I see some pink in there! : D

:: considers re-painting the heat sinks on my plasma weapons to be pink ::

:: rejects the idea of doing it right now ::

I'd say medium blue middle, light blue towards the edges. Picture Mordian Blue fading into Ice Blue.

Other way around then you get OSL with the light fading out around it.

I also agree with it being any colour you want. It depends on what element is being used right? So your army just uses whatever it is that becomes the colour you painted it; simple.

n0t_u wrote:Other way around then you get OSL with the light fading out around it.

I also agree with it being any colour you want. It depends on what element is being used right? So your army just uses whatever it is that becomes the colour you painted it; simple.

You are completely right that it depends on what elements are present. Thus you can get the whole spectrum of colors.

I always did green. but I believe I will give purple a try some time I believe that would be really cool

I paint my plasma coils red.

Isn't it a matter of temperature?

I usually use ice blue, but at the same time any colour works, as has already been explained.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:But really, it should depend what it's made out of.

/thread.

Argon plasma is a blue-purple, while oxygen plasma is a light blue color. As these are the two elements most commonly made into plasmas, most people assume that all plasma is some variant on this color. In truth, the color of the plasma is entirely dependent on what is being made into a plasma.

For example...

you ARE aware all those colours are added by photoshopping images, right? Space is a lot less colourful.

im2randomghgh wrote:I usually use ice blue, but at the same time any colour works, as has already been explained.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ailaros wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:But really, it should depend what it's made out of.

/thread.

Argon plasma is a blue-purple, while oxygen plasma is a light blue color. As these are the two elements most commonly made into plasmas, most people assume that all plasma is some variant on this color. In truth, the color of the plasma is entirely dependent on what is being made into a plasma.

For example...

you ARE aware all those colours are added by photoshopping images, right? Space is a lot less colourful.

Nah man, i seen this one episode of star trek where they flew through this nebula and it was like all tripped out shades of pink and blue man

No space can be that beautiful. Check out some hubble telescope photos sometime. But to the point.

What we generally see is blue plasma but it can really be any color you like. I say go with what looks best with the rest of your colors on your minis.

I think purple looks the best, that is what i go with for my IG.


I used red for Dark Angels though, which also looks good.

I always imagined plasma to be blue to purple because it's so bright, those are the only colours our eyes can pick up. The only time we can see plasma of different colours is when it's far away in space when the light has been filtered by distance. Similar to how the sun appears white at mid day and the sky is blue; but at sunset, the sun is yellow and the sky is red, when filtered by the density of the atmosphere.

The Mad Tanker wrote:I think purple looks the best, that is what i go with for my IG.


I used red for Dark Angels though, which also looks good.

Wow... that's freaky...

In that photo, it looks like it's actually glowing. So much so, that for a second I thought you did some electric and conversion work and put an LED or two in there.

Or maybe I'm just sleepy because it's quarter past five AM here.

No pouncey Im seeing the led effect as well. And its like 0630 here and ive been up all night playing skyrim. So i could be tripping.

But i think that it looks pretty cool. How did you paint it?

blue green or yellow

Wikipedia article on Plasma comes with a variety of pictures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29

While plasma can be any colour because it is just a state of matter it is mentioned in the fluff that is is a ball of hydrogen plasma.

Since it is heated to such a high temperature it would act like an emmissive black body and therefore the light would be almost pure white (minus the absorbtion spectrum for hydrogen) whiter than the sun even and just as bright.

It would also be right next to you.
Blindingly white is the only colour the plasma could be.

The bit on the weapon that people paint is either a cooling mechanism or (more realistically) part of the magnetic containment coil.

If cooling it could any colour from flat black, red, orange, yellow or white depending on how hot it was.
If magnetic containment coils it could be any colour but wouldn't necessarily glow, unless it was hot in which case - see above.

rob-or-ross wrote:The bit on the weapon that people paint is either a cooling mechanism or (more realistically) part of the magnetic containment coil.

Or it is simply artistic license, as the bolts of plasma themselves are of the same colour in various computer games where you see them discharged. 40k is bending science left and right, I wouldn't expect plasma weaponry to hold up to realism 100% either.

Not to mention that fluff is far from consistent from one source to another ... :/

Pouncey wrote:

The Mad Tanker wrote:I think purple looks the best, that is what i go with for my IG.


I used red for Dark Angels though, which also looks good.

Wow... that's freaky...

In that photo, it looks like it's actually glowing. So much so, that for a second I thought you did some electric and conversion work and put an LED or two in there.

Or maybe I'm just sleepy because it's quarter past five AM here.

Thanks, that is what I was going for I did it by painting the base silver, then purple, lighter purple around the edge and then a mixture of white/silver/purple on the very corners.

Whatever colour you want, depends on what pattern of plasma gun it is (las weapons also follow this rule). I tend to alternate between the standard blue as well as green (a la Fallout 3) purple and on one occasion because it fit the model orange.