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Actually this isn't about the ultrasmurfs but my own homebrew chapter which has black armour and red eye lenses, but the issue is the same. I want a sergeant with a helmet on. I'm going to go with red helmets for sergeants like the smurfs, but then I don't know what colour to paint the lenses. If you think about it this guy has the same helmet the others have only painted red, so why should the lenses be a different colour to the others. But then again red eyes on a red helmet will look terrible.

What does everyone else do with their helmeted smurf sergeants who will have the same issue?

When I did a unit of ultras with the red helmed sergeant i painted the eyes blue on him for contrast http://www.coolminiornot.com/300460?browseid=2794777

Yellow lenses, can't go wrong when yellow and red are together.

I tend to use green lenses for a red helmet, essentially any other main colour thats not red will work.

 wickedcarrot wrote:
When I did a unit of ultras with the red helmed sergeant i painted the eyes blue on him for contrast http://www.coolminiornot.com/300460?browseid=2794777

I like the look of this because he still seems to fit in with the other guys, i.e. the blue lenses don't stand out as a drastic break from the rest of the unit. I wonder whether that is because of the blue armour, though. I'm not sure if the blue lenses would blend in as well with my black armoured guys. I suppose I'll just have to try it and see.

I'm worried green will look too much like he stole his helmet from a blood-angel. Not sure about yellow. Might work. I'll try and find some pictures with that combo on.

paint them black...
nice and sinister...

it is easy enough to do the exact same lens effect you would for the red...

just an idea...

cheers
jah

Liking Jah's idea! Is there a spot colour on the models that you could use instead of black?

 wickedcarrot wrote:
Liking Jah's idea! Is there a spot colour on the models that you could use instead of black?

The black does sound like a good idea. The marines have silver trim and the occasional red bit such as the tactical arrow etc. don't think silver eyes would work.

Go with black then! Maybe work some blue into the greys of the highlights?

Black lenses, unless they're properly highlighted, will look unpainted. Green is the complimentary color to red, and is the best choice.

 Brother SRM wrote:
Black lenses, unless they're properly highlighted, will look unpainted. Green is the complimentary color to red, and is the best choice.

I'll better properly highlight them then. Seriously, though, I'm worried that rather than looking like a sign of rank a red helmet with green lenses will look like a random part from another chapter. That's why I liked the smurf picture with the blue lenses. It all still looked like it was supposed to be like that in an ordered Space Nazi sort of way, rather than turning it all into some sort of orky "lets just wear any old helmet I found" situation. I'm sure I could have expressed myself better there but I hope you get the idea.

The upshot is I'm going to give black a go, then try blue if that fails and finally resort to green and give up trying to think too deeply about this sort of thing in future.