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As a quite frequent user of this site, I find it, in all respects, very user friendly and incredibly helpful, however one point I feel it does lack is provision for a sort of database for people's own recipes for certain shades of paint. As a relative beginner, I've often been in the position whereby I want to achieve a certain colour, without having the know-how as to which paints to mix. In cases like this I've often had to create threads just to ask the Dakka users. I reckon it's not just me doing this either. I've taken a look through the general forums and, to my knowledge (please correct me if I'm wrong) I can't find a database, would it possible to have some sort of sticky thread, or forum altogether, where users can (following a general format similar to the swap shop rules) post recipes for paint schemes, preferably with pictures?

It's just an idea, and probably a stupid one , but it could prove to be useful to beginners such as myself.

Thanks, Warpig1815.

A problem with this is that it's very difficult to technically show someone a tone - most people won't have similar color profiles or calibrations from monitor to monitor. I'm not sure how to accurately record color fidelity for the purposes of reproducing it.

It's an interesting idea; but I don't know how it's feasible.

Hmm, I suppose so. I was more thinking towards the recipe being the most important part of the thread, and pictures being just an example - just as a general guideline as to how to achieve round-about a specific colour. Obviously, as you say it would be difficult to standardise how every person views the colour owing to PC specs differing. Anyway, many thanks for considering the proposal.

Cheers, Warpig1815.

Excuse the slow reply - it is such a good idea that I tried it once:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/299521.page

but alas it did not get any traction, though dakka was much smaller back then.

I am strongly in favour of it and would support it if anyone wanted to take the lead in making it happen. As well as colour lists for standard things like skin, ultramarines, etc., I would love to see a list of colour triads for various ranges as well, similar to this one:
http://greatredoubt.wordpress.com/painting-info/

Wow - I never thought I'd see another reply to this.

You see, my initial thought, much like your own was to make this database really simplified - ie. One recipe for one colour. However, I can see a few problems with it:

A) How is it going to be accessible for people? Assuming it takes off, and people post up lots of recipes, how are people going to skip straight to the one they need without trawling through possible 100's of pages?

B) How do we ensure that only the best, most concise and well written articles are included? - It's not much use to somebody if the recipe poster has good intentions, but can't write well - or even worse, their recipe is actually really bad!

C) Would duplicates be allowed? - Now say 3 people all find a recipe for their own take on Ultramarines blue - how do we keep the database simple enough that users are not swamped for choice?

D) How could we get it started? Now I'm all for making it happen, but, alas, I'm only a beginner - the range of recipes I use is far inferior to, and probably worse, than many of the Dakka users, so we would need to make a list of the hardest to achieve effects, go and find the best examples on Dakka, and then submit them all here to get people started.

E) The colour progression charts are a great idea, and can really help when you're not too knowledgeable about which colour goes best with others, but in order to put up a list, and illustrate them with a step-by-step of painting a model, would this not be more suited to the 'Tutorials' forum?

By all means, I'm not knocking the idea, I wouldn't be here if that was the case and i'd love to help progress it, however I'm just having doubts or concerns as to whether it's possible in the forum or sticky thread context...

Many thanks for the reply though - it's great to see the admins getting interested in ways to improve the site .

Lego, I'd be happy to help spitball ideas for this if you decide to try it again. I think it'll need more than a thread to make it work though if I'm honest. My ideas for this would make it more of a standalone feature. I think the idea needs developed quite a bit to make it successful

Could I be so bold as to ask what your ideas are Casey - I only ask as I'd like to help in progressing this, but obviously not being a veteran of Dakka I've no idea how to implement it - how would you make it a standalone feature?

Hey man, yeh no worries. I'm a bit busy or I would have gone it to more detail but I'll jot down a couple briefly now.

First up don't worry about being a vet, I ain't either and everyone's input is always welcome on Dakka as far as I've experienced.

What I do know from being around a little while might be worth passing on now. It's important to know that Lego does all of the coding work for Dakka himself from the bones out. By his own definition it's also a bit clunky because he has had to patch it up over time. That makes new additions often a little hard to wedge in by my understanding. Plus it's a lot of work for one man.

So things like the army painter, article wiki and gallery are stand alone from the forum but adding things like that takes a lot of work and the only way we can help is to help with the planning and often that just makes it harder.

I think this would fit in well in the same way they do. If anyone can add their own recipes then I think there needs to be an up and down voting system to sort the wheat from the chaff. Then that means there has to be some lists that people can access to see recipes of a certain type and where they rank. Then you have to decide whether to trust people to tag there own recipes like the gallery or put them under a ready made category like the wiki.

Actually this might fit into the wiki...

Something to think about, I'll keep it in the back of my mind but I must dash.

Hmmm, thats got me thinking of a similar method of doing it. Like you say, a voting system would be good. I appreciate that Lego is hard-pressed to keep things going smoothly. That I can respect. However, here's what I would do, leading on from your own ideas (Which are far better than my idea ), if time and effort weren't an issue:

I would have a gallery type of set-up similar to the turbo voter. A user would only have to log in and select a category from a table of contents eg. Gold, Light. This would bring up a page for say the top 5 posts for recipes tagged gold, light. Alternatively, the user can access the turbo-voter styled set up and scroll through them to search for a recipe that suits them best - voting them as they see fit to help the site. I'm not sure how new recipes would be added - In a single picture format, or would it be possible for people to write out a thread, including pictures, and then upload this to the turbo-voter as a single scrollable image.

It's just a concept obviously, and i'm not even sure if it's possible - probably it's far to complex, but I just thought i'd share what I was thinking of.

Designing a specific system for it would be overkill at this point - the articles would work quite nicely for aggregating such into two pages:
1. Painting Recipes, featuring a small image of the finished piece, along with recipe description/list. Scope would be anything you could ever paint in wargaming.
2. Painting triads: highlight/midtone/shade list for major paint ranges. A head start on this could be made by going around the web and trying out those that you find. Photos would be beneficial but are not as important here provided the person has tested/verified the triad themselves.

A sticky forum thread would be the best way to commission new recipes so that people would not have to learn how the articles work to help out, then one or more maintainers would go through the forum thread, copy the images to the articles system and add the recipes from the forum thread to the appropriate page.

The main problems would be promoting it, having people interested enough and confident enough to offer their recipes, etc. The way to get it started would be to dig through the painting tutorial threads, as well as the web in general and find a load of examples. Make sure any web links are noted so that we can give proper reference to any third party sources for colour triads or recipes as it would annoy some people to see their work ripped off without attribution.

Ahhh, I see. I've never really had cause to look through the article section, but having just looked now I see that it would be perfect for just this sort of thing.

Sorry really busy right now. Doing this throught the article wiki as Lego suggests seems like the best plan, I don't have the time to pitch in but it sounds like something you could get stuck into and make happen. Get a thread going to hopefully get other people involved and see how far you get.

I also suggest you add links to where people can buy the paints, preferably direct from manufacturer. And use the digital images the companies use to advertise their paint colours for official stuff.

Good luck!

Righto. I'll put up a thread to test the water, and I'll try and perpetuate it if it seems to be lagging a bit. To be honest though, I've not really got too many recipes that I wanted to put in. However, i'll start by asking for examples of gold, black armour, copper and yellow, as they seem to be the ones people often find difficult. Depending on the number of replies i'll expand into other colours. My only concern is how to name it - you see if I simply ask 'how do YOU do this colour?', people will just tell me to 'go google it'. How should I word the thread so that people will know that it's going towards a new Dakka feature?

Not sure - but linking to this thread would help

Leading with a number of key examples (with photos) is the best way to go to drive initial interest. Exalt the thread as well to help get it noticed.