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One of the core ambitions behind the PRISM system has always been this: to take a piece of box art, a painting tutorial, or even a random piece of artwork online and recreate it convincingly in real life. That goal eventually led to the development of the Image Analyser a year later, but before that tool existed, everything was done manually, in-house.

A key milestone for this part of the project was taking an existing Citadel painting guide and attempting to convert it into ALPHA colours—INSTAR’s own range. For the test subject, I went with a box of Cadian Shock Troopers. Their mix of armour, cloth, skin, and metallics offered a balanced challenge that would give the system a proper trial by fire. If PRISM couldn’t replicate this convincingly, I’d have a serious problem.

So, off to the local Warhammer store I went. (Shoutout to the manager there, by the way, he knew exactly what colour I needed before I even opened my mouth .) Armed with the full Cadian paint selection, I spent the better part of the day building three Lasgun troopers in similar poses and kit, just to eliminate variation in the test.

The middle trooper in this image was painted entirely with Citadel Colours, following the 'Eavy Metal guide for the Cadian Officer - https://eavy-archive.com/40k/astra-militarum/



For comparison, I used two different matching methods, Mono One and Mono Two. Each followed the same approach: identify a base, shade, and highlight colour. I used a small colour picker to sample each basecoat colour the Citadel website. The resulting RGB value was then entered into PRISM to see what paint mix it suggested. As you can see in the above photo, the Mono One method came out with a near-perfect match to the original. The fatigues on the Mono Two version leaned a little more yellow, but overall both test models came surprisingly close to the real thing, especially considering the fact that I painted their metallics using Non-Metallic Metal techniques, which added an extra layer of complexity. The gun barrels are the easiest giveaway, but elsewhere the differences are much harder to spot.

To push the challenge even further, I photographed the models from the back and above, flipping the visual cues most people rely on to tell paints apart. I posted this version to Instagram and got a wide range of guesses on which was the original. Up close, sure, you can zoom and tell—but on a phone screen, it's a much trickier call.



This stage marked a real turning point. It wasn’t just about seeing if PRISM could replicate a known paint scheme, it was about proving that the system could hold its own against the tried-and-true standards in the hobby, If it could do that manually, the next step was clear: automate the entire process.

There’s a certain satisfaction when you line up three models, painted using completely different methods, and you genuinely have to stop and double-check which one used what. It definitely made the long hours behind the scenes feel worth it.

This test did exactly that.


FUTURE WISHLIST OF THINGS TO ADD

Ability to use on mobile devices.
More manufacturers paints
In-app painting
Custom selection of seven paints to use

keen to try these out, but your website tells me there are no shipping options for Australia.

I do like that you offer your paints in assorted sizes.

Do you plan to release something like lahmian medium?

Mousemuffins

That’s odd? I’m pretty sure it was on the list of destinations, not sure if the issue we had yesterday affected shipping areas, will have to look tonight.

I’ll let you know when we’ve sorted it!

ulgurstasta

We are looking at bringing g in a supplemental range, we’ll let you know if it’s something we can do!


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Mousemuffins

We've sorted it out, turns out the corruption went a little deeper than we thought and quite a few countries were missing from all the shipping zones, if you head there now you'll find that shipping to Australia is now available

Apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for making us aware of it!

I had a thought today about a product you might be interested in producing.

The idea is you make a few different clear mediums. One for Inks, one for washes, and one for glazes.

Basically making sure that the clear medium has all the properties, spelled out in the items description on your site, to do the different jobs these different products are designed for.

You would fill the bottle up to a point where you could add any of the Instar standard paints to the pot and shake well to create a Glaze, Ink, Wash of any color in your range. The bottle itself would have a little hard plastic line/ridge showing the fill point for a proper mixture.

So, if I got a bottle of Glaze Medium and set it on a level surface, I could pop off the dropper top of the bottle and add drops of any of the other paints in your range until I reached the molded fill line on the bottle. Reseal it, shake well, have a whole bottle of glaze in the color of my choice.

Instead of releasing a whole line of various washes (or whatever) you could just sell a bunch of a single bottle that opens up the color options for your customer to pretty much anything.

Thoughts?

 Supershandy wrote:
Mousemuffins

That’s odd? I’m pretty sure it was on the list of destinations, not sure if the issue we had yesterday affected shipping areas, will have to look tonight.

I’ll let you know when we’ve sorted it!

ulgurstasta

We are looking at bringing g in a supplemental range, we’ll let you know if it’s something we can do!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mousemuffins

We've sorted it out, turns out the corruption went a little deeper than we thought and quite a few countries were missing from all the shipping zones, if you head there now you'll find that shipping to Australia is now available

Apologies for the inconvenience and thank you for making us aware of it!

Thanks! I'll throw in an order later this week.

 Lance845 wrote:
I had a thought today about a product you might be interested in producing.

The idea is you make a few different clear mediums. One for Inks, one for washes, and one for glazes.

Basically making sure that the clear medium has all the properties, spelled out in the items description on your site, to do the different jobs these different products are designed for.

You would fill the bottle up to a point where you could add any of the Instar standard paints to the pot and shake well to create a Glaze, Ink, Wash of any color in your range. The bottle itself would have a little hard plastic line/ridge showing the fill point for a proper mixture.

So, if I got a bottle of Glaze Medium and set it on a level surface, I could pop off the dropper top of the bottle and add drops of any of the other paints in your range until I reached the molded fill line on the bottle. Reseal it, shake well, have a whole bottle of glaze in the color of my choice.

Instead of releasing a whole line of various washes (or whatever) you could just sell a bunch of a single bottle that opens up the color options for your customer to pretty much anything.

Thoughts?

It’s an interesting concept and would be a bit of a game changer if it worked.

We’ll put some thought into it while we extend the metallic and Vintage lines (should be this weekend...)

But this is why we love the Dakka community, it’s you lot that made INSTAR what it is

 Lance845 wrote:
I had a thought today about a product you might be interested in producing.

The idea is you make a few different clear mediums. One for Inks, one for washes, and one for glazes.

Basically making sure that the clear medium has all the properties, spelled out in the items description on your site, to do the different jobs these different products are designed for.

You would fill the bottle up to a point where you could add any of the Instar standard paints to the pot and shake well to create a Glaze, Ink, Wash of any color in your range. The bottle itself would have a little hard plastic line/ridge showing the fill point for a proper mixture.

So, if I got a bottle of Glaze Medium and set it on a level surface, I could pop off the dropper top of the bottle and add drops of any of the other paints in your range until I reached the molded fill line on the bottle. Reseal it, shake well, have a whole bottle of glaze in the color of my choice.

Instead of releasing a whole line of various washes (or whatever) you could just sell a bunch of a single bottle that opens up the color options for your customer to pretty much anything.

Thoughts?

We did try this with some material we had here, though we may have to do some more investigation work as the result, while creating an effective wash left a really (and I mean really) glossy finish.

It is showing some promise though, when we'll be releasing it is a different question while we're working on a few things but we'll certainly keep working with the idea!

 Supershandy wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I had a thought today about a product you might be interested in producing.

The idea is you make a few different clear mediums. One for Inks, one for washes, and one for glazes.

Basically making sure that the clear medium has all the properties, spelled out in the items description on your site, to do the different jobs these different products are designed for.

You would fill the bottle up to a point where you could add any of the Instar standard paints to the pot and shake well to create a Glaze, Ink, Wash of any color in your range. The bottle itself would have a little hard plastic line/ridge showing the fill point for a proper mixture.

So, if I got a bottle of Glaze Medium and set it on a level surface, I could pop off the dropper top of the bottle and add drops of any of the other paints in your range until I reached the molded fill line on the bottle. Reseal it, shake well, have a whole bottle of glaze in the color of my choice.

Instead of releasing a whole line of various washes (or whatever) you could just sell a bunch of a single bottle that opens up the color options for your customer to pretty much anything.

Thoughts?

We did try this with some material we had here, though we may have to do some more investigation work as the result, while creating an effective wash left a really (and I mean really) glossy finish.

It is showing some promise though, when we'll be releasing it is a different question while we're working on a few things but we'll certainly keep working with the idea!

Call it a glaze.

Oooo, hadn't thought of that!

It's still very much in the works though

Well the components in the body that make it shiny or flat can be added or subtracted from the medium you order from your manufacturers I assume.

Just like you can have matte or gloss paints there is no reason you couldn't have a matte or gloss medium.

That being said... How important is it how shiny any of it is? Don't most people seal with clear coats?

 Lance845 wrote:


That being said... How important is it how shiny any of it is? Don't most people seal with clear coats?

I suppose they do, personally we don't seal ours but when we took a picture of the tested mini, it was really reflective so we quickly abandoned any further tests.

We're speaking with our manufacturer next week to see if they can provide us with a matte medium, but that could be considered bad form.

That's not to say we don't have other contacts we can speak to!

 Supershandy wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:


That being said... How important is it how shiny any of it is? Don't most people seal with clear coats?

I suppose they do, personally we don't seal ours but when we took a picture of the tested mini, it was really reflective so we quickly abandoned any further tests.

We're speaking with our manufacturer next week to see if they can provide us with a matte medium, but that could be considered bad form.

That's not to say we don't have other contacts we can speak to!

Sure. Not sure why they would dislike selling matte medium. Lahmian Medium is matte medium and Ard'Coat is gloss medium. Then it's just a mater of getting the viscosity and such right for the different products. So the inks and washes flow right. Then figuring out the different recommended fill amounts.

But if it all work right, endless options for colors.

Hope you're all well, we have some new items we'd like to share with you - as always here's the link to the store INSTAR Paint Webstore

We also got some feedback from a couple of our customers this week who kindly provided us with some images.

The first one was from a commission painter who ordered a few of our colours to do a Necromunda gang, but before he started on them he had a couple of pieces left to finish for a client, so he used our Bronzed Flesh and Polished Steel on them.

The results were fantastic and the client was extremely happy with the result.

"I am very impressed. The Dull Pewter is like working with the old Boltgun Metal and the flesh looks fantastic!"



The next image comes from a customer who purchased our entire range, we got the image this morning and the results blew us away, these were painted entirely with INSTAR

"The dropper bottles are fantastic I used a tiny amount of each paint compared to the waste of spooning paint from tubs, and the fact I didn't have to compromise my brush to spoon the paint. There is a bit of a learning curve in terms of applying it as it is different but it went on very controlled didn't run nearly as much as GW paint can - which has pros and cons, more precise control but couldn't push the paint around larger areas as quickly, however that's not really a big problem. I'm very happy with the quality and extremely happy with the price and various options for sizes."



We've added three new colours to our Paint line, we felt we had far too many dark colours so we decided to go the other way and even it out by adding some brighter colours. We now have available

Bright Yellow



Pale Flesh



Arctic Green - This will look different on monitors, it's a green tinted white, kind of like a pale mint



We've also extended the Vintage Line as well, originally it was only going to be two colours, but since we needed to do some skin for our Tau Army, we increased it to three, so there is now available

IV-03 - Calthan Brown (Foundation line)



IV-04 - Shadow Grey (Colour Line - 2012)



IV-05 - Space Wolves Grey (Crystal Hex Jar - Pre 2011)



We've also extended the metallic line too with two new pigments

Radiant Red



Antique Bronze

We recently got more feedback from another commission painter who bought some paint off of us, to say we were blown away was a bit of an understatement, but we're not going to babble on, just take a look at the picture!



We're also playing around with colour flip metallics this weekend as well as there was a bit of a discussion on it in the Painting and modelling forum, one of the biggest complaints was the size of the flakes leaving models looking more like a metallic car finish, our metallics have a finer grain so should provide a better finish, however we want to do some extensive tests before we decide if we're going to release it.

In other news, we're also planning to expand the vintage line again as we feel it's a little thin on the ground. One of our customers asked if we were going to do packs for old colour schemes based on the older colour ranges, this got us thinking so keep an eye our or subscribe to this thread to hear the latest news on this development!

If you've bought the paint and like it, we'd really love to hear your feedback on it, drop us a PM

We'll have more updates soon!

Are more of the pseudo foundation paints coming?

I use them for my bases, and obviously supplies are now limited. I used the following triads for rocks and dirt.

Charardon Granite
Adeptus Battlegrey
Astronomical Grey

Calthan Brown
Khemri Brown
Deneb Stone

So, some good solid replacements for these would be ace.

Of course, one of the good things about the original run of foundations is the pigment. Made for (sometimes) not amazing miniatures painting, but great for drybrushing... Not sure how your pigment matches up as I feel you are going more for a rounded paint rather than something specifically as dense as the old Foundation range,

JonWebb

Our paints do have a high pigment count and do drybrush well, but in comparison to the foundation paints, they are not as thick and as you say, we are aiming for more of a rounded paint rather than something specific.

In relation to the colours you have asked for, Caltharn brown and Charadon Granite have already been done (IV-03 and IV-02), Deneb stone will be released next weekend along with Vomit Brown so they are coming out, it’s just taking some time however our focus is going to be shifting more to metallics and the Vintage line as these are proving extremely popular!

Beat place to keep up to date is our Facebook page or Twitter

Oh Dheneb Stone excellent it's been one of my most used colours and I'm running really low. It's getting to the point where you have enough colours I'm interested in to justify the postage cost.

Any plans to add Macharius Solar Orange? IMO one of the best oranges ever made in fact the whole foundation range was great. Also do you have any plans to sell empty dropper bottles? I could do with a good source for 50 and 100 ml for custom mixes.

DaveC

We plan to replicate the shades of the entire Foundation Range, but as we’re also getting interest in the crystal hex jar range as well, we’re realeasing one from each range every 1-2 weeks so it’s worth keeping an eye here, on Facebook and Twitter to see what’s coming next

As for empty bottles, we hadn’t considered it but you make an excellent point so we’ll probably look into supplying them at some point!

Thanks for the suggeation, as always we admire the community, their thoughts and ideas as we wouldn’t be around without all of you

...aaannndd ordered.

I've selected a variety of colours and will be testing them enthusiastically.

Hope they don' take too long to get to Australia..

Mousemuffins

We saw the email come through and instantly recognised who it was! Thank you very much

Once shipped it should take between 5-11 days to reach you depending on how long it sits in customs, we usually don’t have any problems though.


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We've just gone over the 50 paint colours mark so now we have even more paints to choose from when deciding on your colour schemes.

We did have some question from customers asking about putting the colours in order of shade, it seems our program won't allow us to do that and put's everything in alphabetical order, however, if you look at the left hand side (Or the bottom of the page if you're on mobile) you can filter the shades by their colour so if you select Yellow, you'll just be shown all the yellows only, should make it easier to select high, mid and low tones!

We're also getting more help with the Vintage line as we had an international customer send us a package back containing Vomit Brown that we'd been looking for



We've got a new purple metallic coming as soon as well, perfect for more elaborate and different power weapons or even tiny details such as gemstones as shown here on our Tau Ethereal model



We're still working on the colour flip metallics as well, so far it's promising but we still need to do some work on them.

We also have something secret going on too.....but we'll let you know in good time!

 Lance845 wrote:
Don't most people seal with clear coats?

No. There's generally no real need unless you're really rough with your minis, and sealers often mess with colours and highlights, so from my experience most people don't bother.

Shiny washes are irritating, unless it's something that specifically wants a shiny finish.

Oh.

Can you do custom paint colours? Or possibly take suggestions for your range?

Mousemuffins

We have thought about it though we’re still figuring out how to charge it be it minimum size and cost or a one off charge.

For suggestions, that’s a little different and we’re always open to them

My experience is that everyone I know seals their minis. And when I asked in the P&M forum, 59/95 said they do both plastic and metal. Obviously just anecdotal but that's what I've seen. I would still call a shiny wash irritating though since it'll look bad right up until you varnish it, which is the absolute last step.

Mymearan

That’s why we abandoned the testing and went back to the drawing board because we knew it wouldn’t be acceptable to the community, if we didn’t like it we’re pretty sure no one else would!

We just got word of Bournemouth Tabletop Commissions doing another piece using our paints, this time it was a mix across the board of INSTAR and Citadel paint (The most noticeable one is our Dark Purple), just shows how compatible our paints are with major brands.



We're still working on our super secret project too

I love the concept but I have tried several times to go and buy some paints (a bit of an impulse purchase) and been put off by the website enough to pass.

You say that there is a way to browse or filter the products but I can't find it on mobile or PC web browser. Is it something that an ad-blocker would remove? I can't be bothered browsing every page and trying to remember what yellows there might be. The only options I can find are to sort by popularity, newness, rating or price which aren't helpful. Maybe a page showing all the shades grouped together? At the very least you need some way of selecting similar colours to compare.

I like the look of the colour shifting paints. If you bring in a pink one for the Slaanesh fans among us then I will need to battle the website and place an order!

I think you are also lacking models that really showcase the paints. Some of the display models seem a little sketchy and don't do the paints justice. On a related note, have you considered sending some samples to a couple of the YouTube painters who also review products (e.g Luke's APS)?

Keep up the good work though. At this rate you will have the most complete line-up out there by Christmas!

That looks like my order in the background (blue tops)

Are there any other colors your looking for to match up?