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I painted plasma guy today and without any thoughts painted it green an glowy with highlights on guy face and armor and . And then I ask my self Why it's glowing? I can't recall anything about some kind of light from plasmagun casing in novels. And if we check GW paint scheme it's metallic ribbed thing, kind of coil may be. Not some kind of glass with bright thing inside. And it's can't be radiator, cause if it's glowing blue because of temperature gunner evaporated in seconds. Any thoughts why we paint it glowing?

Because everybody loves to paint their plasma as it's overheating. It looks cooler than a plasma working properly.

We paint it to look cool.

Doesn't matter what GW writes on the subject (especially for people like me who rarely ever read GW novels)

If you think glowing green/blue/orange etc looks cool? Paint it that way.
If you think it'd look better "working properly"? Then do that.

How about it's a metal radiator but it also projects a magnetic field around itself so that it can be glowing white hot with plasma but still not cook the user? Until that field catastrophically fails, obviously.

Model-wise I think either looks fine.

GW's plasma has varied over the years, sometimes painted bare metal, sometimes with a blue or green glow. It's a personal preference thing... the glow looks cool, but bare metal is easier to paint.

Some of the GW art does show glow,as do some of the painted minis.

My take is the glow is just before/after shooting, bare metal when its cold and we tend to paint things at the most dramatic.

It also helps differentiating plasma weapons when looking across the table.

The fact that metal glow blue when it's 4000 degree hot bother me...

I paint my plasma glowing blue because it should be producing Cherenkov Radiation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

Educational waha... Forget about this even I definitely learn this in unit... So that's why we paint it glowing... But wait, it's can be visible if medium is clear. Not c
Some metallic tubes.

IIRC, Andy from the HH team said 30K plasma is either blue (active) or brass (inactive) colored. Apparently, they now have some sort of consistent colours, orange for Volkite and so on..

Always helps to paint in a distinct colour which compliments the rest of the model.

This is why my Heresy Plasma is blue, and Heresy Volkite is orange yellow. Opponent and I can easily see what’s what at a glance, and being Dark Angels, anything goes with black.

I paint my plasmas green because troopers armor is blue and i have not enought skill to make it look good with blue on blue.

 kabaakaba wrote:
I paint my plasmas green because troopers armor is blue and i have not enought skill to make it look good with blue on blue.

If anyone asks, the Forgeworld it came from uses a variant.

 kabaakaba wrote:
I painted plasma guy today and without any thoughts painted it green an glowy with highlights on guy face and armor and . And then I ask my self Why it's glowing? I can't recall anything about some kind of light from plasmagun casing in novels. And if we check GW paint scheme it's metallic ribbed thing, kind of coil may be. Not some kind of glass with bright thing inside. And it's can't be radiator, cause if it's glowing blue because of temperature gunner evaporated in seconds. Any thoughts why we paint it glowing?

I paint my plasma guns as a metal coil, I know people paint it glowing but... I just can't.

BanjoJohn wrote:

 kabaakaba wrote:
I painted plasma guy today and without any thoughts painted it green an glowy with highlights on guy face and armor and . And then I ask my self Why it's glowing? I can't recall anything about some kind of light from plasmagun casing in novels. And if we check GW paint scheme it's metallic ribbed thing, kind of coil may be. Not some kind of glass with bright thing inside. And it's can't be radiator, cause if it's glowing blue because of temperature gunner evaporated in seconds. Any thoughts why we paint it glowing?

I paint my plasma guns as a metal coil, I know people paint it glowing but... I just can't.

Heck, I think it looks better not blowing up. Praise the Omnissiah! Your weapons are in proper working order. Not like those Hereteks who don't use the proper canticles of plasma weapon maintenance.

Headcannon - the coil tubes are not metal but a temperature resisitant glass/clear ceramic.
The glow is not the coils, but the contents - its hot plasma glowing through not hot metal.

The tubes have a metalic sheen when cold but the plasma glows bright enough for it not to matter.

BanjoJohn wrote:

 kabaakaba wrote:
I painted plasma guy today and without any thoughts painted it green an glowy with highlights on guy face and armor and . And then I ask my self Why it's glowing? I can't recall anything about some kind of light from plasmagun casing in novels. And if we check GW paint scheme it's metallic ribbed thing, kind of coil may be. Not some kind of glass with bright thing inside. And it's can't be radiator, cause if it's glowing blue because of temperature gunner evaporated in seconds. Any thoughts why we paint it glowing?

I paint my plasma guns as a metal coil, I know people paint it glowing but... I just can't.

Same. Brassy colour all the way. I dont think lighting fx look good if painted on the models.. If you insisst on lighting fx, there are LEDs for that

 kabaakaba wrote:
And then I ask my self Why it's glowing? I can't recall anything about some kind of light from plasmagun casing in novels.

How do plasma guns look in 40k video games? I don't play any of those, but it's what I'd base it on, since they're the most visual 40k medium.

Anyway... why should plasma guns NOT glow? They shoot the stuff that stars are made of.

Kale wrote:
My take is the glow is just before/after shooting, bare metal when its cold and we tend to paint things at the most dramatic.

Yep, seems reasonable.

 kabaakaba wrote:
The fact that metal glow blue when it's 4000 degree hot bother me...

Adamantium glows blue.

I just made that up. Anyway... the point is, the 40k universe makes a lot of sh** up, and the color that a weapon glows when it fires is the least of them. For my part, I don't see the glow as the color of the heated metal, but rather the plasma itself as it's about to be propelled into the enemy. Blue stars are the hottest, with a temperature north of 10,000 K.

.

Plasma weapons seem to shoot blue stuff in the 40K games pretty consistently AFAIK, so that at least tracks with what Andy from the HH team was saying.

I usually paint the coils with metal then color it with Talassar Blue contrast paint. Look really nice.

I like my plasma red and my Eldar dead!