Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi everyone. I'm in the process of trying to get my Necron army to the next level painting wise. I've been scoring quite well, but it needs a little extra oomf to get over that last barrier. I decided I'd try to do some glow effects on the Tesla weapons and other things like the orbs on the backs of Wraiths. This is my first attempt at painting any kind of lighting effect, so I would greatly appreciate some feedback.

Wraith side by side. One on the right is how my wraith gems currently look.


Tesla cannon. The one in the distance is how my cannons currently look.


Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

Looking good so far. Maybe with that much white you may need to increase the radius of light on the rest of the model or dim down the cannon if you dont want to paint more of your model blue. OSL is tricky but you are doing great.

I'm here with a friend of mine who has a 10,000 pt necron army, he's reaction ' so I thought I did a fair job on my necrons, but it seems I was wrong, so very very wrong'. I have to say as well, very well done.

S.

 Baldsmug wrote:
Looking good so far. Maybe with that much white you may need to increase the radius of light on the rest of the model or dim down the cannon if you dont want to paint more of your model blue. OSL is tricky but you are doing great.

Thank you! I am thinking of dimming it down a little bit, at least on the wraiths. Do you have any suggestions how to accomplish that? Just increase the amount of Ice Blue that's apparent at the edges of the lighting source?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sharazad wrote:
I'm here with a friend of mine who has a 10,000 pt necron army, he's reaction ' so I thought I did a fair job on my necrons, but it seems I was wrong, so very very wrong'. I have to say as well, very well done.

S.

Thanks very much!

Cool. I think we are painting our Necrons with the same paint scheme
The glow looks cool. As said above, just dial back a little with the white and the amount of glow effect.
Your army is going to look great when finished

 vim_the_good wrote:
Cool. I think we are painting our Necrons with the same paint scheme
The glow looks cool. As said above, just dial back a little with the white and the amount of glow effect.
Your army is going to look great when finished

This is what the rest of my scheme looks like. Basically (using old paint names) boltgun metal base, dwarf bronze accents with a turqoise wash, spacewolves grey for ceramic pieces (mainly faces & aesthetic portions of vehicles). Ice blue for energy stuff.

Eh OK, maybe not like mine. Your colour combination is much more interesting. I just saw the bronze on the wraiths

I think the hardest thing about doing OSL is judging the path of the light, any hard edges (like the edges where the armor panels start around your "bulb" on the back of that wraith), it should only have the faint glow because the light isn't going to bleed over the edges as much. I would say yours is definitely a great start and you're well on your way to just need a slight bit of refining, I have not done it yet on a large scale like a Wraith or anything, mostly on terminator eyes and the occasional spotlight on a tank.

I also think it can be incredibly overdone, as my brother puts it "I paint my guys like they are fighting outside during the day" and some guys tend to paint theirs with an OSL glow that would suggest a night fight, I personally don't think a power sword would glow hot enough or bright enough to make a reflection on a scale of 2 feet away from a guy's face

 Brokksamson wrote:
I think the hardest thing about doing OSL is judging the path of the light, any hard edges (like the edges where the armor panels start around your "bulb" on the back of that wraith), it should only have the faint glow because the light isn't going to bleed over the edges as much. I would say yours is definitely a great start and you're well on your way to just need a slight bit of refining, I have not done it yet on a large scale like a Wraith or anything, mostly on terminator eyes and the occasional spotlight on a tank.

I also think it can be incredibly overdone, as my brother puts it "I paint my guys like they are fighting outside during the day" and some guys tend to paint theirs with an OSL glow that would suggest a night fight, I personally don't think a power sword would glow hot enough or bright enough to make a reflection on a scale of 2 feet away from a guy's face

This is pretty much how I feel about these models myself right now. I agree it needs to be a refined a bit, because when it's done across the whole army I don't want it to be overdone, like you mentioned. I've definitely seen some armies too where it's just too much when it's all over the place. So I guess it's a matter of finding a happy medium. I think my next move is to tone down the reach of the glow and to make the actual light source a bit dimmer (aka more blue less white).

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone!

Toning down the white may help, the way I was "taught", is that you always want the source of the light to look the brightest, so in your mind if that entire bulb is actually the source of light, it would be correct, however if you think it's something inside of that (Like the filament in a lightbulb), then the center of it should be the biggest concentration of white and it should fade toward the blue from there.

I am by no means an authority, just what I have learned in my own pursuit of trying to better my painting skills and venture into things like OSL and weathering.

I do imagine that whole bulb being a light source in and of itself.

Do you have any other suggestions how to represent a 'dimmer' light? Just make the glow lesser?

Something I always tell people that start down this road. Is ALWAYS remember that the glow is darker then the light source. For example, the crevices in those flyers, would have to be white and fade out to blue from there. Having the the edges and such catching the same color as the light never really achieves that glow effect correctly. LBersley has a bunch of vids on youtube (Awesomepaintjob) and on a couple of his he shows real quick how to do a OSL and its pretty simple and looks really good everytime.


Saying that, your army looks the gak man, youre definitely doing them justice thats for sure

You're my new idol.

Why thank you

 KingCracker wrote:
Why thank you

You're perfectly welcome!

 KingCracker wrote:
Something I always tell people that start down this road. Is ALWAYS remember that the glow is darker then the light source. For example, the crevices in those flyers, would have to be white and fade out to blue from there. Having the the edges and such catching the same color as the light never really achieves that glow effect correctly. LBersley has a bunch of vids on youtube (Awesomepaintjob) and on a couple of his he shows real quick how to do a OSL and its pretty simple and looks really good everytime.


Saying that, your army looks the gak man, youre definitely doing them justice thats for sure

Thanks for the feedback.

The glow on the vehicle's circuit patterns/edging was something I did to the army a while back when I was prepping for Nova and I wasn't necessarily trying to go for an OSL type look with it though I suppose it kind of came out that way. I was moreso going for that Necron metal look that GW typically does except with blue instead of the standard green.

That does bring up the point though that I need to be careful with how much I do with the tesla weapons models now, as I certainly don't want to take away from all that edgework. I would have to mess around carefully to see if the edging on the vehicles would look better with a white source in the recessed areas of the circuits, but I'm not sure without trying it and seeing it in front of my eyes.

I will check out those videos, thanks for the suggestion.

Wow I think it looks good. I love seeing necrons that are not the standard silver!

I like the paint scheme on these, but the glow affect was a little to bright.