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this is a bit random, but it just hit me that the usual way of painting up plasma coils (dark recesses, highlights on the vanes) is backwards... here's a couple examples of what I'm talking about (neither of these are my work):





these are good examples of the usual way plasma coils get painted up. choose a bright base color, maybe add a wash to get good color in the recesses and then highlight the vanes to your desired brightness. isn't this backwards, though? I've always imagined the glow to be coming from the interior of the coil and radiating outwards. this would mean the recesses of the coil would be the bright/white areas and the vanes would be where the darkest colors are. so, why do we never paint plasma coils like that? am I missing something about how the glow effect would work?

and yes, I realize this is completely trivial. as I said; random :p

Easy. "Basecoat>wash>drybrush and done" doesn't work if the deepest recesses are the brightest.

You could always try watering down a bright color and dropping it down into the plasma coil recesses.

but i dont think it will look very convincing.

It's easy to think about how to paint something and how something will look in your head but when it comes to actually painting it, it's usually a harsh reality check.

oh, I'm not asking *how* to paint the coils. that's easily done, regardless of going light or dark in the recesses. I'm just wondering why we've all chosen to do it the way we have. seems counter-intuitive to how I imagine the glow effect would actually work in real life. perhaps I'm just over-thinking this a bit

edit: oadie, I just re-read your post and realized I misinterpreted it the first time 'round. that's a pretty reasonable theory!

The inner glow effect on plasma coils looks great.
You don't see it that often though, but it is how I intend to paint my plasma weaponry in the future.
Here's a great example by the very talented Raff:

yup, that's more what I was imagining. it does lack the same pop that inverting the colors has, though. an interesting dilemma.

I think its due to it being the better looking method and being easier to paint due to how washes work etc

@Machinepriest: Your example seems to be the same thing than the others, just muted down (i.e. the recesses are still darker than the outer coils).

@varl: The raised elements ARE the coil, i.e. the plasma is flowing through them (spirally?). If we assume (never had a look at the interior of a plasma weapon) that the coil is actually bent around a non-transparent chamber/barrel, the coils should be brighter than the interior. If the inner chamber was transparent, or made up of a second coil, then indeed the recesses should be brighter (light over light = twice as bright).

In any case, the reasons why most people chose option 1 are clearly that it is much easier to paint and that it looks good that way.

I have this exact same dilemma regarding painting ghosts. I want the deeper recesses to be brighter, so it looks like the ghost is glowing from the inside, while at the same time having a light color on the upper-most surfaces (or, at least not something super dark). The problem is that drybrushing, especially light colors, tends to look really chalky.

Take the GW Banshee for instance. It's glowing blue in the recesses but is basically totally white on the surface. If I drybrushed that, it would look chalky as hell. If I drybrush increasingly darker colors on top of a really bright recess, it kinda diminishes the "glow" effect.

I airbrush a lot, but when you airbrush you can't avoid hitting the recesses. So I'll paint the recesses a bright blue or green, and then go to airbrush white on the surfaces and spray white all into the recesses, or at least do some splash damage.

WHAT DO

@MachineSpirit

I respectfully disagree... though more over the end aesthetics than scientific merits and whatnot. I think that Dread looks fabulous but those coils really let it down; it looks like the most simplistic part! A simple flat blue with watered down skull white plastered over it... frankly it looks terrible :-/

 Henners91 wrote:
@MachineSpirit

I respectfully disagree... though more over the end aesthetics than scientific merits and whatnot. I think that Dread looks fabulous but those coils really let it down; it looks like the most simplistic part! A simple flat blue with watered down skull white plastered over it... frankly it looks terrible :-/

I agree, it doesnt look like "inner glow" at all. it looks like blue coils sitting in a white liquid. A good example of what i was saying earlier, sounds good on paper/concept but doesnt work in practice.

 varl wrote:
yup, that's more what I was imagining. it does lack the same pop that inverting the colors has, though. an interesting dilemma.

That's the problem. I tried doing mine the way they're done on that dreadnought, and hated it. It just doesn't look as effective.

Like the backwards flames that were so prevalent through the '90s, sometimes things are painted the way they are just because it looks better.

yeah, I hear ya. starting to lean towards sticking with the standard dark recesses/bright coil vanes scheme myself. the lack of visual pop doing it the "correct" way is a real deal killer and we all know that "cool" trumps "correct" in 40k :p

treslibras wrote:
@Machinepriest: Your example seems to be the same thing than the others, just muted down (i.e. the recesses are still darker than the outer coils).

@varl: The raised elements ARE the coil, i.e. the plasma is flowing through them (spirally?). If we assume (never had a look at the interior of a plasma weapon) that the coil is actually bent around a non-transparent chamber/barrel, the coils should be brighter than the interior. If the inner chamber was transparent, or made up of a second coil, then indeed the recesses should be brighter (light over light = twice as bright).

In any case, the reasons why most people chose option 1 are clearly that it is much easier to paint and that it looks good that way.

This is the way I Always thought of things.
I haven't yet tried paiting them inverted but I may have some spare Plasmaguns floating around here soon.
I'm curious to see how OSL bleeding out onto the rest of the gun would look with the insides brighter than the outsides. Maybe kind of a striped look?

When I first painted plasma anything, I thought they looked like heatsink fins, so I paint them metallic...