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I'm trying something new on my space marine. I usually only highlight the edge of the armor with a lighter color, but I wanted to try to have a more smooth and blended highlight. On the picture below I finished both legs and the left arm. What do you guys think about it? Any tips or advise?

That looks pretty good to me.

The front side is more subtle than the backside. Other than that discrepancy, I like the effect.

Yup - looks fine, but one good tip is to apply an ultra-thin filter (if that's the correct term?) of the middle colour, which helps to blend things and brings the effect back towards the intended colour. Not to be confused with a wash, though.

I personally prefer the hard edge style, but you applied the blended effect really well here. Excellent gradients and brush control. I agree that the front is more subtle and attractive than the back (esp. the back right leg is too light). The front looks great though. The only quibble I have is with the small rectangular plates below the knees - those are too bright and stand out. Blended highlights like these are trying to emphasize depth of the overall shape. So, unlike edge highlights, you're not going to blend up to every possible break around small details. Those little cutouts are highlighted just as brightly as the tops of the kneepads, even though they're surrounded by lower-lit plates. I would keep a thin edge highlight on the inside of the rectangles, but otherwise shade them the same as their surroundings. You might also consider adding a stronger shading gradient on the sides of the... um... crotch-piece. It's almost uniformly bright right now even though it has quite a bit of physical depth.

Those are really minor details, though, and only stand out to me because I'm also working on understanding lighting and blending right now. Overall, I think it's a really well-done blending job.

Thanks a lot for your comments, a lot of interesting stuff. I agree the back of the legs has a less good blending, and I definitely prefer the left back than the right back. I will try to correct it.

I just realized that two of the picture in the first post were the same :p I corrected the last link