True Metallic Metals (TMM) tests and El Torres by Degra.

After my NMM test piece I wanted to try out TMM (True metallic metals) or to put simply painting metallics with metallic paint, but with shading.

Old school flat pack figure

My first test piece was an old Julie Guthrie Grenadier figure.  A fully armoured knight so lots of metal there. Originally I was going to use VMC metallics but found the mica/sparkle particles in them to be quite visible in the VMC Gunmetal (72.054).  Remembering I had the army painter metallics (I had won the complete Army Painter range last year) I got them out to have a look.  I found them to be excellent.  So smooth in colour.  Much better than the rest of the AP range which I find to be rather thick.  The only negative was that there wasn’t a huge differentiation from the dark Gun Metal to the light Shining Silver.  To add to the colour spectrum I also purchased VMA Black Metal (71.073) and VMA Aluminium (71.062).  However I still find the VGC Silver to be brighter.

I base coated the figure in AP Gun Metal and shaded down with the Black Metal and all the way up to VMC Silver.  I got a really nice smooth transition especially on the larger shield.  However all that shiny metal means you don’t really see the difference.  In 28mm the paint job looks better than the usual paint/wash/dry brush highlight but not by much.  There is just too much light reflection.  The lower the light the better you can see the blending from near black to silver.  But in normal light not so much.

The feet are a bit miscast

 My second test piece was from Eureka and their Conquistadors range (part 100CON01).  Originally I went for a very heavy black lining over most of the figure.  That was too harsh and I toned it down by painting over it.  Given the translucent nature of metallic paints I went for a higher number of layers on the highlight.  From other people’s examples I also really tried to ‘pop’ the highlights to an extreme.  Most tutorial have the majority of the figure in darker gun metal hues and then go for a more extreme highlight in silver to mange that.  I tried that and it worked better.  My blending on the first figure is better, but the end result (i.e. you can see that there is shading) is better in the second.  The heavy highlighting there helps.

Get in my belly!

Silly detail levels

Next up will be a figure I got from The Combat Company, Degra
Miniatures - 54mm El Torres.  He was the reason I did all these metallic tests as he has a very large breastplate.  Given the larger scale I’m hoping the smooth blending I did in the first figure will work better given the larger area.  The figure has a crazy amount of detail and really shows what you can get out of a resin figure.  I have to admit I’m a little nervous and I’m not sure my skills are there for a larger complex figure.  But when failure looms, you can always undercoat again.