Comic Style Mechas
In today's article, I will show my way of coloring cartoon or comic style, whichever suits you. I implement it on mech figures, specifically from the game Heavy Gear Blitz. As soon as I saw them, they inspired me to try to imitate the retro animation from the anime studios of the 80s and 90s, of which I am a huge fan. I say imitations because it's not easy to transfer the feeling of an animated character to the world of miniatures, it's a question of the amount of detail and lighting - two factors that I'm still trying to perfect.
The idea is not to create NMM (Non-Metallic Metal), although it can look like that, but this is a Cel-shading approach to colors and lighting that segments surfaces into clearly separated tones. The comparison with NMM is in how it handles light on the miniature, where the parallel is drawn because you determine the source and amount of light that is shown in the shading yourself.
My examples in this article are reminiscent of NMM because I shade separate panels, trying to get highlights and slight color fades individually, but if we look at the examples in the animation, the model is often shaded by itself and the transition of shadow and light is only in a few places.
Similar to NMM, the approach is a little more complicated, but the technique is simple: we choose which side the light comes from - the panels facing the light are always brighter, the others are darker. Then we determine the direction of the light and shade so that wash or contrast paint from GW falls, but in controlled layers with clearly defined edges between tones. The final highlight is white, it's standard in cartoons. All edges, or at least all visible, are black lines.
Black lines can be obtained in three ways, one is with the side of the brush on the raised edge, the second is with the prominent tip of the brush in the recesses, while the third is with thin felt-tip pens. The third one is considered mild cheating in our hobby, but I strongly believe that such a term does not exist in our dictionary, if we are talking about manual techniques.
You have to be careful with felt-tip pens, because sometimes they can flow too much on a small edge, but that can all be painted over.
My personal procedure is as follows: I paint the entire model with the darkest color, then determine the side that is lit - in these cases, the front. After that I start shading the mech panels, roughly with triangular shapes to emphasize the light from above. So I lighten all the panels in one or two layers before adding a final highlight with white. After that, I blacken the edges for a "cartoon feel". The inevitable fix for edge blackening bugs is at an end.
For the bases, I decided to make a freehand drawing instead of a 3D base as we usually do, I thought it was appropriate that the drawings are in a flat environment. Since the game is mostly played on desert terrain, I used a few colors to show the small "dunes", black lines and, here and there, some shaded rocks. The bases were completed in this way relatively quickly.
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Science behind Acrylic Paints
- Binders (eng. resin) – form a film – in our case probably pure acrylates, I suspect they are styrene acrylates.
- Fillers – in addition to adding volume to the paint, they also affect the viscosity, coverage and appearance of the dry film
- Pigments – the main division is into organic pigments and inorganic pigments. Inorganic ones are more covering but have less vivid shades, while organic ones are often quite poorly covering (yellow for example) but their shades are vivid and bright
Additives:
- Anti-foam
- Rheological modifiers – affect the behavior of wet paint on the substrate (e.g. spillage) and the behavior of the paint when a force is applied to it (brush, roller, spray, airbrush). Rheological modifiers also include thickeners that affect the viscosity of the paint.
- Dispersants – envelop pigment and filler particles and prevent their agglomeration during standing. Good dispersion of pigment and filler affects the coverage and uniform appearance of the dry film. There are a bunch more but I won't go into too much detail
- Solvent – in this case water.
Contrast paints and speed paints – high pigment content, but not so much that it causes high coverage. They are formulated to spread, not to stay where you put them. The result of spreading is that the paint collects in the recesses, where a thicker film of paint remains than on the protruding parts of the miniature. Where the film of paint is thicker (the recesses), the shade of the contrast paint is more pronounced, unlike on the protruding parts where the film is thinner, which is why the shade is then influenced by the color of the substrate.
Composition:
- Binders
- Pigments
- Additives – all listed above + surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the wet paint film, which is why it flows
- solvent
- I would say they do not contain fillers, or contain very, very little of them
Washes – similar in formulation and behavior to contrast agents, only they have a much lower proportion of pigments, certainly no fillers, a higher proportion of surfactants, lower viscosity, and probably less binders.
If we want to greatly dilute acrylic paint or contrast, it is better to use a product intended for this purpose from the manufacturer of that paint rather than water, because it contains all the necessary amount of binders and additives for that paint to retain its properties.
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U ovom članku, naša Dunja nam otkriva znanost iza akrilnih boja.
Akrilne boje – visoki udio pigmenta i dobra pokrivnost. Ako su dobro formulirane ostaju tamo gdje ih naneseš, ne ostavljaju „brush marks“ i suše se dovoljno sporo da stigneš napravit što želiš na minijaturi a opet dovoljno brzo.
Sastav:
- Veziva (eng. resin) – formiraju film – u našem slučaju vjerojatno čisti akrilati, sumnjam da su stiren akrilati.
- Punila – osim što dodaju volumen boji utječu i na viskoznost, pokrivnost i izgled suhog filma
- Pigmenti – glavna podjela je na organske pigmente i anorganske pigmente. Anorganski su više pokrivni ali manje živih nijansi, dok su organski često dosta loše pokrivni (žuti npr) ali zato su im nijanse žive i jarke
Aditivi:
- Protiv pjene
- Reološki modifikatori – utječu na ponašanje mokre boje na podlozi (npr razlijevanje) i na ponašanje boje dok na nju djeluje sila (kist, valjak, sprej, airbrush). Pod reološke modifikatore spadaju i ugušćivači koji utječu na viskozitet boje.
- Dispergatori – obavijaju čestice pigmenata i punila i sprječavaju aglomeraciju istih stajanjem. Dobra dispergiranost pigmenta i punila utječe na pokrivnost i ujednačen izgled suhog filma.
- Ima ih još hrpa ali neću toliko u detalje
- Otapalo – u ovom slučaju voda.
Kontrastice i speed paints – visoki udio pigmenta, ali ne toliki da uzrokuje visoku pokrivnost. Formulirane su da se razlijevaju, a ne da ostaju tamo gdje ih staviš. Posljedica razlijevanja je skupljanje boje u udubine gdje onda ostane deblji film boje nego na isturenim dijelovima minijature. Tamo gdje je film boje deblji (udubine) nijansa kontrastice izraženija, za razliku od isturenih dijelova na kojima je film tanji zbog čega na nijansu onda utječe boja podloge.
Sastav:
- Veziva
- Pigmenti
- Aditivi – svi nabrojani gore +
- surfakanti koji smanjuju površinsku napetost mokrog filma boje zbog čega i dolazi do razlijevanja
- otapalo
- rekla bih da ne sadrže punila, ili ih sadrže vrlo vrlo malo
Washevi – po principu formuliranja i ponašanju slični kontrasticama, samo imaju puno manji udio pigmenata, sigurno ne sadrže punila, veći udio surfakanata, manji viskozitet i vjerojatno manje veziva.
Ako želimo jako razrijediti akrilnu boju ili kontrasticu bolje je koristiti za to predviđen proizvod od proizvođača te boje nego vodu, jer sadrži svu potrebnu količinu veziva i aditiva kako bi ta boja zadržala svoja svojstva.
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