5 Tips to Choose Color Schemes - HC 371

In this Hobby Cheating tutorial, I take you through how to choose your color schemes for your new army. Whether fantasy, sci-fi or something in -between, I've got you covered. Hope you enjoy!
#warhammer #warhammer40k #ageofsigmar

0:00 Intro
1:10 Tip 1
3:55 Tip 2
6:45 Tip 3
8:30 Tip 4
11:51 Tip 5
14:15 Outro

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[sandaemon]

6. Maintain hue contrast: complementary colors look better than adjacent.
7. Saturation and brightness contrast is just as important: 3 equally saturated and bright colors look cheap unless you're painting a clown. make one dark for unimportant secondary stuff and the other desaturated for highlighting focal points.
8. Analogous colors work best in gradients: e.g. an orange panel next to a red panel looks bad, whereas red-orange panel is ok.

9. Less is more: when adding more colors to the scheme, it's getting harder to ensure they don't conflict with each other.
10. If you really want to have a multitude of colors think about space "contrast": a. don't place similar colors near each other; b. give colors different amount of model's surface.
11. In my experience the best combination is 1-2 complementary colors plus one outstanding that doesn't take a lot of space and goes in gradient from highly saturated to white.

[djehutywahe]

I've struggled with choosing color schemes for years, like REALLY struggled. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD at age 30 after having powered through it (with no small effort) for decades, and my suspicion is that this has played a major role in the type of obsessive indecisiveness that has delayed very many projects in the hobby for me. I imagine that others may be able to relate to this as well.

One thing I would recommend to anyone who feels like they have a similar issue is to take a step back from printed and published resources and try to remember what you found really appealing at your first glance. In other words, try to remember what the models or army looked like that sparked your interest in them in the first place. Then use THAT scheme to paint a few chaff/troop/battleline models. At which point you can revisit your sources of inspiration and decide if there is anything you'd like to modify, and if there is, pick 1-2 elements you want to add or subtract and paint another batch of models. It is very important that you do not let yourself obsess and "research" a bunch of stuff while you are in the process of finishing as batch of models, as this is ultimately what paralyzes you and keeps you from making actual progress. You want to avoid overstimulating yourself with too many ideas in a period of time where you need to stick to one or two ideas. As you complete more and more of your models, you will feel more invested and confident in your choice and be less prone to what I'd call "progress paralysis." Hope someone finds this a bit helpful, as this is what I wish someone told me years ago.

[duesexistat]

Thanks Vince. Your tips are gracious and best of all, there to serve the individual for the sake of fun.
Months ago I bought some “Dragon glaze” (mostly opaque, purple-hued sparkly glaze) and I just had to use it. So I’ve thrown it on my newly purchased Thricefold Discord on all their flesh (after painting) and it looks quite cool. It gives the flesh that ethereal glimmer while also giving it a bit of gloss which makes it look more gross and slimy, like I imagine a demon from Slaanesh would be.
Great vid. Thanks!

[geteavnroc]

New video idea: How to tackle painting armies, if you have more than 2-3 armies that need to be painted. Also, cell reception now extends to the forest. lol

[WaldoWally]

Wow. Production value has noticeably improved on your channel. Love the new set and lighting.

[melshk]

Great reminder about stripping not being super necessary. I do it out of habit, especially when getting stuff from eBay, but in a lot of those instances I probably could have gotten away with just a respray. Thanks as always Vince! You've become part of my Saturday morning routine :)

[martinteasdale]

Nice ideas! I also really like putting every colors I plan to use together, with an approximate ratio, on a bit of white cardboard. You can sometimes spot problems and make subtle adjsutmemts to the scheme before testing on a model (ex: switching the yellow for a colder one)

[jgnunan]

I am going thru your beginner stuff playlist and am quite happy (as a 62 year old beginner). I needed a logical approach. As I do Photoshop and illustrator stuff for a living I always have a command-z option, yet painting and building up figures hadn't made sense. Ninjon and Maniac turned me onto your channel. If you are in Minnesota, I would love to buy you a beer. Enjoy your week - Joe

[doominator]

For years I’ve been telling my fellow GW hobbists that there is no rulebook to painting your models. I’m just glad to see someone on YouTube agrees with me.

[MoxAmber]

The paint mock up is brilliant, gonna use that for sure! I really lucked into my schemes fitting ok on color trinaries, with the only disparity being stuff like "made it brighter to work as a plasma/energy color". I will have to put the rest of these in use, thank you for the amazing video as always!

[tonitapiopakkis]

Just came back from the woods, to finish my Octarius stuff 😎 Thanks for the content, my dude ✊🏻

[Mikey__R]

Hold on Vince, I'm going to need a note pad and a hot cuppa tea for this. I'll get you a Dr Pepper.

[vokotetic]

One of the tricks I use to do is to pick a color scheme from a different army that I like. You can pick perfectly a Stomcast Eternal scheme to do a Space Marine (or chaos). Armor over clothes schemes are perfectly switchable between armies

[ondarkendwings]

I learned from the Spanish painters to use impressionist fantasy & sci-fi concept art. Boris Vallejo sorta stuff. Gave me alot of ideas for colours & also how lighting works.

[kgrafty]

Running out of the house screaming for sure 😂

[benwithnall]

Another great HC thanks mate.
Stepping into some new army's shortly and this was something I've been ruminating on!
Cheers from Aus

[Big_Cap]

Another thing I do personally that helps me is figuring out the personality of what I want to paint. It helps hone in on the scheme I want. For instance I love Iron Warriors but I wanted to make a custom warband. I wanted them to be Slaanesh worshippers but their worship came in the form of excessive greed of others riches and technology. So I made the trim dark silver but their armor is a gold with purple in their loincloths, eye lenses, etc.

[shadeling]

Picking a good scheme can be challenging especially for people like me who want most new army projects to have a general theme and their own color scheme. I do find the look at existing schemes for inspiration as a great tool. Sometimes you'll just have an idea hit you which you then expand on and finalize. I do this all before I even decide to buy a single mini. If i can't think of a good theme to go with i often will not bother starting that army. themes can be pretty basic as well. Oh all the armies i play have no X. What armies excels at X thing and go off that.

[alfyb]

I have found a lot of inspiration from Napoleonics and pre-Napoleonics uniforms. The range of colors is massive (yes, even pink!), and they knew how to make a solider look good back in those days. :)

[Wijkert]

14:19 fair point. Tend to ask questions like those just to get your input, but nothing beats trying it yourself.