Saturday, November 26, 2011

BFG: Engines Lit?



So... I'm painting an Imperial fleet for BFG and I'm not totally sure about painting engine glow. Frankly, even on expertly painted minis, I'm undecided on the effect. I tried it on this Dauntless WIP. Thoughts?

It works as a detail on the fighter markers, which are about the size of the "the" in this sentence. Strange how I'm not feeling it on a larger model.

5 comments:

CylonDave said...

Hmmmmm....I think your making the effect TOO BIG IMHO. I did a similar effect for my Necron Tombship and I did something similar to what you did on your fighters and it worked out really well for me. Although I used Green for my engine effects the same applys to imperial ships. I think your making the backwash a bit too much on the back of the cruiser, tone it down some even shrink it down to just the engine exhaust and work your way out slowly till you have the desired effect. I think the best examples to look at would be in Babylon 5 or Star Wars, the effects on those ships never spread out to the whole rear area of the ships. You need a little bit of shade to contras. Good Luck! :)

Jason said...

I like it, and further, I like it as is is. I think you might make the center of the effect a little "hotter," but beyond that I think it works well. It's certainly preferable to the alternative.

Yeti's Yell said...

@Cylon: Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking maybe what I have to do to go less big is backfill the holes there in the engines as close to flush and then do the same thing there as I did with the small fighters. The challenge is that the second you use any white-based color as the hottest exhaust which then gets a shadow thrown on to it by the lip of the hole… well, bye-bye effect.

@Jason: I always intended to do this to the ships since I think it makes the somewhat boring Imp ships a little less so. As above, I think I need to solve for the shadow the sculpt itself creates. I’ll keep plugging away. Looking forward to you playing this, sucker!

afterimagedan said...

I am highly in favor of the engine glow. I do it on most of my fleets.

Yeti's Yell said...

Yours look damn good Dan.