Federation Commander

Hello.

I'm just getting in to my sorta byannual Star Trek phase, which this time would seem to mean Federation Commander.

So I was wondering if you could give me some help with deciding what colour to paint my ships. Ideally, using water based paints, available to the UK and requiring a minimum of mixing.

The look I want for my Federation dudes is this:-



er, thats much the same look as you get on the cover:-



It isn't white, right? Most decidedly Grey.

http://www.culttvman2.com/dnn/Features/ ... fault.aspx

suggests that this 'concrete' colour is close to the colour of the original model:-



and seems to suggest that Tamiya XF-12 J.N. Grey is about right.

So, er, is that gonna work?

For Klingons, I'd kinda like to try replicating the colours of the shooting model -



Er. I think its a kinda three tone colour scheme -





(although that was repainted in the 70's - it may have been a bit more subdued originally)

There is an interesting thread about it here:-

http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=22955&page=3

With some paint suggestions at:-

http://thomasmodels.com/webstuff/klingoninstruc.jpg

But those are for Testors Model Master paints, which as far as I can tell are 1: not water based and 2: not available in the UK.

Anyone got any suggestions? I'm kinda tempted to try GW fortress grey/codex grey/scaly green - mostly I just think that three tone look is kinda badass.

You appear to be all over this, as your research links are great. Most of where I would've pointed you, you already list.

I'm about to primer and paint a boatload of Fed minis myself, so I'll be using some of the paints you had listed as data for my shopping. I too am moving away from enamel paints. I just don't want to deal with the fumes anymore.

A lot of the blue and green tint the models have in filmed shots is actually "blue spill" (reflected-light) from the bluescreen process. It leaves a big decision - paint them as they looked on TV, or as the filming minatures looked "for real".

One thing about the Fed hull color. You'll probably want to cut it with a little bit of white. At the small scale of the minis, a dark shade like that will seem all the darker. Rather than looking like a blue/green-tinged light grey, it will look like a very dark blue/green-grey.

How light to go depends on the look you want.
- If you want an on-screen look like in the images you posted, then just lighten it to-scale.
- Me, I'm going to go mostly-white, tinted with a blue/green-grey - more of a 'as the filming miniature was painted' look than an onscreen look. It will give my Feds a more contrasting look against the greyish Klingons, Romulans, and Gorns.

djdood wrote:I too am moving away from enamel paints. I just don't want to deal with the fumes anymore.

Ach - everything from washing your brushes through keeping the paint the right consistency to cleaning up careless spills is just so much less hassle with water based stuff.

It leaves a big decision - paint them as they looked on TV, or as the filming minatures looked "for real".

And now you have things like Trials and Tribble-ations:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0seF5M-gIRc

and the remastered versions:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WGhvS2LGTM

to choose from (and both seem to like a remarkably grey colour).




Anyone who wants to do a Flames of War/GW style painting guide for common looks:-

http://www.battlefront.co.nz/Article.asp?ArticleID=405

would earn my eternal gratitude.

Yeah, a lot of the more recent incarnations of the classic ships (Trials and Tribblations, the remasters) are going for a more "modern" lighting set-up - which means darker, with more shadows and less ambient fill light.

It makes the ships artificially darker then they are naturally, but these color and shade influences have always been in FX shots.

The old 60's TV's were so small and low-res that the imagery needed to be pretty bold to be legible (and some of the FX shots in the classic show are so grainy from compositing generational-loss that it was marginal even then). They made the shots pop with really saturated lighting, which modern eyes don't seem to click with.