Hi there.
After FINLLY getting my hands on the Transport (felt a bit like Gollum going "My Preeeecious!!") and playing an Epic game with it I went to "The Dark Side" and have started doing a light paint job on the engine glow since it, like the Falcon, looks a bit too dull in it's stock look IMO
So without further ado I present you my feeble attempt of getting the Bright Hope's engines fired up for another Hoth Escape (including some of the inspirational pictures):
Pretty good job!
Unfortunately, you are going to have the same glow problem all white/off-white mini's have: to get the best effect a glow needs to be LIGHTER than the paint around it, and when your ship is already white you are stuck painting it darker. It still looks good, but it seems like you can never get that perfect glow on a white/off-white model.
Luckily, this model is not quite white. You may want to consider dropping the blue, or making it much lighter.
Notice in the art you posted they purposefully put the engines in "shadow", because otherwise they couldn't illustrate a proper glow effect.
Another option would be to do the full glow in white, then paint very thin layers of blue over the edges. Painting blue over off white is always going to be darker than the transport, but if you put down a base coat of white first you can actually get it brighter.
Just some thoughts. Glow on white is tough, but you've done a great job.
Pretty good job!
Unfortunately, you are going to have the same glow problem all white/off-white mini's have: to get the best effect a glow needs to be LIGHTER than the paint around it, and when your ship is already white you are stuck painting it darker. It still looks good, but it seems like you can never get that perfect glow on a white/off-white model.
Luckily, this model is not quite white. You may want to consider dropping the blue, or making it much lighter.
Notice in the art you posted they purposefully put the engines in "shadow", because otherwise they couldn't illustrate a proper glow effect.
Another option would be to do the full glow in white, then paint very thin layers of blue over the edges. Painting blue over off white is always going to be darker than the transport, but if you put down a base coat of white first you can actually get it brighter.
Just some thoughts. Glow on white is tough, but you've done a great job.
Thx for ypur input, it is very much valued. I am still learning fooling around and, not being blessed with loads of patience and/or natural talent, I often simply push forward to see the result and end up with a so so result.
You make some valid points, and looking closer on the references I also realize that the engine glow off the main thrust engines are very bright/whiter, and I will probably redo it one of these days.
So thx again, I will post after some more work/adjustment while waiting for the (soon??) arrival of Tantive IV
Nom nom nom
Redid the rim of the main thrusts a bit, it does make it look better (thx for the advice) but I'll need to do more touch ups/alterations. But for now and looking at it on a mat/play area it does give an okay impression/effect for now:
Sry for the tilted images
One trick you can use is to weather it dark before doing the light effect; lots of soot streaking, oil streaks and carbonisation around the engines. Then put you OSL work on that.
Try drybrushing. It appears your blue paint is going on like a wash. With drybrushing the white on as engine flare on the hull, it will pick up the highlights and leave the blue glow in the crevices. As riplikash stated, starting with a near white model doesn't help, so you'd need to get the brightest white possible. It looks like too much contrast from the blue to the white. Try mixing your colours from the blue through to the white in successive layers, lightening each time. If you've got access to an airbrush, it could be worth considering trying that.
Nice job. I think I like the Mecano Sand Crawler even more though
Glow effects are definitely tough, especially where they light up the parts of the ship near the engine. I think your first image after the bright hope card is best. After that the glow is a little over done. You've got the most lit part at the bottom of that groove extending from the engine, but the glow should be brightest by the engine.
As you have it, it makes it look like the groove itself is lighting up. Does that make sense?
Also (and this could easily just be a photography thing), you'll want the brightest glow effect to be the center of the engine. Anything around should be a shade or two darker than the source of energy.
It's looking even better, great job.
I'm going to second the dry brushing tip. You are getting a bit of a wash effect (crevices are lit) when you want a highlight effect.
Winterdyne's idea was great too. The engines are a great place to put on some suit and grease, which will allow your OSL (object source lighting, the name for this technique I couldn't remember yesterday) to pop.
I think the biggest improvement you could make right now is to thin your paints. Good OSL involves lots of mostly transparent layers of paints building on each other, rather than just trying to paint colors directly. It will also give you a smoother gradient and better blending with the surrounding colors.
But it really is looking great! Good job.
Just thought I would share this. My first attempt at OSL from several years ago. You can see some attempted glow coming from the staff, but it just doesn't work on pure white. So I feel your pain. OSL on white requires some clever tricks to get it to work. For the transport you can try soot, or take advantage of the fact that it is off white already. On this mini I probably should have planned the OSL in from the beginning and painted the entire thing a slightly darker white so I could go lighter for the OSL.
Cool paint job, awesome Lego Sandcrawler
Here's a few pointers to successful OSL.
1- always remember that light is additive. This means you can't shine light on something (no matter the colour) and have the result be darker.
2- always remember that light doesn't really spread. Anything that obstructs the line from your light source to your surface casts a shadow. This is a common flaw with airbrushed OSL effects, and actually more represents 'bloom' where a camera (or retina) effectively overloaded by reflected or cast light. This is an effect that is very dependent on viewer angle, and so should be avoided as much as possible.
3- bear in mind your falloff distance (this is sometimes called attenuation). Generally, we expect light to be less intense further from the emitter: this does NOT mean a darker colour, it means the light should have less effect.
Here's a fairly simple single-emitter example; very light greens over silver/gunmetal. Note also that on hard edges, the OSL highlight is fairly intense, with almost no blend back, it's literally just the edge that needs to catch the light. This is also important when simulating a glossy surface.
Another example with slightly more cast light, and good examples of shadowed OSL on the hip plate in particular:
