 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another hobby-cheating video, and today we're gonna talk about one of the trickiest questions that haunts us in miniature painting. How to pick your color scheme. I think this happens to all of us. You get excited about a new army, you go out, you buy a bunch of figs, you get them home, they're on your desk, you're assembling them or you're opening the boxes, and then you go to paint them and you're like, wait a minute, I don't even know what I wanted to paint these guys. What colors do I use? What should I do? And then you panic and you throw all the minis up in the air and you run from the house screaming and live in the woods for the rest of your life. Well, maybe not all of that. If that's the case, you're probably not watching this video. But today we're gonna talk about what are the tips, tricks, tactics for choosing a scheme that's gonna look good. So whether you're a new painter or somebody who's been going for years, I hope something in this video is helpful for you. Let's get into it. Alright, so number one, the first question you're gonna ask yourself, does an existing color scheme already work? Now, this makes your life a lot easier. And I think it's probably obvious, but it has to be said. If you're a big fan of ultramarines and you just bought a bunch of space marine figures, well, guess what? Paint them all blue. There are color plates, there are army guides, there is everything you ever needed to paint those models in those colors. And this is true for most of the armies at something like Games Workshop or, frankly, any other large gaming company makes. In their books, they will have already miniatures that have been painted or schemes or something like that. And much like being a historical gamer in that case, then you've got the existing colors and templates and plates to work from. So it's just a matter of replicating those existing schemes. You don't have to worry about whether or not the colors look good together. The fact that you liked what the art was and you thought it looked cool says, yeah, they work, so you're good to go. Now, one of the things you can do, if you like, is maybe modify a minor element to make it your own. For example, if you really love blood angels or something like that, instead of using the standard shoulder pad color, you could paint the shoulder pads a different color or have a slightly different iconography or maybe you integrate another color in a big way. Like maybe you have white as a more preeminent color on their shoulders or on their knees or as stripes or maybe a bisected marine or anything like that. And then you just call it a successor chapter and life goes on. But the point is, is that you should always feel free to use those existing color schemes, those plates as a jumping off point. This isn't a religious text. These aren't scriptures handed down from above. You are under no compulsion ever to paint exactly what you see in the picture. Use it as inspiration, as a prompt, as an idea and nothing more. Change whatever you want to change. And if you're only changing minor elements, especially if you swap them to neutral colors like browns, blacks and whites, it won't actually change the color scheme at all because you haven't changed any hues. So you can do so with relative confidence that the scheme is still going to look good when you're done. So don't ever feel bad about experimenting and using those existing army references either completely or as a jumping off point. Alright, number two, search for inspiration. What I mean by that is don't just sit there and stare at the mini. It's a little tiny gray person. It has nothing to tell you. But the internet does. The internet, this magic box that contains all of human knowledge and we just, we're okay with that. Like that's just part of life now. So I guess, cool. You can very easily go on there and just Google image search that particular figure. Just search for whatever you happen to be painting. You know, if you just picked up your Soul Blight Gravelords and you've got a box of zombies, just Google Soul Blight Gravelord Zombies and see what people have done. What cool zombie skin tones have people already used? How have they painted the models, the dresses, the pants, the rot, right? And you can do the same. Don't ever feel bad about quote unquote lifting someone else's color scheme. Again, that's not a thing. Those other people who've already painted it, they're the vanguard. They forged ahead, blazing a trail so that you can follow in their footsteps much more easily and copy whatever they happen to do or as just before change it just slightly. You can also look at the art for the army, the 2D art. Even though it's two dimensional art, it's often different than the miniatures end up coming painted. That is to say, it doesn't always look exactly like the color plates. And there might be neat ideas to inspire you in that art. So just search, you know, Soul Blight Gravelords art or whatever and look and see what all is in there, what pops up. That two dimensional art can often be a great resource for inspiration, for colors, for scenes, for just the whole vibe of your army. And really, for me, I pull down usually a file of a bunch of different cool images from the army. Even if I'm not going to use those colors exactly, it's just an inspiration and it just lights a fire to get painting and to get going at the desk. Finally, look around your walls or the box where you keep your paint or whatever. What is your favorite color? What's your favorite paint you got recently that you really just want to use and experiment with? If you've got some existing favorite color or a cool paint that you really love, then use that. Figure out some excuse to put it on the miniature. Make, you know, Pink Stormcast or whatever. It doesn't matter. It's your mini, as always. But if you've got a color you're already jazzed about because it's either your favorite color or a paint that you tried that you're like, wow, this is really awesome. I love how this looks, then use it. Use this as an excuse to really get to know it, to play with it, and to make an army that color. Number three, this one's a little more tricky, but it's not that bad. And that's mock it up. So basically take a picture of the gray miniature and send it to your computer and then put it into anything that you can paint over. This does not have to be an expensive program, by the way. Sure, you could use Photoshop or something like that online that's free, but you can also just use Paint 3D on your computer. It's on Windows or whatever. It's a simple, free thing. It doesn't matter. You just are testing the colors in combination. Grab a simple watercolor brush, turn down a little bit of the transparency, pick some colors you think look pretty cool, and roughly paint over the areas you want to be those things. You don't need to be a great digital artist to test. If you put the two colors together on the digital image of the miniature and it looks like crap to your eye, congratulations. It looks like crap. You picked a bad scheme. That's okay. It's as easy as just undo to make it all go away and to try a different scheme. In 20 or 30 minutes, you can try 10 different schemes. It's quick. It's easy. It risks absolutely nothing and it gives you instant feedback. Now it's not going to be exactly the same as painting your miniature. It won't give you the full tactile sensation of holding the mini that's been painted in that color, turning it around and really seeing what it looks and feels like. But it will give you a good test for your combination of colors that you're thinking to see if they work together. Number four, trust the color theory. Color theory exists. It's a thing. There are lots of videos and all sorts of information about it out on the internet. In fact, there happened to be some in this very hobby cheating playlist that I've done on the channel before. And you could check those out as well. But really all you need to do is have a color wheel. By the way, if you don't own a color wheel, if you don't own a little thing, you can actually physically rotate. You can just Google color wheel and there you go. Pick any triadic or split complementary scheme. Both of those are three color combinations. They all tend to work well together. They all tend to be pretty visually pleasing and go. That's it. Triadic or split complementary. Now, you might have a question. Vince, am I supposed to use the RGB color wheel or the CMYK color wheel? It doesn't matter. It does not matter. Pick one. It's irrelevant. They can both work fine. Don't get hung up on crap like that. Why are you worried about stuff like that? That's nuts. At super high level composition, that kind of stuff matters. When you're just trying to pick an army scheme, either one will work fine. Here's the trick to using those split complementary and triadic color schemes. The point of the triangle, so the top part, wherever the single point of the triangle is pointing, whatever the little arrow is pointing to, that's your dominant color. That's what's going to be the majority, the most often used color spread equally around the miniature. On a space brain, this would be the dominant armor color. Same thing with a storm cast or something like that. If it's an army with less armor and more cloth or clothing, then it would be the dominant clothing color. Always remember things like neutrals, whites, browns, blacks. Do not count, so we can just ignore all those. Then the other two colors at the bottom of the triangle, those are your pop colors. You use those evenly distributed around the miniature, either in usually a triangle or square. So have two, three, four points of that color existing on the miniature. And you just use them in minor ways. So that might be a flourish, a little the color of one of their bracers on one arm, the bracer on the other arm, and a knee pad or something. It doesn't matter. You can find plenty of places to hide colors. But those two other colors, those are just your pop colors. Maybe it's the cloak and the color of the hair or the feathers or a tassel coming out of their head, or whatever, miniatures have all sorts of wacky things you can turn colors. You can also desaturate them to make them look a little better with the overall color scheme, which just means you add a little bit of something like black or brown or gray or white, basically some neutral tone that will sap the strength, the saturation out of the color, make it a weaker version. You can also usually just find these pre-made and a lot of miniature paint bottles. Instead of picking the super bright, fiery orange, pick the desaturated weaker orange. When you look at two bottles, you know which one is like orange, and you know which one is orange. Pick the one that's orange. Okay, there we go. Number five, and the final step is put one model together, just put one together. Usually a basic trooper, some basic guy or gal from your army, and prime them up and paint them. Now, we are not going to take our time with this. We're not trying to determine, you know, exactly how long it's going to take us to paint the model yet. We're exploratory. This is the brainstorming phase. If everything else hasn't worked, then we're in the brainstorming phase, which means we need to get physical, we need to get tactile, right? So we're going to take that many, prime them, probably zenithalum, and then we're just going to start slapping some paint on. I mean, get rough with it. Don't be clean. Don't be, you know, careful. Get that paint on the model. It doesn't matter if it's rough. It doesn't matter if you've got air and brush strokes. Who cares? None of that impacts your overall evaluation of the model and the color scheme. Slap that paint on. See how it looks. How does it feel with all of the little bits and bobs and everything painted? Does it look good to your eye? If so, thumbs up. You did it. You found your color scheme. Clean it up, refine it, and then figure out how to turn that into a process for everything else in the army. If it didn't work, if you don't like it, no problem. Prime over it and do it again. Do not strip the model. It's a plastic model with acrylic paint on it. You can repaint a model many, many, many times before you need to worry about stripping it. As long as you didn't literally gunk paint on and cover details, you're fine. Poor Larry the Ogre. I've painted that guy no less than a dozen times, completely from head to toe on camera. He's never been stripped, he just gets primed and painted over, and he still looks just as clean and detailed as the day he came off the sprue. You're at worst going to do a couple of shots at it, nothing's going to be disrupted, and who cares even if it was, it's one trooper, one basic guy out of an entire army. No one is going to notice the one thing slightly out of place. So, with those five tips, hopefully, you've now found your color scheme. I hope this helped. If it didn't yet resolve your questions and you've got particular challenges, one of the most common ones I get is, well, will this color work with this color? There's a real easy way to test that out. Do the digital mockup. Throw the paint on the mini. Look for minis in that color on Google. Do all those things. It's super easy. None of this should take any time. We have all the tools in the world at our disposal, and I do hope this helped you find your scheme. It is so rewarding when you find a color scheme for your figures that you really enjoy, and I hope this helped you do that. If it did, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. We have new videos here every Saturday. If you've got any questions, drop them down in the comments below. Don't forget, we've got a Patreon focused on taking your next step on your hobby journey. Join up there for an awesome community of really enthusiastic hobbyists on Discord, as well as review and feedback options, all that kind of thing. But I want to thank you so much for watching this one. I hope this got you unstuck, and you've now got some ideas on how to go forward and paint your army. As always, I thank you for watching this, and we'll see you next time.