Let me preface this post by giving a very serious and well-deserved shout-out to all the talented helmet painters out there, whether you are working on their own helmets, and/or doing commissions for others.
via Imgflip Meme Maker
That being said, I am going to be referring to what Ponte had to say about his latest ESB helmet paint-up, one of the best ESB helmet paintjobs I have ever seen. It is jaw-dropping, gorgeous, and a standard I hope to merely approach.
If you've read my last post, you know that I have some problems with the Humbrol Silver 11 I tried to lay down on my helmet this week. Rather than a pearlescent sparkly silver, it came out gray. Now in all honesty, it looks a little like that reflective high-visibility material on safety vests, running clothing, etc... just a
defective version of it. It looks like it would be highly reflective, if only the light would hit it at the right angle. Alas, here isn't an angle it will suddenly 'pop' at. For the TL;DR version, "It's just not working as a proper silver. At all."
Scouring the Web, around 2013 people started posting some negative feedback about the new formulations of Humbrol enamel paints, silver being one of the ones receiving a lot of this flack. Apparently I wasn't the only one getting gray out of their Silver 11 tins. Right on the money, it was about April 2013 when I bought the silver enamel I am currently trying to use for my two helmets. The results of airbrushing that silver (I really should have trusted my test cards!! Lesson learned.) speak for themselves, just see my previous post.
In general, we in the prop and costume community are looking for realistic looking metal finishes. The current "unicorn chaser" in the SW community in terms of metal finishes would have to be the upcoming Captain Phasma costume (how the heck are we going to do that?!). In fact, at a troop this morning, I was consulted by almost everyone there about what we should do to achieve that finish. I guess they think I know what I'm doing, when it comes to paint and weathering? :rolleyes Please! It's just happy accidents!
In regards to the Fett costume, Ponte (and others, I wish I could give you appropriate credit here) have remarked on a couple separate occasions that the screen-accurate metal/silver paint on the original Fett armour and helmet appears to be a metal
flake paint.
With modern paint formulations and techniques, we can now easily achieve a very seamless metallic look with a simple rattle can. The key to its success,
and the issue with this paint that kind of renders it a surprisingly poor choice, is that it dries ultra-smooth.
Because it has a very smooth surface with little tooth, it becomes highly reflective. Yay!
Because it has a very smooth surface with little tooth, it doesn't take subsequent paint layers very well at all. There's nothing for the new paint to bite into.
Because of the screen-accurate suggestions on the metal paint being an older metal flake sort, and my previous and well documented issues with trying to get new paint layers sticking to a smooth modern metallic paint, I don't want to use a modern metallic paint. I'm going to go for something that still has a little tooth and texture to it, and will ultimately be more screen accurate. I want a silver metal flake paint. I want an alternative to Humbrol Silver 11. And I think I found it:
This is Testors Auto Lacquer 'Diamond Dust' silver paint. It's got sparkle. It's got shimmer. It's got that pearlescent tone (at least according to the plastic cap). The fleck is about the same size as the Humbrol.
Here it is on my test card, and a small shot of it on some spare wood in my paint booth. It is most definitely silver! And it's got sparkle!
This is under fluorescent light.
Here it is in direct sunlight, laying at an angle to the light.
Here it is outdoors, in the shade.
Thoughts?