The ONE Big Secret to NMM - HC 566

Hello everybody and welcome to another Hobby Cheating video. And this week we're going to give you the ultimate secret to understanding non-metallic metal. Let's get into it. >> The let's strict technomancer that is Vincey V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vincey V. >> So I've done two previous videos on non-metallic metal, which I think are good lead-ins to this one. Basically, I start I started by kind of explaining how light works over the shapes, then we kind of talked about reflections and how to shape that light. And now today we're going to talk about the true ultimate secret, which is scattering the light, creating inconsistencies in the patterns that will make it feel more real. And this one's a little tricky to actually explain, so as usual I'm just going to show you. Let's get over the desk and let's get painting. So I'm finishing up this uh Madame YoKai bust. And she has this very big sword, which is like the perfect surface to sort of show this technique in action. And uh so here's how she looks. We're going to use something unusual though. I want to really show you two things with this. [music] First, how to properly sort of actually scatter light and create realistic non-metallic metal effects, but also I'd like to show you that you can use a lot of different colors. So today we're going to use these three paints. This is a purple, a mid-tone sort of desaturated green, and a very light desaturated green. And we're going to make steel out of this. Trust me, this will look like steel when we're done, okay? All right. So let's begin. The first thing I'm going to do is I start mixing these you know I create several steps and mixes of these colors along the way. Of course we can just do our standard five color spread of the dark purple as a base coat. We mix a little bit of it in, you know, just create a 50/50 of both. But I end up making a couple more half steps. So all in all I want to end up with about seven or eight steps here, just because that's going to make it easier for my layering and to show what I'm going to do. I then begin establishing some initial color zones. This first part is going to feel very familiar to anybody who's watched any of my previous non-metallic metal videos. So, I start by laying down the base coat of the darkest tone, then I start creating areas where I want some of that light to be. So, you know, as usual, we have a primary highlight area and then a secondary bounce light area. And as I create those first initial layers, it's mostly the same thing as what you've seen before. I'm working within shingles on a roof, covering less and less each time. [music] So, you can see how I covered the whole blade with purple, then a little bit less with the purple plus the mid-tone green, then a little bit less with the next step up from there, and so on and so forth. Now, this part should read as pretty much very normal to you because when you're doing non-metallic metal, this is basically what you do. Period. This is sort of bargain basement obvious stuff. You start covering less and less to run the full gamut from dark to light. However, as we go up basically past the mid-tone or from the mid-tone on, I should say, that's where we start getting a little weird. So, instead of just doing a single zone, instead of taking, you know, working and going smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller each time up to a primary highlight, what we're going to start doing is creating smaller zones, skipping spots inside of those areas. So, you notice how I'll put a little bit in the primary, then I'll skip a spot, then I'll do a little more, then I'll skip a spot, then I'll do a little more, and so on, right? And I start to create effectively the roller coaster, and we will come back to this concept at the end. But, instead of having just one smooth progression from dark to light to dark to light >> [music] >> to dark, and that's how I see a a of non-metallic metal rendered. Where it's just kind of a straight line that goes up, down, up, down. Instead, what we want to do is we want to create like a roller coaster little variations in there. We go way up, and we come down a little, and we go up again, and we come down a little more, then up a little, then down a little, then up a lot, then down a lot, and so on, right? Creating this very random progression. Now, as I continue highlighting up, getting into higher and higher value paints, not only do I start do I continue to skip spots creating even smaller zones within those zones I'm creating. So, within the mid-tone zone, which was already had multiple skips in it, I'll then go to the slightly lighter tone and skip in a different place, right? I will also start picking some new spots and place just the highlight in there where there's like deeper shadows around it. And what you'll start to see is that roller coaster becomes very evident, right? Now, we're really going up and down quite a bit. Picking those new areas is really important because you've got to break it up. The reality is unless you're dealing with an extremely perfect metal, where like you get a really smooth clean shine, something that's polished to like a near mirror finish, there's inconsistencies, you know, and and imperfections in the metal that will cause the light to scatter in a somewhat unexpected way. And if you look at a whole lot of high-end NMM, you'll see once you start seeing this roller coaster, it's impossible not to see it everywhere. Okay? And so, you'll see how I just create little bits of light here and there, like uh within both my mid-tone zones, and then sometimes into the darker areas, creating new spots. And I just continue highlighting up and up and up. As I get to the highest highlights, >> [music] >> I'm now creating like multiple small zones, scattering it around. I don't ever put the highest highlight into the deepest shadow. There's a little bit of nuance to this. As I'm sort of layering it up, the key here is I'm placing, you know, some mid-tones in some dark or in some like light shadows or something, you know. So, I never jump from like the brightest bright to the darkest dark right next to it. Instead, I kind of mix it up a little, you know, and I can I might put it in an area where before I didn't have any light. So, it's going to represent like a two or three step jump, but not the full gamut from like highest to lowest value. So, you can run like two or three steps apart, but you don't want to run seven or whatever value steps apart. Now, once I've got all that in place, I start to just basically fuzz the edges. You're going to have something that looks kind of silly as you begin placing all these in there. The next key is when you're smoothing this out, do not try to cover everything you've just done. You are doing extremely targeted glazes or thin layers with feathering or whatever blending technique you like, and you're going to just get in there and fuzz the very edges, making sure that each little transition becomes smoother into the one next to it. You will work thinner and thinner as you go. Remember our grand theory of blending. We start thick and broad, so we're using thick layer paint and working broadly, and as we go, the paint gets thinner and becomes a tighter, more targeted, smaller area. That very much applies here. As we then fuzz those little edges and start to smooth it out, now the roller coaster gets smooth instead of being like an EKG where it's sharp spiky lines where it's bright and then very dark and so on, now we get these nice smooth progressions in between the colors. Still a roller coaster. It is not just all the way up and all the way down, but there's lots of little variations in here, right? [music] And that's what we want. We want it to go, you know, from dark into a slightly lighter, into more more light, then down a little bit, then up a little bit, then down a little bit more, then down a little bit more, then up a little bit more, then down a little bit, then up a lot, and so on and so forth, right? And to do that, we've got to do these repeated targeted glazes or very thin layers. We work on the edge of that to then kind of just create that fuzz and smooth out the image. Now, as a point of fact, if you don't like this type of smooth [music] blending like you see me doing here, you can also do the same thing with metal with just sharp thin lines. So, if you're more of a hash and scratch kind of person, you can do the exact same trick, but just lots and lots of repeated thin lines. That will give it more the impression of something like a brushed steel, but it's certainly completely doable. [music] Okay. So, once I've got those edges all fuzz, right? Then my next step is I'll continue going back and working some of the highlights. And here comes the next little trick to this. >> [music] >> When you work in just your highest values, you've got to go back in after you do this and really reinforce those bright values. And you start then just scattering around little points of light. Not a ton. They do shouldn't be intense, and they should be again never in the darkest area. You're not taking a high value little spotlight and putting it into something dark. Instead, you can jump like two or three steps or have it occur near or adjacent to a highlight. But what you're doing is you're just placing these little bits of color that are broken up. So, now we're down at the very small micro level. The key is not only do we have the roller coaster, but we're catching little little light little bits of light in there. So, I'm just touching little tiny spots. And I'm making sure that there's some variation even in that area, right? So, my highlight areas you'll notice I tend to create them as triangles. That's just the more natural way to look on a flat surface. Light will tend to scatter in a triangle as it cascades [music] down the surface. But you'll notice then that above some of those triangles I placed a little circle of light or in some other areas I come in there very thin paint. It shouldn't be extreme. You're just giving this impression of scattered lights, okay? And when you do that, it's really going to create that absolutely uh sort of incredible impression of the uh of the metal having small imperfections that are catching those individual lights and creating little tiny variations, okay? Once that's in place, we then repeat the same thing where we're going to go in and we're going to create small glazes just targeted around the edges to make sure that those have a smoothness to it. If your dots or your lights or your scatters are too strong, these glazes are what's going to bring it all together and make sure that everything is in the right place, okay? And in fact, most of your cleanup for this is just smoothing out everything that you've done. I will say, you know, working back and forth on this, I spent a considerable amount of time then creating these glazes and just working it very thin over and over and over and over again to get everything nice and smooth. And glazes are the end of almost every road and that's perfectly okay. When we work with the glazes, we just work the very targeted area. I cannot reinforce this enough, right? I'm not going in and like glazing the whole sword. I'm working a couple millimeters, if even that, each time I put the brush to the sword. Okay? And basically, once that's done, we've got it. The key here is, as you continue to, you know, take this out to other surfaces, you want to break up this light in the same way. Whether it's the shoulder or a chest plate or a forearm or a leg, it doesn't matter. In all cases, you're going to take this light and break it up. Instead of having one big broad area of highlight, you can have two, three. Break it up. Create small little roller coasters. Doesn't need to be huge. Scatter the light. Have the lines of light be a little imperfect. Go wide, broad, and then thin down, and expand out again. That's what those little specular circles are doing. It's showing where the light expanded, contracted, expanded again. [music] Okay? All right. Well, with that, here's how she came out. Uh I think this looks pretty darn cool, I will say. Uh hey, look. If you've got any questions about this, drop them down below. Consider this like the three-part series on non-metallic metal completed, and I hope this lets you go to the highest level possible on NMM. Like I said, if you liked it, hit like. Subscribe. We've got new videos here every Saturday. If you've got any questions about anything I talked about here, drop them down below. I always answer every question and read every comment. If you want to support the channel and help me keep making videos, there's lots of ways to do so. You can pick up your supplies from the affiliate links down below. Saves you money and really helps the channel. Uh there's also, of course, our Patreon, focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey. If you're looking for a new game, Uncle Adam and I just published recently our newest game, Repent, Ye Foolish Gods. Uh if you're looking for a fun new skirmish game, and of course, elsewhere in the Vincey Cinematic Universe, you can check out Fireball the Gazebo, my RPG podcast with Ninjon, or Snarl Cast, my indie wargaming podcast with Uncle Adam. As always though, I want to thank you so much for watching this one. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time. >> [music] [music]