Sunday 13 November 2011

Myth Busted - Citadel colour mixing



For months now colour mixing charts are circulating on the web about a great chunk of the current Citadel range being possible to be replicated by simply mixing Skull White, Chaos Black, Blood Red, Enchanted Blue and Sunburst Yellow in the right proportions.
The story surfaced first at Nesbet Miniatures Blog and months later on the excellent Path of the Outcast Blog that I'm following. After sharing my concerns; Cannonfodder, the blog owner started a poll, asking the public what they think. 54% voted that they didn't try it but they thought it would work.
Actually it doesn't.
When I first read the original post at Nesbet's blog I shared the enthusiasm with all the rest, but after a little while things started to distub me a little.

A little on colours

For three years or so I was an active (and now honorary) member of Europa Barbarorum a project that some of you may know. It is a hardcore total realism mod for Rome (and later Medieval) Total War. Apart from skinning a few dozens of units in the mod, I was making some research into dyes and pigments, and how they work. (It was important to know what colours could be produced in the timeframe, and what was cheap or expensive.)
A colour has three major attributes: hue, saturation and lightness. It is possible to produce any colour by mixing rays of light in different colour, basically any hue can be recreated this way. What works with light doesn't work with pigments though. Pigments are of different opacity and will not produce all the hues you want. Of course I mean the pigments we modellers use; the cyan-magenta-yellow system for offset printing is an entirely different matter, and even there colours are not mixed, only dots (I know it is a bit more complex then this).
The other important thing is saturation. It is the measure how vivid the colour is. Pastel colours have more gray in them so they are of lower saturation.
The third thing to be taken into consideration is that pigments have personality... some hues you just cannot produce by mixing them. The best example is purple. In the antiquity a few grams of purple dye could feed a family for decades. Don't you think it was easier to mix or overdye madder and woad or indigo? It just did not work. Only purple dye did the job.
The charts don't, or very little address these points and this is the reason why they fail miserably.

The proof

No research is complete without experiment though, and it was relative easy - as all my readers know - I keep my citadel paints in dropper bottles. This time apart from cropping I did not use any Photoshop goodies and let the image much bigger then usual.
The results speak for themselves:


As ever, I don't pretend to have a monopoly for the truth, so if you thik that the colours are good enough proxies, or I did something wrong and you had different results, please do not hesitate to comment!
But from my part: Mith Busted.

39 comments:

  1. thanks for the background and for the experiment. Funny thing aside: I was also skinner and modeler for computer games for years. I will write a follow up on the issue and show your results if it is okay for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sure it is! the point is to help people prevent the mistakes we make :-). My diminishing stock of citadel colours gave these results, someone with different colours may fare better, but I for one very much doubt it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TY for this,

    Can you just clarify your swatch please?

    WM

    ReplyDelete
  4. Eh... What swatch? Please excuse me English is not my native tongue... The colours are on a plain white paper, the lighting is with daylight bulbs, the camera is on direct daylight setting. No digital alteration apart from cropping.
    Is that what you asked?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry for being 5 years late with this response: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z8NQoTemsc

    Now, I do suspect that somebody just calculated the mixing recipes from additive (computer screen) colour mixing, and pigments do work a little different, but you can still mix any colour as long as you start with Process yellow, process magenta, process cyan, white and black.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You define your thought classically by this blog, thank you so much for sharing such an amazing blog. Get website designing services by ogen infosystem in delhi, india.
    SEO Service in Delhi

    ReplyDelete
  7. Keep more data about this related blog, by and large this is significant for me. Get the best Mutual Fund Advisor and Investor premiums at Mutualfundwala.
    Mutual Fund Agent

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice blog, Get School Bus Painting and Fleet Painting at Kalakutir Pvt Ltd in Delhi, India.
    School Bus Painting

    ReplyDelete




  9. PSl 2020 is nearly to coming in pakistan in February 20. The most awaited and the Popuplar event that is gonna be start. So Get ready and enjoy all the pakistan super laegaue live streaming, schedule, fixture and the other teams details. You can watch all the match updates and the Online ball by ball updates.

    Psl live streaming 2020

    ReplyDelete
  10. waist trainer helps plus size and fatty womens to hide their extra body fat and look slimmer. Waist trainer also use to control lower belly and back fat . they can be wear under clothes during different functions and aslo used during workout for back support. they are the best choice to get hour glass body shape.

    ReplyDelete
  11. We are providing the best waist trainers for fat lose from tummy and back fat to get dream body shape for different occasions. Waist trainers are readily aimed at showing off your body curves in the right places and also. Control the lower body fat
    These items can customize your overall body and hide your extra fat to look attractive. The Majority are using the waist trainer for lose belly fat well and you can stay active without leaving the house.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Most valuable and fantastic blog I really appreciate your work which you have done about the electricians,many thanks and keep it up. Very useful info. Hope to see more posts soon! I really like to read this post, it shares lots of information to readers.a

    Graphic Design company in USA

    Label Design

    Box Packaging Design

    Packaging Host

    Die Cut Stickers

    Static Cling

    Lahore Smart City Payment Plan

    Hosting Mart

    ReplyDelete
  13. Learn more" "Can not redeem your gift-card because of a concern with your account. Check always cover. google.com." "We want you to confirm your identity before we let you increase balance to a Google Play account. Verify your identity " "We want you to confirm your identity. Documented proof could be deemed necessary.amazon com code
    amazon code
    Play.google.com/redeem
    amazon com code
    Prime video mytv

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thanks create a wonderful content for us it’s worthy.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Congratulations on your article, it was very helpful and successful. 3cb1f6bb0c0447ac4ddcb4aae7730856
    website kurma
    sms onay
    website kurma

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thank you for your explanation, very good content. 6d744e4fffd06839787f51767d4a8063
    define dedektörü

    ReplyDelete
  17. Colors are an important aspect of the art world—in fact, colors are an important component of our world in general—but making digital colors is considerably more difficult since you must master how a computer can make digital art and all of the many distinct hues.
    Local Citations

    ReplyDelete
  18. It includes consumables, for example, food and wellbeing and excellence helps, as well as provisions for cleaning,
    DGCustomerFirst

    ReplyDelete