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Painting : How to pick a Mandalorian Paint Scheme

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: How to pick a Mandalorian Paint Scheme
« on: May 19, 2018, 11:57 AM »
How to Pick a Mandalorian Paint Scheme
Lead Author: Keely
Edited by: MMCC Education Team

One of the best things about the Mercs is the variety of custom paint schemes available to us for our costumes. One of the most OVERWHELMING things about the Mercs is the variety of custom paint schemes available to us for our costumes! How do you choose?

Hopefully this tutorial will help you narrow down the look of your armor! For each step we’re going to follow 3 kits through the color designing process!



Pick the Colors!

First thing to do is to pick your main color and a few additional colors that you think may go well with it. Your main color can be your favorite color, a color of a favorite character, the college you went to, or any other variation. 

  • I went with orange because it’s my favorite color. To pick my “other” colors I dug through my scrap fabric bin to see what I had and found some leftover burgundy fabric from another costume (Lyra Erso to be precise). 
  • Dianne chose purples and blues because, even though she’s Hufflepuff, she’s apparently a Ravenclaw color-wise ;)
  • 9-year-old Verd’ika Peter just knew he wanted blue! He got browns as his additional colors because I had some leftover tan curtain fabric for his vest and brown burlap for his cape (also from my Lyra costume oddly enough).


Pick the exact shades!

Colors are weird. You may know that certain colors look good together, but sometimes the exact shades of colors look just...off when put together. That gray is too cool and that brown is too warm and that red is oversaturated and...well, a bunch of other artsy terms that really just don’t matter for our purposes. What we really need is just to find the shades that look “right”!

One of the easiest ways to do just that is: Google Images! Just plug in the colors you want into the google image search and see what color combinations might come up. (Be sure that the fabric you already have matches the shades on the images - it’s easier to alter your paint colors than your fabric colors.)

  • Orange and burgundy gave us these options:






  • Purples and blues got us this:





  • And blue, brown and tan this:



Pick Where the Colors Go!

Once you have your shades, you can sketch out your design, color in a coloring sheet or use Mando Maker to get a general idea of where things will go, then pull your fabric and paint together and get to sewing and building! The first piece to get will be your flightsuit, followed by your vest, boots, waist items and belt.

Get those finished up then cut and shape your armor (This is ALWAYS easier to do on top of the soft goods you’ll actually be using as it can change the fit of the armor!). Then, take a photo of yourself with your full unpainted kit on.

Here’s where it gets fun! Use a graphics program (Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, Paint Shop Pro, or even Microsoft Paint) to “paint” on top of your kit! Save several copies as you go so if you don’t like something, you can go back to a fresh copy and try again. Once you’re satisfied use your design as a template when you’re painting!

  • I used Mando Maker to get a basic idea (switched from the purple to burgundy after finding the aforementioned leftover fabric). My kit utilized a swarzy Manticore logo that I cleared with the App Team before including:





  • Dianne sketched out her design by hand and used a swarzy badger logo to hint at her Hufflepuff origins despite her Ravenclaw colors. The teal color was added to her kit during this design phase, as the purple and blues alone needed something else.




  • And Peter just decided on his design right before it was time to paint, no prior sketch



The Final Costumes

You can see that the final designs changed a little, but overall the ideas we had from the start made their way into the completed costume. You can see each of these costumes has a minimum of 4 colors. We’ll go over each of those below:

  • My costume has a charcoal gray/black base for the flightsuit/vest. This is mirrored in the belt, boots and a few accessories, but is kept out of the actual armor itself. The base armor color is light orange (pumpkin) with the main accent a darker red-orange. The secondary accent color on the armor is the burgandy which is also used on the sash and kama and the tertiary lighter gray is used sparingly on the armor and loin cloth. All together 5 colors were used for this kit (6 if you count charcoal and black separately)





  • Dianne also has a black base for the flightsuit/vest/boots and belt. The dark navy blue was used for the main armor color, but used as a secondary color on her soft parts (for her bias tape). Where the purple was used as a main color for soft parts and secondary for the armor. The teal was used as a tertiary color for both - all together she only had 4 colors.





  • Peter has a base of navy blue, with a tan vest. I honestly wouldn’t suggest doing the vest such a vastly different color, but for a Verd’ika we went with what we had ;) His base armor color is blue with a dark navy and brown as equal secondary colors and gold his tertiary accent.


Summary

As you can see, there are several different ways to combine the colors. Just play around with them until it looks “right”. And don’t be afraid to ask for help along the way. As with many other parts of building your costume, when choosing your colors, posting in your WIP can be a huge help!

We can’t wait to see what paint schemes you come up with!

--MMCC Education Team--

« Last Edit: Jul 23, 2019, 09:41 AM by Raestin Ke'Varek » Logged
 


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