Hi, my name's Scott, the miniature maniac.

And today we dive into the shiny world of nonmetallic metal.

What up, mini family?

Nonmetallic metal or NMM as it's coined in the miniature painting world

is a complicated technique that has eluded many a miniature painter.

What are some common pitfalls, what are some tips, why is it so complicated?

These are all questions that we are going to answer in the course of this video,

but first for the unfamiliar,

let's define and give a little history to the technique of NMM.

Nonmetallic metal is a 2d art effect that can be traced back very far

to the likes of Rembrandt and even further.

Canvas painters in the 17th century and older

didn't have access to paints that contained metallic pigment

so they resorted to emulating it with non reflective paints.

Using yellows and browns for golds, and grays for silver, etc.

This effect isn't only restricted to paintings, however, you can find it all over illustration.

This started to make its way into miniature painting at an early age.

As early as the 80's or possibly even earlier.

Adopting this technique from 2d and employing it in 3d art has some challenges, however.

When a painter paints a portrait, they're dealing with a singular point of view.

When a miniature painter paints a model

they have to account for all the views around the miniature.

Now when you pick up a miniature that's painted in a nonmetallic metal fashion and you move it around

it's gonna look a little bit weird.

Primarily with a metallic object when you move it around the highlight stays put.

On a painted highlight it moves around with the rotation.

So this is the problem that us miniature painters are going to need to overcome.

Before we even get into painting techniques

we need to first understand what makes something look metallic.

And in order to do that we need to leave the world of art and go into the world of physics.

Don't worry, we'll keep this simple and employable for miniature painting.

Metallic objects are essentially bad mirrors.

They reflect the environment around them, like green trees, blue skies, etc.

Wait, so what happens when you put a metal object on top of a mirror?

Oh Jesus Christ.

Everything that is exposed to light also produces light in varying degrees of intensity

based on how strongly it reflects the light.

When you stare into a mirror your face is producing rays of light

that bounce back at you producing a mirror image.

Similarly in this scene of me looking like a total badass with this sword

you can see the green grass a little in the sword.

Which is a flat piece of metal just like a mirror.

If we quick switch the perspective of the sword there's a wall of green behind where the camera was

and that was reflected on the sword.

You can also see the camera a tiny bit too.

This is important to keep in mind when you're planning your non metallic metal.

What environment is my character in?

Is there a robe that's adjacent to its metal?

All these items emit light and they reflect it off of the armor

based on how rough and how reflective the armor is.

And this can be a little bit intimidating.

It's like I need to think about all of these things.

I mean even other panels of armor reflect light off of them

into other panels of armor and it never ends.

To that I would say no.

I think it is an exercise in futility trying to emulate reality entirely.

We just want to be inspired by it

enough to sell the effect that something does look reflective.

Another thing to keep in mind as aforementioned is the finish of the armor.

Is it the super shiny parade armor that you see in the typical knight in shining armor pictures

or is it rough by years of abuse and battle?

Or is it rusty eyes have been sitting around in a damp area, kind of oxidizing a little bit.

Depending on how rough the armor is it will scatter more light than it reflects.

And it's important to kind of consider this when you're also planning out your non metallic metal.

For inspiration you can look up these sporting events.

Like PWLR which stands for Polska League of Walk Rycerskich.

Or SCA which is the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Who comes up with these names?

Which are dudes that fight in full suits of armor.

Where was this when I was in high school? So much cooler than soccer.

You can find all these kinds of different environments and lighting conditions for inspiration.

Okay so now we have a basic understanding of the physics of how light reflects off of metal.

Let's construct a basic checklist that you need to follow loosely

in order to be able to pull this technique off successfully.

So if metal is like a mirror, how does a mirror operate when it's curved instead of flat?

Well let's crack this open by first introducing the concept of the specular highlight.

I have this cylinder here in a horizontal arrangement.

I've a light source from above and Brian over there is sitting right in front of the cylinder.

From Brian's perspective where is this highlight going to go?

Conventional wisdom tells us that the light is coming from above.

So the cylinder will be lit from top to bottom, right?

Wrong, the main highlight or a specular reflection goes right here, and why?

I promise this will all come back to miniature painting at some point, just stick with me.

Let's take a look at light rays.

If my light source is above, like the sun

the light rays shine down onto the object and reflect off of it.

If we zoom into the peripheral of the cylinder

we can examine in what direction these light rays are reflecting.

The point at which the light ray would bounce into the gaze of the person viewing it

is where the specular highlight would be.

If Brian were to stand up, the specular highlight would move

to where the reflected light ray would intersect his eyeballs.

Highlighted placement for painting something that's reflective

not just metal stuff, but also fabrics like silk, obey this concept to a varying degree.

The placement is a function of you the viewer

the shape of the object, and the position of the light source.

This understanding for me was huge.

And probably one of the most difficult things to pull off about non metallic metal.

But I don't want to downplay that last part.

It's also a function of the shape of the object.

As you probably already know, shapes get highlighted differently.

So let's take a look at some basic shapes.

Here's Cynthia the cylinder and as we already discussed

the highlight runs along the cylinder with it, either horizontally or vertically.

Depending on how the cylinder is positioned.

Here we have Sylvester the sphere.

And finally we have Scrag the square.

Dude got made fun of so much in high school for that name.

Heck, even the shape of the light itself also affects the shape of the highlight.

Understanding a shape affects where you place your highlights and shadows is very important.

And keeping memory of a bunch of basic shapes is also important, we'll discuss that why.

Again to me, this is one of the most important

and most difficult things about painting non metallic metal.

Where to place your highlights and shadows for a surface that is reflective.

So if understanding where to place your highlights and shadows

and understanding the physical properties of the material are important things.

Are there other things that are important about achieving this effect?

Why yes, I'm glad you asked.

That wasn't contrived at all.

Another important thing is correct distribution of color brightness and contrast.

Let's start by looking at this gradient from black to white with all the gray tones in between.

When doing non metallic metal silver

we want this range of tones present on our miniature.

We want the very dark darks and we want the very bright brights.

We don't necessarily want an even distribution of all the colors in the range.

What I've discovered is that when you have an even distribution of colors

your item tends to look more like stone than metal.

We want to focus our efforts more towards the bright end of the spectrum

having less mid-tones and then some shadows.

All tones should be present on the item you are painting

but should not be equally represented.

Now for something like iron or lead this shifts

but for steel, and especially polished steel this holds true.

So what are some other things that we need to consider when attempting non metallic metal?

Well earlier I mentioned the issue of the viewing angle.

When someone picks up your miniature painting piece and rotates it.

The highlights on it don't move and shift or stay put, like a metallic object might.

So short of sending our miniature off to get chrome-plated

and become actually reflective and shiny.

There aren't a lot of things we can do but there are some things we can do to help the situation.

When we're planning out where to place our highlights and shadows

it's a good idea to have some mental snapshots

from different angles that our viewer will typically look at our model with.

We can even go so far as to take literal pictures of our mini from different angles

and use this as a light roadmap for where to place our highlights and shadows.

Pop that sucker and a photo editor and crank the contrast and you have a really good guide.

Then when someone picks up the miniature to look at it

there are viewing angles that they'll subconsciously be drawn to.

Certain angles will make more sense and others won't.

And you tend to gravitate more towards the angles that look correct.

Finally a word about blending.

While not necessary for pulling off non metallic metal

it can help in certain situations to have some blending methodology under your belt.

Whether it's wet blending, feathering, glazing ,blending with an airbrush, or layering

or whatever else you want to use.

If you want help with wet blending I have a video in the top right hand corner, pa-chow

up there, you can check out if you want to get more information about that technique specifically.

But it's important to keep in mind that

blending implies something about your finish of your metal.

Typically, highly reflective metals

don't transition colors very smoothly and it's rather abrupt.

When metal is rougher than it tends to transition slowly.

Alright Scott the miniature maniac you sure have talked a lot about nonmetallic metal.

But can you actually pull it off? Well I'm glad you asked.

Now we're gonna move into the demo portion

to demonstrate enacting these steps on a miniature.

And also going over some more tips and tricks that I use when painting a reflective subject.

I put a vote out on social media about which miniature you guys wanted to see me paint.

And it looks like KDM's Gold Smoke Knight won.

Which is unfortunate for me because it was the miniature I was least sure of how to paint.

But fortunate for you because you get to join me in figuring out how to paint it.

If you want to be part of these votes

make sure to hit the little bell icon next to the subscribe button.

You'll get notifications when I upload a video.

But you also get notifications when I post a picture

or a poll or a status to my youtube community.

I'll be painting the chest and stomach portion of this miniature

to keep this video from going on for so long.

But what I'm about to show you and what I've already spoken about

will empower you to paint this whole miniature and hopefully any miniature you want.

Firstly what environment do I want to paint this guy in?

Well I feel like shooting for a cloudy day so lots of white in the sky.

Additionally I'll paint him silver despite his name.

Because I think silver is a little less forgiving than gold.

Silver tends to reflect the environment a lot more that other metals.

Also I'll go for a really polish metal, like no wear and tear.

This mini has a lot of complicated shapes

and sometimes it can be a little tough to figure out that important part:

where to place the highlights and shadows? So, let's use this miniature to show us.

I'm going to apply a very thin layer of some oil

to this miniature to make it even shinier than it already is.

I'm gonna take a few pictures of it with a very soft light above it like a sky on a cloudy day.

Then I'm going to drop it in a photo editor and bump up the contrast

to see where those shadows and highlights belong.

For fun I even took a few photos with some colored paper below to get an idea

of where the environmental colors would go, like blue waters, or red lava, or yellow sands.

These pictures will remain in front of me while I paint this miniature

as a light map from various angles.

Another method you could tackle however

is to reduce the complex shapes to shapes we understand.

For instance his arms and legs are like cylinders.

And the picture helps reinforce us along with these long running highlights.

The stomach itself is a cylinder with a bulge in the middle.

So it has bands of heights and shadows

but the bands are curved and not straight like a traditional cylinder.

The head itself is a simple sphere and so on and so forth.

Reduce each part of the miniature to a basic shape.

Start simple and add complexity as you go.

Before painting I'll clean off the mini with soap and water to get rid of that oil.

Then I'll prime it a mid gray.

I'm gonna rough in some highlights and shadows first based on my pictures.

I don't want to spend a lot of time blending at this point

because I want to make sure that it looks believably metal

before I invest a lot of time and smoothness.

I should have started with a brighter undercoat

because it's taking me a while to build up a bright enough highlight.

It's important to take note of when something is not working so that you can fix it on the next attempt.

My buddy Jon calls this being proactive in the process of painting.

His alliteration game is on point.

I think this is a good enough start so I'll proceed with blending.

The process that I use is unrefined and unhelpful to watch

but I'll tell you about it because you probably will be using something similar.

I'm essentially smearing paint.

I'm glazing, I'm wet blending, feathering, I'm doing everything to get the paint smooth.

It isn't one thing.

And I keep doing it until it looks as smooth as I want it to be.

There are hundreds and hundreds of brushstrokes used in this process

and that's because I'm not a great miniature painter.

Whenever I repeat this process however

it takes me less and less brushstrokes to achieve this effect.

And at some point I'll have done it so many times that it takes me

a hundred brushstrokes to get this effect.

The key is to never stop practicing and trying.

Speaking of people that never stopped trying.

How's that for a segway?

We got some patrons to shout out.

Shout out to Marc Hedglin, Trolen, Roechi, Evan Mcgroder, Darius Talaat, Meghan Raynak

Kieran Peel, Michael Christopher and Ragury.

Thank you guys for being my new patrons in the recent past

I really appreciate you guys donating your

hard earned dollars to my Patreon campaign, it means, it means a lot.

If you're a curious about my Patreon campaign and the rewards that I have to offer

you can find a link to it in the description below.

After I've gotten it close, I like to do some black lining and edge highlighting.

Sometimes when there's no separation, stuff can look a lot worse than the end product will be.

So when I break up the surface a little bit, it almost instantly looks better.

This part is a little tricky because the thinner you get the lines the sexier the final outcome is.

So you need a consistency that's wet enough to flow off your brush

but not so diluted that it's not opaque.

It's real finicky.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use black when black lining.

Any dark color will do.

After this I want to add some sky reflections to the tops of the metal.

So I took some caribbean teal and diluted it to a very thin consistency

and tinted the parts in between my brightest highlight and the shadow with a very slight blue.

Like some of the sky is peeking through the clouds.

Next I wanted to add some metal striations, like we saw in the cube earlier.

So I started to do thin vertical lines in between each region of color

as thin as I could make them.

This is a tip that I picked up from Michal Pisarski's NMM class at AdeptiCon.

I kind of went a little crazy with this step when I took a break and snap the photo of my mini.

So I came back later and smooth this out with a little bit of glazes

to help reduce the intensity of the lines.

Next I tighten up the bolts on the paint job by making the edges of the highlights even thinner.

I did this by pairing them down with a dark shadow color.

I'm simultaneously upping the contrast while making those lines nice and crispy.

If you look at my boobs, can you tell I'm not wearing a bra?

I'm recording right now and I would love to use that in my video.

After this, I took a look at Kirill Kanaev's work because I'm inadvertently copying him

and noticed he had greens in his work, so I decided that I wanted to add some to mine.

This character has grief written on his face.

So I figured I could have him standing in a nature-filled setting

and burning up or corrupting everything he touches.

So he can never fully experience nature because he kills it

but it surrounds him, hence the green reflection.

Quite the story just to justify copying someone, eh?

I started with a darker green and then went up to a more

electric green as it approached the highlight

until it was pretty much a yellow highlight.

I also added some striations, sort of, with this color to maintain that brushed metal look.

I then also added some sepia tone with an ink glaze to the bottom as well

to get some orangie tones to simulate maybe the reflecting of a setting sun.

I figure the more colors I add

the more polished the metal will look, which is kind of counterintuitive.

The less gray/white/black it is, the more reflective it looks.

I have to be careful I don't add too many colors for fear of being gaudy.

Next I worked on the decorative trim element and made it gold.

Painting more details can help to make your piece look substantially better.

I know it's obvious, but if you're ever wondering in the middle of a paint job

what you can do to make your miniature look better, just start working on other parts.

You'd be surprised how finishing a few details can help tremendously.

In terms of highlight placement I just followed the chest above to have some consistency.

When you have a peak like this, in the middle of the chest

having a light area right next to a dark area however real that may not be

helps parts to look more reflective.

This little reality bending trick is courtesy of Caleb Wissenback, so thanks for that Caleb.

After I fussed over the blending like I did with the silver

I black lined all the bolts and added some final subtle edge highlighting.

And that was the silver smoke night stomach area complete.

This is one way amidst many ways to accomplish non metallic metal.

I chose a highly reflective silver on a cloudy day and a green pasture.

You're gonna choose something entirely different and hopefully

what we went over today will equip you to be able to carry out that idea.

From the physics portions to the actual employment of the technique.

But it's important to remember one thing.

This takes time.

I've been painting non metallic subjects for the last two years.

Messing up and failing constantly

and this little part of this miniature you just saw me paint

took me around 10 hours to do.

You're gonna give this a shot, it's not gonna look good for the first hour

for the first two hours, for the first five hours, it's going to look like garbage

and that is normal and that is okay.

You saw this miniature, it looked garbage all the way up until the very end, that's normal.

You're not a bad painter, you and I are just learning.

So press into that failure and keep practicing and don't lose sight.

If you liked this video and also similar advanced topics

I have a playlist that has all my advanced videos in it.

But if you're like, well that's way too much information, I don't even know where to begin.

I have a playlist of beginner techniques that you can study

to develop the cornerstone of your talent as a miniature painter.

If you like the channel and you want to support it

I have a merchandise store where I sell cutting mats and coffee mugs

and patches that you can put on your blue jean vest.

I also have a Patreon campaign which has a lot of fun rewards

both linked in the description below.

Subscribe or die and most importantly don't forget to

Paint More Minis.

Dear god.

Oh God no.

Oh Jesus Christ.

Oh sweet baby Jesus.

That we can help with the situation (burp) with.

Captions by Nicosubs