@wendigo Glad to hear someone is picking up the Tohaa. They are the most unique out of all the Infinity factions and so play differently due to their skills/weapons & Triads. I like the color triad idea alot. Do you have back up color triads chosen in case you dislike the current one you have above?
I would not recommend using a color wheel. There is no science behind the appeal of triad, complementary etc. color picks. Just choose whatever you like, that always works. Also that color wheel is wrong. Red, green and blue should be 120 degrees from each other, but looks like red is slightly skewed clockwise, making that orange area larger than it should be.
I don't know if there's really any science behind the color wheel. I knew I wanted to paint purple, so I put purple in the program and it told me teal and greenish tan. I liked those colors and I thought they went well with purple, so I chose those. Anyway, here's my first batch while I am still figuring out which parts go which color. Kamael! There were seven of them between the 300pt box and the swc box. I didn't anticipate fielding them ever and I wasn't a fan of the old, smaller hand sculpts so they seemed like good guys to paint first and take some risks with. The first purple triad I tried had too much red in it, and the guy looked like spiderman. I tried a second one with the bluer purple worked well so I did the rest of them like that and repainted spiderman to be like the others.
@wendigo They came out looking amazing. This is one of the best Tohaa schemes I've seen in a long time. The bases are also spot on. You found yourself a keeper in my opinion.
I'd argue that "Just choose whatever you like" is nowhere close to a reliable guide for choosing color combinations, behold Dennis Rodman and modern rappers. But on the other hand the idea that there's no scientific basis on the appeal of color triads has thrown me into a search rabbit hole, because i was curious about this, i like to check if what i believe is actually true instead of succumbing to confirmation bias. So far complementary colors do seem to have a basis (something to do with the light receptors in our eyes), but haven't found anything yet about triads. I hadn't considered whether this was true or not, i just accepted that "Color triads are the way to go", interesting.
Also I read the article you linked, very interesting stuff. I have read something similar in the past, the FOUR primary colors thing was new to me. But what I meant with the "no science behind it" was that there doesn't seem to be a lot of accurate science why any pick of colors appeal to us more than any other pick of colors. Playing around with triads on a color wheel you can sometimes create very pleasing color combos, but it's just as easy to create absolutely horrible combos. So just picking triads or complementaries from a color wheel doesn't seem to help much. First and foremost, the color combos have to look pleasing to you. And in many cases, the ratio of those colors on the model matter just as much. TL;DR: picking colors you like usually works best.
I am relieved to see the reaction to the color choices is generally favorable. Makauls! These guys were gross old hand sculpts like the Kamaels, but they were a little more important to get right because I planned on having at least one Makaul in every list. Since their arms were bare, I had to really settle in on a skin color. I had originally tried to paint the Kamael with blue skin, like Asari from Mass Effect, but they ended up looking like smurfs so I scrapped that. I couldn't use human flesh color and keep the alien vibe going so I started digging into my paint reserves and I found Reaper 09148 Ghoul Skin. I tried this on a Kamael and it looked great, so I went full speed ahead with it on the Makauls. It wasn't mind blowing, but it worked, so it became my official Tohaa skin color.
Asari also remind me of the Algoryn from Gates of Antares. The heads are very similar in shape. I'll think about picking this color up. It seems to work nicely. The color may not be mind blowing in your eyes but I think it looks amazing.
Ghoul flesh works! It's obviously organic, but obviously not a human skin tone. Interestingly enough, I painted a couple models (Soda Pop Noh Empire space oni) using Vallejo Sunny skintone and then washed to heck with Baal Red or whatever the GW red wash is called these days, was aiming at red oni skin. If/when I get around to Morats, I'm going to use the same trick. I also bought all the Reaper skin tone triads, which included Dark Elf flesh that I'm using on my Tau.
Reaper skin triads are my go-to for skin tones anymore. I still have a pile of other colors that I use sometimes, but it's hard to beat the ease of having a set of shadow, base, and highlight already worked out.
And because despite the fact that i agree with you guys i'm feeling contrarian at the moment I'm going to suggest the opposite route
I totally agree. I am horrible at mixing paints and I have been using reaper skin triads for awhile now with results I am pleased with. I have a couple of Morlocks with the dark elf flesh as well. Sakiels! I was trying to blow through all the older models first as I knew that if I started on the new sculpts I would never get around to painting the older ones. These are not great models and I am growing tired of painting dozens of tiny straps, but I am OK with how they turned out. I've only played with them a couple of times and they aren't amazing but I will admit 20pts for a two-wound model that you can put a symbiomate on is a bargain.
