Need help for identifying some colours and their actual hue

[Dosani]

Hi, i have many Reaper Colours in triads, but i dont know if maybe the store that sold them to me some years ago had an old batch or else, as i see that some of the colors are not as shown in the reaper site. So wanted to ask anybody that has the "undead skin tones" and "vampiric skintones" , if you have any pics that show the true colour of the "moldy skin", "bloodless skin", "ghoul skin", "vampiric skin", "vampiric highlight" and "vampiric shadow", as i want to compare and determine if maybe my colors are wrong or something :( and see what i need to add to them to make them be as intended :)  Thanks for the help ! 

[Heisler]

If you are trying to match them to the colors on the website that may be your problem. The website cannot accurately produce a representation of the color.  

[Dosani]

6 minutes ago, Heisler said:

If you are trying to match them to the colors on the website that may be your problem. The website cannot accurately produce a representation of the color.  

 

Yeah i know that the website colors are probably not the same, but what i want to know is how are the actual colors in reality as i dont know if the ones i have are as intended or not 

[Heisler]

I'm sure they are, Anne is very consistent with her mixes, however some colors have changed a bit because the base for the paint has changed. I would drop CourageousOctopus a PM, he very likely to actually have paint swatches for the paint track application he has developed.

Edited December 19, 2017 by Heisler

[Dosani]

5 minutes ago, Heisler said:

I'm sure they are, Anne is very consistent with her mixes, however some colors have changed a bit because the base for the paint has changed. I would drop CourageousOctopus a PM, he very likely as actually paint swatches for the paint track application he has developed.

 

Thanks , i will pm about this hope he has some info :)

[Inarah]

I have the Undead skin trio, bought almost ten years ago. 

 

I see no reason why your colors would be "wrong" from being old. Reaper quality control is very good. Shake them very well if you think they have been sitting. You should be able to hear a small bead rattling in the bottle.  If the paint has thickened and won't mix by shaking, you can add a few drops of distilled water (and nothing else) to get it moving again. 

[Dosani]

58 minutes ago, Inarah said:

I have the Undead skin trio, bought almost ten years ago. 

 

I see no reason why your colors would be "wrong" from being old. Reaper quality control is very good. Shake them very well if you think they have been sitting. You should be able to hear a small bead rattling in the bottle.  If the paint has thickened and won't mix by shaking, you can add a few drops of distilled water (and nothing else) to get it moving again. 

 

By chance do you have anything that has a basecoat or any pic that shows how the real color it is like? I has shaken them , but what i want is something to compare the color i have

i find the mouldy skin color a tad yellowish instead of greenish as i suppose it should be :(

[Inarah]

Yes, the moldy skin is a bit yellow.  I used it as a base for these zombies, but there is a brown wash over them so it is not a true color:  

 

 

I think  I did this guy with Moldy also:  

 

 

IIRC the zombie on the right was the darker of the triad colors, and the one on the left used the palest as highlight. 

 

 

Medusa was done with Moldy, but also washed with brown. 

 

 

Don't know if that is helpful. Don't know what it looks like on your monitor. 

[vutpakdi]

It’s going to be hard to accurately compare a picture of a painted mini to a color that you have in front of you. 

 

First, unless the mini has just single color basecoats, you’ll be trying to filter out any highlights, shadows, washes, and glazes used.

 

Second, you’ll have to take into account that the picture might not accurately capture the colors because of lighting and camera color balance.

 

Third, your monitor, might also shift the colors slightly unless it’s calibrated.

 

Best bet would be to get painted color swatches on paper, but that may not be worth the trouble,

 

Ron

[Pegazus]

21 hours ago, Dosani said:

 

Yeah i know that the website colors are probably not the same, but what i want to know is how are the actual colors in reality as i dont know if the ones i have are as intended or not 

 

If you have the Reaper pamphlet that they send out some time with the paint swatches printed on it, I have found them to be fairly accurate. Been painting a little brush stroke on each one when I use that color so I can compare what it is shown as versus what it paints like. So far, I’ve only found one color that was really off, but I can’t remember what color it was.

[Dosani]

On 12/20/2017 at 1:10 AM, Inarah said:

Yes, the moldy skin is a bit yellow.  I used it as a base for these zombies, but there is a brown wash over them so it is not a true color:  

 

 

I think  I did this guy with Moldy also:  

 

 

IIRC the zombie on the right was the darker of the triad colors, and the one on the left used the palest as highlight. 

 

 

Medusa was done with Moldy, but also washed with brown. 

 

 

Don't know if that is helpful. Don't know what it looks like on your monitor. 

 

Thanks!! Inarah this is really helpful as it confirms that the undead triad is probably a little yellow , more than the pics that i saw on the net , thanks for posting your pics :) 

23 hours ago, Pegazus said:

 

If you have the Reaper pamphlet that they send out some time with the paint swatches printed on it, I have found them to be fairly accurate. Been painting a little brush stroke on each one when I use that color so I can compare what it is shown as versus what it paints like. So far, I’ve only found one color that was really off, but I can’t remember what color it was.

 

Thanks Pegazus, i will search for this pamphlet i believe i have it , and will compare the colors following your advice.

[Wren]

Moldy Skin and Bloodless Skin have changed very slightly. The newer formulation of Bloodless Skin is just a touch paler and grey than the original mix. Moldy has had three variations, again very slightly. The newest formulation appears just a touch more of a yellow green than original. The mid period mix is a little paler as well as a bit more yellow.

 

Again, these are very slight variations. As Heisler says, it is likely due to changes in the base used to mix the paint. The base is the 'acrylic' part of the paint, with binders and so on, as opposed to the pigments, which are the aspects mixed to create the colours. But there are different types of bases, and they affect the appearance of the pigments. There have been one or two occasions where a certain base has gone out of production or been deemed less optimal for use and another has to be used instead.

I am not aware of any changes with the Vampiric triad. It's a newer one and I don't use it much, so I haven't replaced mine to compare with the older one. I am a paint-a-holic, so I bought most of the colours when they first became available, and then a few years back updated a lot of my collection. Where I noticed changes, I kept the original bottles as well as the new. 

The only other colour I have (unless I'm forgetting one) like that is Rosy Skin. The newest formulation is a little lighter in colour than the original. I have a vague memory of either Violet Red or Pale Violet Red changing, but if that memory is correct, I did not keep the original bottle. (I gave it to a friend, so it's dimly possible I could compare at some point.)

I am attaching photos of the paint bottles and the drop swatches on top, taken against a neutral grey background.
 

[Dosani]

On 24/12/2017 at 9:48 PM, Wren said:

Moldy Skin and Bloodless Skin have changed very slightly. The newer formulation of Bloodless Skin is just a touch paler and grey than the original mix. Moldy has had three variations, again very slightly. The newest formulation appears just a touch more of a yellow green than original. The mid period mix is a little paler as well as a bit more yellow.

 

Again, these are very slight variations. As Heisler says, it is likely due to changes in the base used to mix the paint. The base is the 'acrylic' part of the paint, with binders and so on, as opposed to the pigments, which are the aspects mixed to create the colours. But there are different types of bases, and they affect the appearance of the pigments. There have been one or two occasions where a certain base has gone out of production or been deemed less optimal for use and another has to be used instead.

I am not aware of any changes with the Vampiric triad. It's a newer one and I don't use it much, so I haven't replaced mine to compare with the older one. I am a paint-a-holic, so I bought most of the colours when they first became available, and then a few years back updated a lot of my collection. Where I noticed changes, I kept the original bottles as well as the new. 

The only other colour I have (unless I'm forgetting one) like that is Rosy Skin. The newest formulation is a little lighter in colour than the original. I have a vague memory of either Violet Red or Pale Violet Red changing, but if that memory is correct, I did not keep the original bottle. (I gave it to a friend, so it's dimly possible I could compare at some point.)

I am attaching photos of the paint bottles and the drop swatches on top, taken against a neutral grey background.
 

 

Thanks Wren, as always your input about this technical issues is invaluable :) i was a little distressed as i dont see the colour matching exactly as i expected. In your experience, does the paint change of color or hue if its too old? i didnt bought these triads directly from the reaper store, but from Miniature Giant, and i was worry that the colour its not the same because maybe the paints are old or something, i really dont know :( , they work fine just it  bugs me that i feel the bloodless skin more whiteish, the moldy skin more yellowish than green, and the ghoul skin more green - gray, i dont have any other copies of this colors to compare so its difficult to determine if this is some issue of the paint batch or maybe the paint its perfect its just me that i find them different.

[Wren]

An individual bottle of paint does not change colour as it ages to my knowledge. The consistency changes over time if you don't add water, but your paints aren't different because of where you bought them.

The labels in my picture are a limited way to tell the 'generation' of a paint. The one on the furthest left is the old style label. The ones with the large SKU number like the one on the furthest right are the newer labels. (There's a generation in between these two that looks mostly like the new label but has a smaller SKU number font. There's also the very first batch of labels that were taped on rather than wrapping the whole bottle, but these colours are newer than that so none would have that label.) So if your labels look like the one to the left or have smaller font numbers above the names than the ones in my picture, you have older formulations of these paints.

Maybe I wasn't clear what I meant when I was talking about formulation. Each paint is a certain selection of pigments mixed into a certain 'base'. The base is all the paint stuff apart from the colour - the acrylic binder, flow release agent, matting agent, all kinds of stuff. I don't know Reaper's secret recipe, just the general idea of how paint is mixed. 

 

I do know that while the pigments are primarily what determines the colour, the base has some impact on what exactly the end colour looks like. Some of the sample paints that go out are when the pigment gets mixed into the wrong base so it doesn't 100% match the colour 'recipe'. 

Reaper mixes the paints on site, but it does not manufacture the bases or the pigments. Very occasionally there may be a change in the supply chain availability that is beyond Reaper's control and which may occasionally mean small changes to the appearance of a colour. Also occasionally there may be Reaper-determined reasons to slightly alter the recipe for a paint colour because there is some issue with it. Anne aims to keep the colours as consistent as she possibly can, but on rare occasion there are perceptible changes. 

Think of it like this. You usually use Brand X vanilla extract to make cookies. Brand X goes out of business, so you have to buy Brand Y vanilla extract and use that instead. 90% of people who eat your cookies might not notice a difference, 10% might. The recipe is just a little bit different. There have been three very slightly different recipes of Moldy Skin, and two very slightly different recipes of Bloodless Skin and Rosy Skin to my knowledge. Over 10+ years and 300-400 colours of paint, that's not too bad a track record. I know that's not much consolation to you if you want those particular colours to match 100% exactly, but that's the situation.

[Dosani]

Thanks Wren for all this info! Really appreciated, and well explained :) i love the undead triad that i have atm, but probably will order a new one just for comparison, if i see too much difference i will post the comparison here, although it may take a while as i need to order the paints first