Shredders Revisited

This is the money shot.  Or angle, if you prefer.

Following an exchange with Cloudfang of Live to CRUSH in the comments across my last couple posts, I went back to the Shredders to tweak my scheme and see how it looks in person.  The tweaks were a pair: purple lining around the chitin and a bone/cream on the "under" chitin.  A couple caveats before getting into the comparison.  First, the work on the Shredders has been very quick and dirty.  Since this is a test run on a new scheme and not final work, I haven't been as attentive as I would normally be.  As such things like the purple lining are sloppier than they would otherwise be.  Second, the finished models are bound to be slightly different since the layers will accumulate in a different order, notably the purple would go down over either primer or the blue/white skin and not orange.  The "clean" Shredder is a better example of what things would look like in this case.  Finally, I primed these two white for no real good reason other than to mix things up by working over white for a change.  Considering the bulk of my Legion came primed black I'll probably go with that, and even my usual grey primer is dark enough to be similar to black.  In summation, final models are likely to be neater and darker than these two Shredders.  Now on to the fun.

The "clean" Shredder.

Lacking any purple paints, I did a 50/50 mix of Bloody Red and Electric Blue with an eye towards getting a bright purple.  Instead I got a slightly darker blue than the base Electric Blue, so I added more Bloody Red to end up with something like a 75/25 red to blue mix and a purple that was a darker than I wanted and far more paint than I needed, but was at least purple.  The purple was applied like a shade to the orange bits, and I put a little in the deepest creases by the mouth for good measure.  After the purple I got to the under-chitin, meaning the bottom plates on the tail and the raised foot of the "dirty" Shredder.  This was a pretty typical bone progression (all in Vallejo Game Color as usual): Leather Brown, Scrofulous Brown, 50/50 Scrofulous and Bonewhite, pure Bonewhite, 50/50 Bonewhite and Dead White. 

"Dirty" Shredder.

So how did it turn out?  The purple is a clear upgrade on the "dirty" Shredder, but I'm less sold on the "clean" one.  The transition from blue/white skin to orange chitin does seem a little smoother, but it's more shade than the bright, "glowy" purple I was going for.  It might pay dividends further down the road though, either as a color for clothes and armor or just by showing up better on a larger beast with more, and better defined, chitin.  The cream under-chitin worked out far better than I expected.  I was skeptical about adding another light color on top of the already light skin, but viewed through a lens of cold/warm instead of light/dark it makes much more sense.  Like the purple lining I think the full scope won't be apparent until I apply the scheme to larger beasts, and especially when doing a side-by-side comparison of a flyer (like the Seraph) and a groundpounder (Carnivean).

At the end of this little experiment, I'm on the fence.  The under-chitin is a winner, and regardless of whether I run with the purple or not I'll be filling that particular hole in my paint collection.  Perhaps a brighter purple will help it pop more as its own color instead of extra shading, albeit a more harmonious shading.  So what say you, peanut gallery?