I've used them on a few models so far but my main gripe is that the supplied swatches don't at all marry up to my experience. I decided to make my own swatches and to test if it using a gloss black undercoat made any difference to the effect.
Before anyone shouts "You should have used spoons!", I probably should but my main objective was to have something I could tuck into the box as a handy reference and not have to dig out my cutlery drawer. Some of these paints don't look anything like what is in the bottle and their names are no help either.
Galaxy Dust
- 77.002 Light Violet Green - A minty coldish green which flips to a greyish purple at about 20 degrees.
- 77.008 Green Gold Cold Blue - A nice verdant green which flips to a dark blue.
- 77.009 Turquoise Violet - A really nice 70s blue flake flipping to a solid purple with flecks of irridescent blue. This is the standout colour of the set.
- 77.010 Emerald Green Mauve - a darker more blueish green flipping to purple.
- 77.017 Green Silver Blue -almost identical to 002 but a bit more opaque to begin with before flipping to a much greyer colour.
- 77.018 Dark Green Tin -a really nice warm green which flips toward yellow.
Magic Dust
- 77.001 Violet Old Copper - nah, this is definitely a purple to blue shift and it's really quite good doing multiple flips the further away from 0 degrees you get. Nice.
- 77.006 Gold Pale Blue - this was way too subtle for me. It's a greeny gold to begin with and it pretty much stays there.
- 77.007 Pearl Violet - Purple to a dark grey.
- 77.011 Old Silver Pale Violet - Another super subtle shift which just goes black to my eyes. I will chalk this up to a faile in application even though this was the most successful swatch of the three.
- 77.012 Silver Pink - Is it? just looks Greeney Purple to me.
- 77.015 Gold Yellow Burnt Orange - Green to a very nice Gold. Just pipped into second place by 001. I used this on the cockpit glass of my Swordfish II model and it looks great even if it has a propensity for spiderwebbing.
Space Dust
- 77.003 Orange Violet - This is the colour I chose to use on B'lakor's wings and over a curved surface it works quite well. However, this doesn't cover great and will need multiple coats to get a really pronounced effect.
- 77.004 Electric Blue Intense Violet - Blue to a sort of purple, just not as successful as 001.
- 77.005 Green Blue Velvet - I think I might have messed this one up, I'm not getting an effect at all but it is a really nice metallic green.
- 77.013 Bright Gold Brown - Very subtle but a transition from green to an orangey brown is there. Perhaps on a larger curved surface this will work quite well
- 77.014 Old Gold Grey Violet - I'm just not getting the gold here. It's another green to purple transition.
- 77.016 Red Gold - this is definitely a green to gold transition but it is green for a long time..
To Gloss or Not to Gloss, That is THE Question.
I have to say I can't see any difference myself. However, airbrushing the paint onto a gloss surface made a huge difference when you are actually spraying. The gloss is a barrier and makes the paint much more likely to pool or to spiderweb. There is a lot of acrylic medium in the mix which is what suspends the metallic particles, but this takes an age to dry and if you are like me patience is something I have yet to learn...
Overall Opinion
There are a lot of colours which basically look green. I imagine that there is some perfectly reasonable physics paper which explains how the light refraction effect works. I will continue to use them and these swatches are going to help a lot in the choices I make. However, it really does depend on the miniature you are painting and the exact curves on the model to achieve the best results.
Space marines or any character wearing pauldrons or other similarly curved armour pieces is going to look great using shifters. Large Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) with flat panels I'm guessing less so, but I am intrigued to see what it looks like on a windscreen of a car.
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