Want a wild metalic paint job, Buy Tropical Glitz paint.
I wanted to step up my metaling paint scheme game. So I went searching for the paint the 1:1 lowrider guys use. I found Tropical Glitz.
They sell their paint in "Ready to Shoot" form. The ready to shoot paints are for touch-ups and deatil work in the real world. But they are pre-thinned for airbrush use, so I thought they would be perfect for scale models.
Their paints and metal flakes are available in .004" flake size, which is just right for our scale finishes.
The trick to these paints though, is they burn right through any hobby grade primer or paint. You have to use tougher stuff.
I absolutely HATE using Rustoleum paints. They are for larger projects and it is hard to get good consistant results on a scale model. BUT, their primers can stand up to the hot lowrider paint from Tropical Glitz.
They have fun names for their paints and a HUGE selection. I bought some silvers, a metallic grey, a light blue metallic, and for fun I bought a golden brown metallic as well.
The colors are:
Galactic Silver
Mercury Silver
Cloudy Dayz is the grey
Cosmic Black
Miami Beach is the name of the light blue
And Toasted Coconut is the golden brown color.
I also bought Cloudy Dayz, Toasted Coconut, and Platinum Silver metal flakes.
Then I did some test shooting. These colors are amazing. Links below because they are short videos. If the links don't work it is because they are hosted in imgur.com, and some workplaces block that.
Mercury Silver with Platinum Silver flakes mixed in some clearcoat. Then another couple coats of clear on top.
https://i.imgur.com/o95KYPl.mp4
Galactic Silver with Platinum Silver flakes mixed in some clearcoat. Then another couple coats of clear on top.
https://i.imgur.com/srK0hWw.mp4
This Cosmic Black looks a little weird because I put bright Platinum Silver flakes in the mid coat.
https://i.imgur.com/4khdHnA.mp4
Cloudy Dayz with Cloudy Dayz metal flake mixed into a clear coat. Then a couple coats of clear on top.
https://i.imgur.com/tWQEBhv.mp4
Toasted Coconut with Toasted Coconut metal flake mixed into a clear coat. Then a couple coats of clear on top.
https://i.imgur.com/8qscG5R.mp4
And Miami Beach is an interesting color. This video is two spoons. The spoon on the left is Miami Beach paint over black primer. With a clearcoat. No metal flake mid coat. And the spoon on the right is Miami Beach over black primer, with Platinum Silver metal flake in a clearcoat, with a clearcoat over the top.
https://i.imgur.com/7758AdZ.mp4
The reason why it is interesting, is the color has a green hue to it when applied over black. But if you apply it over silver, it looks blue.
In this photo, the spoon on the left is the same left spoon from the video above. And then I sprayed out Mercury Silver, and then Miami Beach over it and got the spoon on the right. Sorry the spoon on the right is dull. I didn't put a clearcoat on that one.
Anyways, I am having fun with these paints. It is cool to see different results based on the bascoat, and then you can further customize with the metal flake mid coats.
When it is dry, I'll post a pic of a spoon where all I did was loaded up some clear with a tin of Cloudy Dayz metal flake and used that as the paint. No paint was used, just tons of metal flake applied over black primer.