Holotech coloring

[empirewolf13]

Hey so does anyone know how to color holotech pieces? I got a blue ray liger zero and am going to do a red liger hiou to go with the Souga, how can I dye the white parts a see through pink?

[Hanyoutai]

Best to avoid literal dying, which involves boiling parts and would render your kit unusable because of the thin pegs.

A great way to go is clear paint colors. You can color mix red and blues to try to make a pink color, and apply it conservatively in thin layers. The same effect as using these paints on chromes would apply, in which the lighter the layer the less pure the color appears. This means you wouldn't need to mix in very much blue at all, theoretically. You'd just want enough to give it that slight color shift.

Always test on clear sprues / runners first, before using expensive paints on an expensive kit. If testing on the Zero sprues make sure you include the 'letter' square on the sprue and not just the round parts, which may capture light differently than the full kit might. Having a flat surface will give you a better idea.

This method was used to create the Molga Gummi ver. by Isaac Leon Lim for the 2011 Zoids Poison Custom Contest.

[empirewolf13]

Is it a special kind of clear paints?

[Snowflake]

I used what I'm pretty sure was Tamiya clear paint once. But anything that says it's for model kits will be fine for sure

[Maethius]

If you can find it in red, you might be able to use vinyl dye... I know several modders that dye Nerf guns with black vinyl dye as opposed to black spray paint because it actually alters the color of the plastic. I have NO idea how it would affect HMM parts, but you could test it on sprue trees. The product is usually available at or through auto part stores.

[empirewolf13]

Do you think either of these methods would work on colored holotech pieces? If I'm successful eventually with the white clear armor pieces could it be possible to do it to color clear pieces? Like take a blu-ray blade liger and make a holotech red blade liger?

[Hanyoutai]

Unfortunately altering the colors won't usually end up with the desired result. The general rule of them is that you can go in various tinted shades of darker. If you tried to turn it red I am pretty sure it would turn a dark, plum purple or something. Dyes would likely only tint or darken the colors rather than change them outright (to the 'on the box' color that is) and clear paints can only add over the color you're attempting to paint over. The more layers of paint you add, the less transparent it may look.

[empirewolf13]

Ok so just stick with clear parts

[Snowflake]

Yeah. But you still have lots of options!
Things I've seen done successfully:
Yellow to orange
Orange to red
Blue to green
Red to purple

and theoretically green-to-aqua would be doable, as would blue-to-purple, yellow-to-green, or.. y'know, clear-to-anything
And remember, if you put on a thick coat of it, you're going to get 'tinged' results as the light enters slightly differently. If you coat clear blue with clear red, you'll get a nice purple but it'll have a red tinge in some light. Hardly a bad thing, but something to remember.

[empirewolf13]

But there's no way to do clear blue parts from the blu Ray blade liger to clear red for a holotech blade liger? And the holotech zero parts are clear white so I'm hoping if I do a light enough coat of the clear red it'll go pink like liger hiou

[Snowflake]

You'd be better off getting pink paint. Clear red rarely looks properly like pink. You could get red and mix a tiny tiny bit of blue into it
and yeah you'll never get blue to red. purple or green is your best option.

[Maethius]

Color wheel basics; red + blue = purple. If you wanted to get spendy, you could CAST parts in clear resin and paint them red, but you would have to REALLY want that sucker for the expense and effort involved!

[Snowflake]

And I think clear resin is among the hardest to get right. Resin is already troublematic for being so brittle and so hard to get perfect.
But a tiny bit of bright sky blue clear paint in some very bright candy red clear paint, applied thinly, might get the pink you desire. make sure you test it before you do whatever you do.
www.ebay.com/itm/MR-HOBBY-Color-Gunze-LACQUER-GX105-Clear-Pink-MODEL-KIT-PAINT-18ml-/310561609866 This might be exactly what you're looking for. Or it might not. But 7 bucks isn't gonna bankrupt you, right?

[empirewolf13]

The normal white armor on a standard zero tofo.me/tag/LigerRedHiou that's the color I'm going for

[Hanyoutai]

The Mr. Color Snowflake posted I think would definitely be worth a test. Mr. Color sells Zoid-specific paints for a few of the HMM kits so it already advertises for our very specific brand of model in some cases. It looks like it could get dark enough to be transparent pink.