[Meeky]

Apologies if the following questions sound really stupid but I've never worked with vehicle kits before!

1) Paints, I need 19 colours my hobby store prices these at £3 each which works out rather exspensive! any recommendations of places to look?

2) 3 of these paints are "flat" colours which mean what exactly? I assume I use these as the primeing colours & spray whilst parts are still on the spurs?

Any help greatfully appreciated....

[Grey Ghost 531]

"Flat" means "not shiny". It's dull in sheen. Sometimes flat is also called matt. Gloss is the other choice. In between gloss and flat some paints are "semi-gloss" or "satin". Think of flat as like dirt, semi-gloss like most leather and gloss as shiny like a new car.

What kind of vehicle? You can probably skip some of the colors. If a part is hard to see on the finished model it doesn't matter if it isn't the "correct" color.

If you are new to modeling, it's probably better to keep the painting simple and maybe not paint every little thing. That can come with practice. Don't base you're expectations on the models you see on this site, these guys are experts!

[Meeky]

Its a 1:12 ducati 888 I used to paint warhammer as a kid & was tought to spray the models black,white or red first then the other colours!

thought it best to buy the colours suggested as most of them are common and would be used on more models in the future! just want to make sure I cover all aspects rather then spending hours painting each peice to find I could have done it a quicker way

[Bigasshammm]

Get the basics. Black silver aluminum etc. you can alway mix another shade of silver or something to differentiate engine components. After that you can either pair each piece as you get to it. Or if you're using an airbrush group parts that are the same colors and either paint them on the sprue or remove and paint. Then do any detail paint on each piece as needed.

Like I said in pm a lot of time you can leave the blak plastic part that is supposed to be black untainted and it will look just fine. Get yourself a bottle of Future/Klear/Pledge with future shine. It gives a nice glossy cote and can be applied by a brush. One cote on a flat black piece for instance gives it a perfect semi-gloss appearance.

[Netz]

Also if some of those colors are called out to be mixed together to produce a single [i]color[/i, then try to find a manufacturer that will have the needed color straight from the bottle.
Tamiya and Hasegawa are known for using 2 to 3 colors to be mixed to get the final color.
Curt

[SLAYER]

Use your logic. Most parts in a modern car or bike are black, steel or aluminum so you don´t need 19 colours to paint a bike. Take a look at some of them in real life and you´ll see what I mean. A bit of red for the body, maybe yellow for the springs and calipers, chrome for the shock absorvers and you´re done!