Nicely done Mac. So to confirm this is Valspar Black pearl that you used on the ball?

I bought some from Red Frog Hobbies... just write them about shipping costs and they'll get back to you quickly. Good and quick service too.


Yup: Kustom Kolors = Valspar

Great link. they are cheaper than Wal-Marts clearance price by a $1.50 a can. And to think that I just bought 5 cans of black pearl.

Hey, everyone - first post here...so please be gentle

The Kustom Kolor Black Pearl is a beautiful color. It was originally suggested at the Sith Training Temple that this was used for the grey/silver on the helmet and armor and not the black.

Afte having just repainted my armor and helmet usin this color (in the grey areas) I think that using it for the black is an interesting approach, because I think it is too dark for the grey portions. That said, I also think it is probably too light for the black portions.

I don't have any pics yet, but the color is perhaps a bit darker than the grey in Vader's armor in the Bespin dinner shots (sorry, I would post it but don't want to snag any elses pics). You can see them at Darth Kahnt's website. The paint looks pretty black, but in the right light the silver shows a bit. Movie lights are pretty bright, so it is posible that this isthe silver.

I would love to get more clarification on this from folks, but right now (IMHO) the Valspar does not look right for either the black or grey - which truly sucks since I just dropped a fortune on like 30 cans of the stuff

I think it was meant to be the "darker" Silver tone most likely seen only
on one ROTJ Vader Helmet - the Hero Helmet when Vader first arrives at
the Death Star and is talking to Moff Jerjerrod, and in the Scene were the
Emperor arrives at the Death Star and is walking along next to Vader.

In ESB the silver WAS a lot lighter and on all the other ROTJ Helmets it
was lighter than the Black Pearl paint, too -

Welcome to the forum, bubba fett... hope you like it here... and thanks for your input.

Don't think the Black Pearl was meant for the black areas... it was never mentioned as such on STT. It was for the grey parts... and from the grainy pictures I have seen it looks pretty good.

We all have to remember that stage lighting has a big effect on how things look on screen... and a color that looks dark in normal lighting may in fact look very bright in stage light. The highlights on the mask was never meant to stand out... but was meant to look like reflections off a shiny black surface.

The more light shining on the armor... the brighter the grey would look - as is the case with these pearl colors. And we already got a pretty decent match with the Black Pearl and the grey color on the DP DLX helmet - whatever that means in regards with the original helmets.

This paint debate for the gunmetal never ends Surely it's only matter of time.

Obviously there are people that know like the helmet vendors, as they have matched it pretty well.

I spent lots of $$$ trying out many gunmetal/silver/gray/steel/aluminium colours in all the local stores. It was a painful experience and I only found 2 colours to be a fairly good match, although not perfect.

As I said my local professional paint sprayers who spray cars for a living matched the colour by doing a blend of that BMW colour with another touch of silver. It was put in a machine or something then mixed. I just got off the phone with them and they know the main colour was that delphina colour but they say they can;t remember what mix they did, other than it was 90-95% BMW mixed with a touch of silver

All the Silver tones from the different vendors are different, so I believe
they don't know more than we do - everyone of them had their "tryouts"
and everyone of them is now using the paint they thought "matched best" ...

Just my 2 cents what I think -

Yeah, let me re-phrase that. I think in my opinion. some Vendors have matched the colour well, other people have as well. It may not be 100% perfect but it's pretty close . I have done my own colour matching in brief and I could not find what I felt was exact, that's why I got the professional's to do it.

In short... I believe you are more experienced than myself with the colours as you have done more detailed tests, so I'll take your word for it

Oops. Just catching up on some email and Mac had suggested to me that maybe the Black Pearl was used with Valspars Galaxy Grey for the helmet. This is intereting in light of the post by Hal9000 in the Vader Prop section.

So, to change subjects (slightly) is the lack on the mask really black? Has this been confimed? Sure would be a lot simpler to just be chasing the grey.

Thanks DarthVaderV. I will definitely look into the BMW color when I repaint again, which will probably be soon 8-0 I have reworked this darn DPCA lid so many times I think it may just be time to buy a new helmet.

It's black. But black isn't just black. There is brownish black, blueish black, whatever. The type of black is still debated.

Okay, to minimize confusion, let me clarify this.

As a newcomer a while back, I read on another site "Galaxy Gray" and "Black Pearl" but was never able to actually verify these uses. I also heard they were made by Valspar back in their day. Again, I was not able to verify this.

The goal of this exercise is to determine for each color if it was meant as the base color or if it was meant as a highlight. I am not stating anything for fact because this is, after all, a color validation experiment exercise.

I feel validating things are necessary because you read something on some other website and it may sound plausible, but you repeat it to others without checking the info out first. Well, this is my sincere effort to really figure out how these paints work out.

Now that I've shot Black Pearl and compared it against a DP DLX and photographed it both using a flash and natural lighting, the results I see are similar to how a tour suit appears when you use flash photography. Under flash photography, Black Pearl lights up and looks brighter than it really is.

Conclusion: I had read that the Black Pearl should be used like the gloss black, and that the Galaxy Gray should be the highlight. Well, the more I look at this, I think that Gloss Black should be gloss black, and that the Black Pearl should be the highlight instead.

NHM had told me that Valspar was used for ESB/ROTJ. This being the case, the paints used in ANH (as well as the way it was painted) may have been different. The ANH metallic gray highlights seemed brighter on camera, but then that could have been due to the bright ambient lighting on the Tantive IV ship in the film's opening scene.

So what about Galaxy Gray? Well, unfortunately, I do not have an airbrush, so I've not been able to try the Galaxy Gray, which is much lighter. However, as I look at the paint through the glass, I do feel that it's much brighter than the Black Pearl. Could I use it for ANH? I've not yet tested it to make that determination, but I love Pantheragem's use of the FolkArt acrylic paints to capture the ANH look.

Basicaly, use what you think looks best. Sometimes a certain color or brand is too expensive for mail-order into your respective countries, or a certain automotive store retail chain isn't in your neighborhood. People use a variety of paints to approximate the same effect, with varying degrees of success.

For my next color experiment, I will try to compare those choices I've seen people on various forums use and recommend:

1. T-177 DupliColor Gunmetal - one of the more readily available paints in automotive parts stores here in the States

2. Tamiya's Gun Metal X-10

3. Black Pearl

I'll try to compare them in identically-lit conditions. I'll set up a tripod too.

The problem with these paints is really: did they exist at the time of filming? Don't really know if anyone has tried looking into that, as metal colors didn't really exist as abundantly as they do today back then. So even though it looks right, doesn't mean it could physically have been the same paint, as it all depends on when it was developed and put on the market.

For instance... the General Motors gunmetal coat line didn't exist until the mid eighties onwards, so the people who have sworn to that brand being used for the ANH, have been proven wrong.

Similar with the Valspar and Kustom Kolors - many are questioning whether those paint brands from that company even existed at the time of filming, which is a crucial piece of information, imo.

My dad is a former car painter and he has really opened my eyes up to the fact that metal colors were specialty, expensive and rare colors at that time... so figuring out what metal colors and paint companies actually providing them at the time can help us tremendously when trying to find the right color for the black and grey.

Valspar existed... but did they have that line of metallic paints at the time?

I absolutely agree with that. Kustom Kolors is a recent spinoff by Valspar. As I had said, even if they did have a specialty color called "Black Pearl" 20+ years ago, it remains to be seen if the formulation and color today is identical to that used for ESB.

I started a new thread...

http://thepropden.aokforums.com/black-p ... t1059.html

... where I compare the Black Pearl against Dupli-Color and Tamiya's Gun Metal paints.