Okay, let’s tackle the hard bit first. The colour bind goal model is sitting on my desk with a big white triangle where the colours should be. Mocking me. Telling me that I’m not good enough to paint it. Well, we’ll see who’s not good enough.

This is potentially going to be a bit of a challenge. The things against me are that I have never really painted anything before (apart from some Warhammer figures when I was a kid), and the extent of my paint mixing experience begins and ends with mixing up some grey paint for the other bits of the trophies earlier. Furthermore, the Colour Bind goal triangle is basically just the OpenGL triangle, that is, a triangle with its points being pure red, green, and blue, and those three colours smoothly interpolated between the points.

It may sound strange to some, but red, green, and blue are chosen because they are primary colours – specifically, primary light colours, also known as primary additive colours. The primary colours many people are more familiar with are primary subtractive colours, or primary pigment colours, red, yellow, and blue. With paint, you mix yellow and blue to get green. With light, you mix green and red to get yellow. Screens, and thus computer games, use additive mixing, which is why the OpenGL triangle and the Colour Bind goal use the additive primaries.

So, naturally, I have to paint what’s in the game. But since I’m painting, I’m going to be using subtractive mixing – a subject I know considerably less about. Halley assures me that, unlike the wonderful abstract world of computer graphics, paint is made of chemicals that may or may not have identical mixing properties, consistency, intensity, and whatever else. Fortunately, she’s going to provide me with some advice. She also did a pretty awesome job of masking the model for me. I am seen here taking my first feeble steps into mixing colours.

After a fair bit of remixing, faffing about, and general obsessing over needless details, things have come out reasonably well!

All that’s left for this trophy is to take the masking tape off and retouch some bits (the white dotted line around the edge needs it), and then attach everything to everything. Specifically, the trophy and the nameplate both need sticking to the base. I also varnished the whole thing in some matte polymer varnish because I was concerned that the paint job would get chipped.

Meanwhile, the other trophy’s repainting job was drying in a somewhat unorthodox drying scenario:

Now we’re practically home and hosed. Just sticking a bunch of stuff together remained at this point, and happily, it went off without a hitch! There isn’t really even an intermediate phase – just the finished trophies in all their dubious glory. Check it.

And last but not least:

That’s it! Four trophies completed.

As a side note, as someone who generally creates things digitally, my heart goes out to people who spend most of their time making physical objects, because you don’t get to keep what you make! I made Colour Bind, and I sell it to people, but I also get to keep the game. Not so with these – I’ve taken my last look, now it’s time to make some overengineered packaging.

As mentioned, these trophies are going to two people, so I need two boxes. My plan is to cut out some of that weird cardboard/chipboard stuff that the trophy bases are made of, get some wooden dowel, and drill holes the size of the dowel – then, I’ll have squares of wood making up the floor and ceiling of the box, and the dowel holding them apart. Hopefully the result will be rigid enough to survive the adventure of international shipping. I didn’t document this process all that much, because it’s not so interesting, but I did get a photo of my standing near a drill press, so that’s something.

Basically what you see above is two squares of wood taped together, and I’m drilling holes in the corners. The plan is to then thread some wooden dowel through those holes, and put a nail in each connection to hold the whole thing together. The dowel and the drill I’m using are pretty precisely the same size, so it should be reasonably solid. The next challenge will be to hold the trophies in place without damaging them, or having to attach sticky stuff to them that will leave a mark. I decided to drill some smaller holes in the base of the box and tie the trophies to the base with twine. Here’s Asier’s trophy suitably bound and ready to post:

And here are the ones for Nathan and Scott:

Now for the packaging process. We got some vaguely appropriate boxes from the post office, loaded them with bubble wrap and other random packaging that we’d saved from all the stuff we’ve been sent throughout our lives, and got ready to go.

Well, that’s it! The rest of the story involves me going to the post office, and paying absurd prices for shipping (it is going some distance, I suppose). Next post I make will hopefully be about the recipients of the trophies telling me that they’ve arrived safe and sound, and that all is well.

Anyways, I hope you’ve found this interesting and/or entertaining! Remember, there’s still one trophy somewhat like this one, but different (and yet to be created) up for grabs! These four trophies were for gaming skills, but the last one goes to the person who makes the coolest level in Colour Bind’s level editor. If you want to try that out, you can get the game on Steam or you can get it on Desura as well. The MacOS version is coming out really soon (at long last!) too – its fate is currently in Apple’s hands, but will be on Steam and the App Store when the time comes.