Is it worth seeking out Humbrol brown bess anymore, or are alternatives basically good enough?

[XOIIO]

Hi all, so I recently have delved into the world of aliens props a little bit, and while I don't have anything specific in mind, its one of those things that would be fun to make one day.

One of the big things I've heard about is humbrol brown bess paint, something that was discontinued decades ago apparently, and apparently there are a few different types of replacements, but a lot that don't match, however there's an archivefx company that I guess recently color matched it and it seems like it might be basically the same? The Aliens Legacy • View topic - ArchiveX Brown Bess, matched to vintage old stock Humbrol BB

So, I was wondering, is it worth putting effort into keeping an eye out for the original paint if some old model painter or something nearby had his collection selling? What would a tin of that paint even be worth? Granted I'm sure there are obsessive people who would spend far too much money on a tin of paint, but then again maybe they'd just buy the original props through whatever means they could.

I'm a sucker for authenticity and having something super original would be cool, but I'm not sure how valuable the old paints are considered in this area and if it's worth checking classifieds in the provinces around me and stuff regularly to try and find some.

I just see a lot of threads trying to compare different paints to brown bess so it makes me think it would be worth the effort in case I want to make an aliens prop someday.

edit: so I guess humbrol brown bess is actually different to humbrol super enamel, they look pretty close, but I guess the super enamel might not have the same sort of status as the even older stuff.

 

[Riceball]

Personally, I think that a lot of Aliens fans are overly obsessed about the whole brown bess color of the pulse rifles. Sure, that's what they were painted in and looked like on set, but onscreen they were an OD green and that's what I'd go with. I think that not enough fans distinguish between screen accurate, as in what you see onscreen, and set accurate, as in what the prop or costume looked/look like in person. Personally, I prefer actual screen accuracy, I like my props and costumes to look like what I saw on my TV or in the theaters and not what it looks like in person.

 

[paulsboutique]

Sms paints have a version called blaster brown that matches

 

[red4]

Personally, I think that a lot of Aliens fans are overly obsessed about the whole brown bess color of the pulse rifles. Sure, that's what they were painted in and looked like on set, but onscreen they were an OD green and that's what I'd go with. I think that not enough fans distinguish between screen accurate, as in what you see onscreen, and set accurate, as in what the prop or costume looked/look like in person. Personally, I prefer actual screen accuracy, I like my props and costumes to look like what I saw on my TV or in the theaters and not what it looks like in person.

Is that an established definition? To me screen accurate means what the object actually was, because what it looked like is open to too much interpretation per person, and thus "accurate" loses its meaning.

 

[Lichtbringer]

Well, "screen accurate" is for me what i see on screen. After lighting, filters, whatever. Not what it looks when holding the real part in daylight.

 

[Birdie]

And yet no-one ever paints their trackers OD....

 

[Axlotl]

I don't own a pulse rifle (I'd like to one day), but my instinct as a modeler tells me that dark earth mixed with Olive Drab will make brown bess.

 

[Riceball]

Is that an established definition? To me screen accurate means what the object actually was, because what it looked like is open to too much interpretation per person, and thus "accurate" loses its meaning.

From what I've seen, screen accurate means whatever the individual collector wants it to mean, for some it's as seen on screen (big or small), and for some, it's what it looks in person. As I mentioned previously, there should be a distinction between the two because, in many cases, what we see on screen isn't the same as what the costume and/or prop looked like on set. The pulse rifle is just one example of this, the yellow/gold tunics seen on the original Trek is another, it appears like a kind of mustardy yellow on screen but in person, they were more of a greenish color. I just think that using screen and set accurate as separate terms just makes things clearer when trying to recreate any given prop or costume since the two can differ.

 

[division 6]

And yet no-one ever paints their trackers OD....

I did.
My P.R. was 2 shades of o.d. lighter shell, darker braces.

It's what I had on hand and also wanted to be able to tell mine from my friends.

 

[Birdie]

All of the Marine gear was painted with BB (not the smart guns, obvs) and that knowlege has been out there for so long, and I've used so much of the bloody stuff over the years that I don't even see OD when I watch the movie. OD replicas just look wrong to me, eye of the beholder and all that. Interestingly the Aoshima Dropship came in a variant 'Screen Colour', a kind of blue-grey. The Standard one was OD