Glow Paint Light Enhancement

Prop-Builder

Well-Known Member
I have some glow paint ink and pigments and am trying to increase the brightness to use on various models such as the underwater alien craft and creatures in James Cameron's The Abyss movie. I don't want to use fibre optics or anything requiring power, I just want to find a way to use the glow paints/powders available. It's also cool to see that there're many colours available, with green being the brightness. Unfortunately though, even the green isn't bright enough, so I'm thinking there must be a way to increase this by using a reflective background that the paint is on?? I'm not even sure how these pigments really work anyway, I'm looking into how they're made and capture the energy of the sun. If I start with the green paints that I have and improve on those, then I will try it on the other colours. Any info on this would be a great help.
 
Glow (in the dark) pigments glow after they've absorbed light. The strongest response will be from ultraviolet light, such as sunlight. You will get a very good response from a proper black light, such as a fluorescent tube black light; the incandescent ones never worked for me. Either way, it will only really show up well with no other illumination, so displaying the minis, painted with glow paint, with a black light will produce something pretty effective.

My experience with glow paint is that typical glow in the dark paints are pretty...sad. I haven't encountered one that isn't acrylic. Acrylic paints in general cannot support a heavy pigment load because the acrylic medium's molecules are too 'fat', and so they are generally somewhat transparent. Therefore, it takes a number of coats of glow paint to get something that glows well. You will probably get better results with fluorescent paints or pigments and a black light than you will with phosphorescent paints and a UV source.
 
As Nextgenmaker said, a blacklight is about the only good way to make glow in the dark paint shine brighter. And if you do get one, don't get one of the small bulbs. You need a fluorescent one. I have a 4 foot one that lights the whole room up, anything smaller and the "lights" won't be as bright.
 
https://www.glonation.com/
http://glowinc.com/
http://www.toxic-toad.com/

As mentioned upthread, UV is the best light to activate. The links above are for the automotive application which has superior longevity.

Personally I prefer using florescent paint with UV LEDs for glow effects. In art school I once did an entire canvas painting in florescent pigments with a black light- I never saw it in regular light until it was done. Looked lousy in daylight but it was wonderful in UV.

What sort of project are you doing with underwater alien FX?
 
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