Help Me Pick a Color Scheme (for Vampires)

[ElectricPaladin]

Here are the schemes I'm considering. I'd love your input.

1) White and Silver w/Bloodstains

This is the one I'm most into. It's also the oddest and the most challenging. The plan would be to mostly go with pale colors - pale bones on the skeletons, pale and bloodless flesh on the zombies, pale ghouls, cream-to-white cloth and dark silver armor on the models that are wearing clothes - and then liberally splatter everything with blood. I have gotten very good at doing blood splatter; my Hordes Legion of Everblight is almost entirely blood-splattered. I would follow up the matte varnish with some Tamiya Clear Red, to give some of the bloodstains a little "freshness." To make some connections between the blood splatters and the models themselves, I would probably go with red OSL on all the glowy bits. I think this would be fun and striking on the tabletop, but an enormous pain in the *** to paint. Even going with a cream-based white rather than a grey-based white - even using the Dip - this is going to be a bit of a challenge... is it worth it? I'd love your input.

2) Green and Black

Green is my favorite color. Vampires like to wear black. It's a match made in heaven. I'm reasonably sure that this army will look almost exactly like I always used to make my undead look when I played Warcraft III (rarely, badly) back in the day. This is a safer choice than the one above, to be sure, but not a bad one. I do like the way green and black go together. As these are vampires, I would probably go with very pale flesh tones and tie the models and their clothes together with paler, more electric green OSL.

3) Purple and Black

I don't have any purple armies, and although it isn't green, it's a color I like quite a lot. I've seen some purple Vampire Counts models, and they look quite nice. Purple has neat royal connotations, and I can very easily imagine it being the color of a particularly arrogant house of Sylvanian counts. Additionally, while I already have three green armies (well, two and plans to start a third - also, one red army, two grey armies, one blue army, one entirely metallic copper army, and one multi-colored army) I don't have any purple armies, so it would get some new colors up in my display cases.

The biggest problem? I don't think purple would take the Dip as well as any of the other options, and I definitely want to continue my trend of dipping Fantasy armies. So much infantry... I don't want to try painting that the slow way.

4) Classic Red and Black

This one is last for a reason. But, it is classic, and red and black are the vampire colors. It looks good in the studio models, and it would look good on mine.

So, what do you think?

[Deadlift]

I went with the white and silver. I always said if I did a vampire counts army it would be based on this character from the BL trilogy.

Jerek von Carstein.
Sired by Vlad in Inheritance, he is the last Vampire created by Vlad before his demise. Once Jerek Kruger, a noble and proud man who served as Grand Master of the Knights of the White Wolf, he once slew Vlad in combat, only for Vlad to rise again and claim vengeance a year later. Atop a temple spire in Middenheim, he and Vlad dueled again, resulting in Jerek Kruger becoming Jerek von Carstein, the youngest of Vlad's twisted mockery of family.
While Vampirisim turned Konrad into a beast who kills for blood, Jerek maintained his once-honourable heart. When Pieter leads an assault upon Nuln, Jerek quickly resents his 'brother' labelling him a monster after witnessing his acts of wanton slaughter. Jerek gleaned useful information from one of Konrad's pet Necromancers however, learning the secret of Vlad's immortality: his signet ring. Jerek resolved to find and destroy it, travelling to Altdorf and even exhuming the bodies of Wilhelm and Vlad. He did not find the ring and despaired: the thief who took the ring was lost to him, and all he could do was hope that it would remain lost.
Losing his will to fight, disgusted by his own brethren, Jerek considered himself as neither human nor Vampire but torn between the two. He claimed Konrad was beyond help and that his kingdom would be the same as Vlad's - carrion birds fighting for scraps. Jerek was not killed as Konrad believed, and returned at the Battle of Grim Moor, where he aided in the human victory. He continued to thwart the Von Carstein line, thwarting Mannfred's alliances and continually seeking the cursed Carstein ring. At Hel Fenn he tore off Mannfred's left hand, which bore the Carstein Ring, leaving him easy prey for Martin of Stirland. Jerek took the Von Carstein Ring with him, and was sealed up with it in an unknown location by Kallad, the ring's guardian for all eternity. As Kallad bricked Jerek Kruger up in the darkness, he acknowledged that the creature before him was a man and not an undead beast, remarking on Jerek's incredible humanity even after losing his soul. Presumably the Von Carstein Ring remains lost to this day.

Basically an army of the once "proud" White wolf who despite being a vampire is able to regain his humanity and turn against his sires. Obviously White and Silver would feature heavily in the scheme and any blood splatter would contrast well and really pop.

[ElectricPaladin]

Well, Deady, my wife agrees with you. I've got a wight king in progress who will be my test case mini - I'll post him in my WIP thread when he's ready for public consumption.