Mixing Old Grey & New Grey - the weathered look, does it work?

[General Magma]

I was wondering what you guys think of this matter. I was planning on purchasing several old grey pieces

to go along with my new grey pieces in certain MOCs. I'm planning on doing this for Star Wars MOCs,

because one of the aspects of the Star Wars aesthetic is the weathered and used look that things tend to have.

But I'm not so sure if that would work too well for it, perhaps it would look bad and maybe I should just have, for example,

new light bley with some new dark grey or just other things to make it look weathered rather than using old pieces.

What do you think of this? Do you think it would or could work really well, or that it's just not-done, looks bad and that I should

stick to one shade of grey? And if so, why? Or would you actually encourage something like that for what I'm planning to do?

If anyone has ever tried or done it themselves, feel free to share the results!

Edited July 11, 2015 by General Magma

[BeardedNerdSE]

I've done this for tiles/plates on a big town square, but it's mostly covered up by minifigs anyway. It's good for a weathered look I think. I also used some old brown on a mainly reddish brown building to get a suggestion of brick colour variation.

[Boettner Builds]

I used a mix of both. Old dark gray, old light gray, new light blueish gray and dark blueish gray on my Bricklinked UCS Falcon. It looks AMAZING! Before I Bricklinked my Falcon, I had seen one in real life and it looking so "new" struck me as odd. But the multi-shaded Falcon I made looks PERFECT!

[TheLegoDr]

I think it provides a great weathered look. However, for some reason I cannot bring myself to mix old and new bricks together. I feel so dirty doing it haha...

But I commend others for doing it. Kudos to you.

[gcanik]

Mixing old gray and new gray is a great way to get the "weathered" look be it in a space MOC or building facades. I've used the process in my BrickLink built Millennium Falcon and in my Ghostbusters HQ I'm currently working. My only suggestion is don't go overboard w/ mixing in the old grays as it can get really noticeable and look kind of weird.

[Sid Sidious]

I feel it looks better when combined with other colors, such as tan, dark tan, and sand red. When a MOC just has both grays, it can come off looking like the builder just ran out of one kind and had to use the other in parts.

[Vorkosigan]

Personally I don't like it, but many people do use it and it seems to get a good response.

However I think it works to use it systematically to represent a different kind of material (not just random weathering).

Edited July 11, 2015 by Vorkosigan

[Prune Face]

I feel it looks better when combined with other colors, such as tan, dark tan, and sand red. When a MOC just has both grays, it can come off looking like the builder just ran out of one kind and had to use the other in parts.

Personally I don't like it, but many people do use it and it seems to get a good response.

However I think it works to use it systematically to represent a different kind of material (not just random weathering).

I would agree with the above.

Personal opinion:

If you sporadically include old grey in a solid bley wall, I think it looks bad, like you ran out of new parts, and included faded, yellowed parts.

If you are including old parts in a large context of mixing old and new grey and old and new dark grey, maybe brown or some other color, it adds color variation, which would be appropriate.

[THERIZE]

I only mixed white. It looked terrible on an airship. But i think grey would look perfect!

[MAB]

I think it looks terrible. For the weathered look I prefer texture rather than slightly different colours.

[General Magma]

Thanks for the feedback, all!

I've decided to include some plates in old dark & light grey in my BL order, and will likely only be using them for specific weathered spots.

By that, I don't mean tossed around at random here and there, but - for example - if I were to build a wall in dark bluish grey and wanted

some kind of spot or mark of weathering, I would add some old dark grey plates and add it to the wall to add some kind of "splatter" to

the wall in old grey, a specific spot of weathering, if you understand what I mean. Other than that, as has been suggested by some,

mixing the greys with colors such as dark tan as well as using textured pieces will also definitely come into play,

so thanks for the suggestions, everyone, and any other ideas are, indeed, still welcome.

Edited July 12, 2015 by General Magma

[-zenn]

Personally I don't like it, but many people do use it and it seems to get a good response.

However I think it works to use it systematically to represent a different kind of material (not just random weathering).

Same here, it gives me te feel of bricks being dirty... I'd rather see dark and light mixed.

[Tariq j]

Same thoughts here as well, it makes the bricks look as though they've been buried underground for a long time! A good weathering effect to use is the one used on the back of the palace cinema and Kwik E Mart.

[Mesabi]

I really like the technique, but I think it'd be out of place in a StarWars MOC. It looks kinda like a cinder block wall, and those aren't really a big part of StarWars. Either way, would love to see your build.