My name is Nathan and I am a passionate miniature painter and the designer of Army Pigment. If you’re reading this, I want to thank you for joining me on this creative journey. I have been working on this product for a long time and I am very excited to finally get it in people’s hands and begin this journey of enabling creative expression in this hobby.
This project started because I had two things I was looking for in a painting app and I was struggling to find one that really met my needs. The first was an app that felt modern and was fun to navigate. Setting recipes and saving mixes is sometimes a tedious part of the hobby and I wanted a tool that took as much of the frustration out as possible. A lot of apps rely on large bodies of text or stacked, data-rich tab boxes which, while high in utility, really make navigation feel like a slog. This always seemed like a barrier to true utility, and because of this I was determined to build a UI that was minimal while still retaining functionality. To that end, mixes don’t have any text input and just rely on tapping drops. There are very few places where you will be prompted to type beyond naming projects or searching for a color. All of this is a deliberate attempt to make an intuitive UI that doesn’t get in the way of your creative process. There is no being bogged down by text or massive feature lists that clog menus. Each feature is intentional and something that actually has essential utility. Most actions and navigation rely on visual cues and not text indicators.
Paints are shown with their respective pots and not just swatches so that at a glance you can see what ranges you’re adding and mixing. This is critical to making navigation easier but also to determining expected finishes as you mix different ranges. Mix consistency matters on the brush and on the finished model and the difference between the finish on Pro Acryl, which is very matte, and P3, which is glossy, matters when mixing.
The second thing I wanted so badly was an app that was easy on the eyes and complemented the art that I was making on my miniatures. As an artist, I like seeing well-balanced, coherent design, and most of the apps on the market have very dated and unrefined fidelity. I wanted something that was fun to open up and that hopefully could feel worthy as a support tool for an art form as special as miniature painting. To that end I have worked hard to keep the app as pleasant to look at as it is to navigate. This was so important to me, and I can’t stress enough how much appearances matter when trying to arrange a productive creative lifestyle.
This is just the beginning of what I am trying to build, and as we evolve this platform I hope to make it a true all-in-one solution to bringing your hobby with you wherever you go. Once again, thank you so much for all the support and interest, and I am so excited to be sharing this at long last.
Be sure to stay in touch as our community grows and help me improve the app as we go forward. This is all a new experience to me and I am doing my best to succeed. There will no doubt be bugs and complications early on, and I am going to do my best to continue to improve and refine it. Let’s be in touch and build something special.