Malefic Flesh and Fairy Flesh Nocturna Vallejo Paint Sets

Here I’ll be doing a review of two paint sets I recently ordered. These are the Vallejo miniature paint sets called “Malefic Flesh” and “Fairy Flesh.” These are two sets that Vallejo designed for the Nocturna models. These kind of sets are called “Fantasy Pro Nocturna Sets” which also includes a Crimson Red and Imperial Purple set.

I made swatches from the digital ones provided on Nocturna website to give you an idea of the range in the two sets. Later I’ll do a scan of actual swatches to see how they compare and I’ll be painting some model heads to try out the different color schemes they suggest.

The Malefic set has paints in a cool colour range and is used for dark characters like evil elves, day fairies (editor note: I need to recheck this word, by it I meant evil fairies though), vampires, monsters, demons, etc. The word “Malefic” means evil and is used in astrology, but it is also a historical reference to witches. The Fairy set are warm colors used for regular elves, good fairies, humans, dwarves, etc.

I ordered the Malefic set from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D4VFCKY/ and it arrived quickly and waited much longer on the Fairy set that I ordered from another supplier along with some other stuff that usually causes a few days’ delay. In the end the wait was significantly longer than it should have been.

I haven’t painted with either set yet since I haven’t had time. Thankfully I’ve had a lot of work lately restoring comics for DC, but I really look forward to using the Malefic set on a collection of vampire and werewolves miniatures that I have from Blue Moon Manufacturing.

I have been painting Blue Moon’s frankenstein set and am almost done. I only have Igor still to paint. I really like these Blue Moon “Things That Go Bump in the Night” sets, but be forewarned: They are very small and they are real lead so they take a careful hand. Also you may have to email the manufacturer if you want the instructions for the game that are supposed to come with the figures. My boxed set of vampires didn’t include them, but they responded immediately and after retrieving the PDF sent it to me. So I can say that their support was very good and very polite. No problems there at all

http://www.bluemoonmanufacturing.com/index.php?cat_id=1

I was a bit annoyed that the Malefic set arrived in a simple envelope from Amazon though which didn’t protect the box all that well. It wasn’t roughed up too badly, but there was a little wear from being smooshed and that kind of thing needs to change. Amazon needs to insist on shipping things in boxes. I’ve had a number of rare, one of kind items, ordered from Amazon damaged by bad packaging and bad carriers which completely ruined my investment, but worse destroyed pieces of history. So that has to change. In this case the package was a bit smooshed and partly open in a way that if it had been pressed hard one of the dropper bottles would have opened and ruined everything. So again I must say I really think Amazon should change its policy so that all items are shipped in boxes with proper reinforcement and cushioning. But little harm was done in this case. The box wasn’t torn and could still be used fine, but it could have been worse. The traditional Vallejo dropper bottles often come with cracked caps that will dry up your paint almost right away. The damage occurs from being smooshed in shipping so it’s a good idea to have some extra smaller replacement bottles around from army painter in case you need to swap out the lids or you can 3d print one in an emergency if you have a 3d printer. The newer designed vallejo gamecolor bottles have stronger caps so this should be less of a problem in the future, but I prefer the old game color line for many reasons I’ll discuss at another time.

Extra bottles with shaker balls and caps – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PY4YS6W STL file for a 3d printed Vallejo cap: https://www.printables.com/model/189076-vallejo-17ml-printable-cap/files

The packaging for the Malefic set is very nice. It has beautiful fonts and colors and great art all over it. And on the back are printed examples of the colors therein. This set has great shelf appeal so whoever designed it deserves praise. The Fairy set is just as well packaged.

Inside there are eight paints and an instruction guide. The bottles are nicely labeled in a more fancy way than the standard Vallejo paints and the cap color is different also. I can say that the impression I got with all this attention to detail is that I felt I was getting a good product. And for the price they did a great job to make the customer feel like they made a wise choice.

I’ve had a chance to use some of the colors and I always mark the cap of the paints with a dot as I usually do for easy identification and later color matching and I can say that the paint seems to be of a high quality. It dries very smooth but slightly glossy; more like a satin finish except for the darker colors which have a little more gloss which isn’t unusual for most Vallejo model color and traditional game color line. I have a feeling they would be less glossy if I had shaken them more. I barely shook them at all. They are a joy to use.

The instruction guide is as nice as the packaging following the same color and design theme and is printed very well. It’s just a little foldout set of instructions, but it suffices. It explains some terminology covering: Highlights, Shadows, Feathering/Blending, and Washes. It shows the difference between doing a highlight on a raised surface and doing shading in a recess. But then it gets really good by giving you exact recipes to follow for both the Fairy and Malefic sets to create different skin tones.

The color palette is beautiful, but very subtle. The muted tones would be difficult for a beginner to understand how to use if not for the instructions. The instructions include multiple color schemes and the process to achieve them.

For the Fairy set they say to achieve natural colors base with Base Flesh 74.004, do initial highlights with Natural Flesh 74.006, secondary highlights with Natural Flesh 74.006 plus Highlight Skin 74.008, initial shadows with Burned Flesh 74.002, and final shadows with Nocturna Shadow 74.001.

For the Fairy set they say to achieve intense colors base with Reddish Flesh 74.003, initial highlights with Medium Flesh 74.005, secondary highlights with Medium Flesh 74.005 plus Fairy Flesh 74.007, shadows with Burned Flesh 74.002, and more highlights with pure fairy flesh 74.007, and then final highlights with Highlight Skin 74.008.

For the Malefic set they say to achieve purple tones base with Malefic Flesh 74.012, initial highlights with Pale Flesh 74.015, Shadows with Purple Shadow 74.011, and final highlights with White Flesh 74.016.

For the Malefic set they say to achieve blue tones base with Cold Flesh 74.014, initial highlights with Pale Flesh 74.015, shadow with Frozen Flesh 74.010, and final highlights with White Flesh 74.016.

For the Malefic set they say to achieve Green tones base with Forest Skin 74.013, initial highlights with Pale Flesh 74.015, shadow with Deep Forest Skin 74.009, and final highlights with Pale Flesh 74.015 plus White Flesh 74.016.

So there are three recipes given for the Malefic set and only two for the Fairy. The photos given in the instructions for following the process are very good.

This set which costs around $22 dollars on Amazon which averages to around $2.75 for each 17 milliliter bottle is a quite a bit more expensive than it was thewarstore.com (around $26) (thewarstore.com is no longer in business sadly), but even the Amazon price has increased in price by around a dollar since I ordered it at around $21 so I have a feeling the prices are going to continue to go up.

I’ll be writing more about the sets once I get a chance to use them more, but so far my only real complaint is that it seems you can’t get these colours individually so if you run out of a particular colour you have to buy a whole new set or make a matching color yourself. And that stinks. But do I like them so far? Heck yeah I do.

The 74.007 Fairy Flesh is the closest replacement for the 1990s citadel Elf Flesh that I’ve been able to find so far. The tones are almost the same. It has the yellow overtones that most flesh paints don’t. For most practical purposes I’d say it’s a replacement and that it probably uses the same pigments.