Everything about the Turbo Dork Everything Bundle Review

The shiniest and most colorful metal paint on the market is also a paint that requires patience, mixing, and the proper miniature project. With a perfect blend of those elements, you can have some spectacularly sparkly miniatures that pop on the game table.

Over the past few years, the Miniature Painting hobby has exploded, with many companies competing with each other using their unique formulas and mixtures for their paints. Social media posts with immaculate, matte miniatures with details have set a standard and expectation for how paints and painting should be for award-winning paint levels. Plenty of paint lines offer up contrast style speed paints, dry brush formulations, ultra matte acrylics, artist grade single pigment paints, and of course metallics. As we point out in some of our paint reviews, the amount of brands and offerings out there can be mind boggling, so why even have another paint line on the market?

This is where Turbo Dork offers a completely different approach: shiny, color-shifting metallics. These paints are wholly unique to the market, and offer something wildly different versus the many companies promising one or two coat paints. These paints are a little different to use, and while not all are perfect, there is something great about what Turbo Dork is doing and we’re going to deep dive into this with  you.

So what do you need to know about TurboDork?

Unboxing

Turbo Dork was kind enough to provide us with a review copy of their Everything Bundle; one bottle of everything they make. The box comes with all 40 single color Metallics, all 33 TurboShifts, and their 7 ZeniShifts, in addition to two silicon mixing palettes, three silicone mixing sticks, a brush, and their TurboDork mixing medium.

The paints come neatly packaged in ziplock bags, with each bottle securely sealed with their twist-down-and-off cold (and Alec*) proof seal. Each bottle is also pretty unique in that they have a super thin dispenser, something we’ve only seen on Bear Cavalry Paints. 

Every Acrylic Paint We Make Bundle

The big bundle with all our colors. All 40x single color Metallics, 33x TurboShifts, and 7x ZeniShifts, and with a 10% discount applied!

Turbo DorkTurbo Dork

*Lack of coffee and not reading the label made it difficult for Alec to figure out how to open the bottles. 

The back of the box contains a mural of the metallics and how they look on a painted model.

Painting with the Paints

The three different mixtures, Metallics, TurboShifts, and ZeniShifts, all offer different kinds of metallic paints for your model. 

The standard metallics are meant to be used over top of a basecoat of a similar color. For example, Dork, a metallic blue, is meant to be used over a light blue basecoat.  Gordian Knot, a metallic green, should be used over green.

TurboShifts paint result in an opalescent color shift, similar to what you might find on one of those quintessential 90s Hot Wheels cars. The shift effect is best seen by applying it over a black base coat., which allows the metal flakes to reflect different colors based on the angle they lay in on the model. So, smooth and round models provide a gradual shift, whereas hard angles provide a stark shift in color.

ZeniShifts are similar to TurboShifts, except that they are meant to be used over top of a zenithal primed basecoat, and are formulated to reach to the white/black shift of a zenithal prime. 

If you are not familiar with zenithal priming, it’s a priming technique where a brighter primer, such as white, grey, or silver, is applied over the top of a solid black base coat. Learn more about that in our “How to Assemble Models” article.

This technique creates a method of pre-shading to simulate shadows and light sources before paint is even applied. The ZeniShift paints take advantage of this technique by utilizing different colors of the primer to reflect vibrant colors, depending on what primer they are over. 

As a result, each offering from Turbo Dork fulfills a different purpose, but it’s up to the artist to figure out exactly what those purposes are. As highlighted above, a lot of paint brands aim to have a matte finish that photographs well, and is used for everything from army painting to winning Golden Demons. Turbo Dork aggressively skews away from those norms, forcing the painter to think very carefully about their choices.

This is because of the formulation of Turbo Dork. Their pigment and metallic flakes are much larger than normal metallic paint, something they call out in their many Tips & Tricks on their website. 

Tips and Tricks

Turbo Dork

Here’s what we learned in our time spent with Turbo Dork paints.

Priming & Base Coats

Priming and Base coating depends on your specific need, so pay attention to the bottles. Turbo Dork does a great job of labeling and putting specific directions. For the metallics, ensure you have a solid base coat of the color you want. In our “How To Paint Colossus”, we didn’t do that, instead keeping a bit of a zenithal prime and using the various silver paints to create shadow and highlight.

In an upcoming Cyberpunk Red painting article, we used a zenithal highlight combined with the Turboshift and Zenishift paints to take advantage of the opalescence throughout a motorcycle.

In several tests of dragon eggs (because who doesn’t love a metallic dragon), all of the paints actually performed well, but the metallics placed on straight black worked the best.

Airbrushing

Alec: In my experience between paint brush work and airbrushing with Turbo Dork, it became instantly apparent that using an airbrush makes a huge difference for the final result. 

I used a mixture of metallic, TurboShift, and ZeniShift paints on a selection of different miniatures. The goal was to experiment with different model types and colors to see if one kind of paint worked better with airbrushing. With only a few minor user-error issues, all of them looked fantastic in the final result. In total, I applied anywhere between 5-8 coats, to ensure that none of the paint splattered or pooled up. 

The only hiccup I had was that not all the paints required the same 3:1 or 5:1 mixture the thinning medium required. I found it thinned some of the paints too much, and others required more of the thinning medium. I highly, highly recommend having a small wood board nearby to spray on before applying it to the model. 

Painting over Turbo Dork

Yes, you can! After concluding the airbrushing, I then went back over the models with other paint brands to paint cloth, weapons, faces, etc. I also used the paint to touch up spots I had missed while priming. I could just paint right over the top of the Turbo Dork paint. Honestly, matte colors next to Turbo dork really helps make it pop that much more.

Thinning/Mixing

The Turbo Dork Thinning Medium is an absolute must for these paints. With water, the paint just falls apart. While we’re not sure what’s fully in this medium, Turbo Dork states it’s acrylic medium, thinner, and flow improver…and it certainly feels like it. When used in a 5:1 ratio with the paints and a brush, the paint behaved magnificently. And this thinning medium worked with other paints as well, and for Randy, this might become his new medium for thinning (don’t use water, please).

For mixing, results are…well, mixed. Randy uses a scientific grade vortex mixer with all of his paints, and even with some of the metallic paints, the vortex couldn’t cut it. So we had to bust out the Silicon Mixing Sticks, which was helpful, but at the same time, you can’t help but wonder why a mixer and mixing balls couldn’t do the job alone.

Impressions & Thoughts

On the paint:

As mentioned earlier, this paint is unique, and the finish isn’t for everyone. While Randy found it was very useful in his tests, overall, he personally doesn’t see a lot of use in his projects. That being said, the paint is amazing in what it does. The ZeniShift was so impressive in how it operates, and really, it’s about finding the correct project. These are definitely not for the grimdark artist or the person trying to match box art. It’s truly for someone seeking a unique look and feel to their projects.

Some of the TurboShifts did not perform very well, and that might be due to a combination of factors, from thickness of layer to priming color, and that’s less of a statement of the paint and more of the conditions around the paint. 

Also, at the top of this article, we called out the notion that this hobby lives online, and so matte paint just photographs better. Turbo Dork is the kind of paint that needs to be seen in person and played with in order to catch the light from other points.

Because of the fantastic final output of airbrush, it should also be noted that this paint is not really beginner painter friendly. If this is your first time painting, it may be frustrating to use these paints. It’s really important to have an understanding of the different priming techniques, thinning of paints, and basic painting fundamentals. As a beginner, you could use these paints sparingly for some details, but the paint really shines when it’s being applied to the majority of the model. 

On the hobby supplies:

We didn’t really discuss this in the article, but Turbo Dork was kind enough to send us some of their hobby supplies, which included Silicon Mixing Sticks. The sticks are a hard material encased in Silicon, with a pointy end and a flat end. You can use these to mix up paint, which was necessary in some of our testing, and have been useful with other paints (like Dirty Down). While useful, they are very big. 

Also included is a silicon palette, which is one of the more ingenious ideas to come out of the hobby world these days. Some folks utilize a silicone pad (you’ll see these sold as fidget toys), as when paint dries, they immediately can be scrapped or popped out. This is satisfying and easy!

Lastly, they included a brush, which low key ended up being very useful and very good. It has a thicker handle, which causes you to hold the brush a little differently than other brushes, and it was very comfortable to use, as a traditional brush tends to be longer, meant for canvas painting vs miniatures. We'd love to see more of these, but can't find any details on their website.

Turbo Dork would like you to know that these brushes are going to be available hopefully around GenCon, so look out there!

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