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I finally got my tanks in the mail, I now love the warstore, so it's time to get my paint scheme nailed down. I've wanted to do a camo pattern sence I deiced I was going with a tau army, so I had a idea to replicate a Urban MARPAT design. I'm doin a small test patch on some old bits, so I'll see how that works out. Baring that my next Idea was to do a red tiger pattern and do up the iconography as a sickle and pulse rifle and go with the whole space commie theme. The downside of this is that my painting isn't spectacular and I was looking for any info on similar projects or pattern tutorials.

Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome.
Thanks

SPACE COMMIES!!!

Ehem. Sorry. I can not be held responsible for what my Commie alter-ego does, see the avi?

Anyway, I think the camo would be great, though better on Guard. MARPAT is always good, but how would you do the pixels?

Very carefully.

P.S. If you do decide, post some pics!

As a guard player that uses all camo pattern on all his vehicles I would have to say that you have your work cut out for you. However you are lucky in the sense that there are not as many tau in a tau army as there are guard in a guard army.

Back in Imperial Armor 3, Forgeworld decided that Tau camouflage doctrine usually employs a two-tone color scheme. The camo will rely on natural patterns, often symmetrical. Popular ones on the net use water wave patterns, diffuse stripes, and the like. The Fire Caste does not use contrasting colors, but cadres will use a trim color.

Camo can be tricky to do on models as a good camo will diffuse the lines on your model. That effect makes your model look poor when viewed from across the table. A safe approach, and one I recommend to new painters, is to use a two tone pattern and paint parts of your model in those two colors. Use one of them as your base color. Then use the other as the "trim" color. Good parts for using the trim color are the panel near the engine intake, the exhaust vents on the nacelles and exhaust port on the sides of the cockpit. You may also want to consider the ring around the hatch doors (the one that includes the viewport), the nose panels and possibly the secondary web system.

If you're brave you can try the method described in IA3 above by applying the lighter tone via an airbrush. If you use a dark color for your base color and a lighter tone for your camo or accents, the model will tend to rise from the table. Conversely, if your primary color is light and you use a darker tone on the model it will sink to the tale. It is very subtle, but it may help you.

Hope this helps!

Edit: I did a hammerhead using a two tone camo scheme similar to the jagged edge found on some urban camo patterns from the old Soviet Bloc. It didn't lok very Tau. Leave the marpat and strong contrasting colors to the Guard.

@ cogliostro something similar to marpat is the old WWI "lozenge" camo pattern on german aircraft(it's a bunch of similar colored blocks or splotches). Rosemont hobbies in Norhampton pa. (now it's krieger's rosemont hobbies) They are experts on the subject of WWI stuff. They even produce their own kits. I have seen decal sets there of the "lozenge" camo pattern. It might help or they can steer you in the right directon. www.kriegershobbies.com hope that helps

My original idea for the pixels was to use 16th inch automotive striping tape and apply it to the model and then Xacto the pattern out and then just do that in layers. I just did a small set of test lines on the hull section of a 'head so see if it would work over a larger area and it went on easy around the bumps and curves. The only problem other then the fact that this will take many hours to do each tank is the fact that I don't know how well the cut marks are going to show through the paint layers.

I'm gonna pick up some new paints and and do a bigger test section on my old IW bassy and post some updates later in the week.

Edit: I think I found any easy fix that should make it go faster too. I could create each pattern on a piece of acrylic and just transfer them over.