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Maybe i posted on the wrong board, but I got tons of people lookin at my other thread, but no comments, and I need comments. Im gonna start collecting Tau for a fluff army, I dont care about tabletop power. I wanted to paint them in a digital camo pattern, as I think they are one of the only 2 armies that can pull it off. Got some samples here, let me know what you think.

How are you going to paint the digital camo, out of curiosity?

I'd be interested in seeing a full army of digcamo Tau.

Rico.

Let's see a couple of examples on the minis. That is how I do it when I'm torn on a scheme.

Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:I got tons of people lookin at my other thread, but no comments

We dont know how to effectively paint squares and rectangles that makes up digital camo ( i assume the blocky shapes are what makes it.... digital )

I think you are going to have a hard time pulling it off, painting tiny, millimetre squares of 72 firewarriors...and the effect might not bee too effective because they're so small, if I were you I'd do solid camo, then if you like do some big blocks of camo (like the examples above but magnified) onto tanks and big stuff .

Prolly just dots or something, dosent have to be perfect squares to work, its just easier for the real life things to make

LunaHound wrote:

Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:I got tons of people lookin at my other thread, but no comments

We dont know how to effectively paint squares and rectangles that makes up digital camo ( i assume the blocky shapes are what makes it.... digital )

You would be correct Luna. The military found it was "more" camouflaged then the older blobs. (particularly in night vision scopes)



I say go for it man. I think camo Tau look pretty cool. Youll have to mess around a bit to get it donw on the minis, but on the vehicles it shouldnt be to hard.


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Also to help. I tried making a square using a pencil eraser. That didnt work so well as the paint didnt really stick to the eraser, BUT Im sure if you messed around with something made of foam or some such. That could help ya some. Just a thought

If I were you I'd just do a PAT on the armour and paint the cloth a solid colour. This way, you can freehand the pattern and then paint it in. As well, it would be worth looking on Wikipedia. the US and Marine Patterns borrowed from several other nations in their design, and many are easier to paint in a 28mm scale. Indonesian Digital is really easy to paint. It's like a sort of Digital BDU. Might be worth looking up.

Ill have to take a peek at that, thanks good sir

LunaHound wrote:( i assume the blocky shapes are what makes it.... digital )

Yes.

From what they tell me, the theory is that the eye is designed to deal very well with curved shapes and designs that would ordinarily be found in nature but isn't so hot when you throw sharp angles and blocky patterns at it. Earlier camouflage was designed to mimic the background environment (trees, leaves, grasses, etc) and it worked pretty well when you were standing still... but not so hot when you're moving (leaves and tree branches don't move through the forest at a leisurely jog). The digital patterns supposedly break up your outline and make it harder for an enemy to both spot you from the background initially and also target specific parts of your body (i.e. torso) even if you're moving.

It's actually rather impressive to see the difference it makes in real life. Your eye just sort of blurs everything as it tries to make sense of it all and you have a very hard time getting a clear picture of how the person's arms, legs and torso are actually positioned.

Anyway, as far as drawing it on a mini? I seriously doubt you'd be able to do a legitimate digital camouflage and even if you could, it probably wouldn't look so hot because it would actually break up the line of the model and it would look like a blob. Best bet is to shoot for a 'simulated' camouflage pattern where you can make the model look cool and detailed but avoid getting the actual camouflage effect.

This being said, wasn't there a guy who painted a squad of IG with a near-perfect BDU pattern? I remember seeing them on here somewhere...

DoW


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metallifan wrote:If I were you I'd just do a PAT on the armour and paint the cloth a solid colour. This way, you can freehand the pattern and then paint it in. As well, it would be worth looking on Wikipedia. the US and Marine Patterns borrowed from several other nations in their design, and many are easier to paint in a 28mm scale. Indonesian Digital is really easy to paint. It's like a sort of Digital BDU. Might be worth looking up.

Now you're just being polite, you know full well Canadians invented Digi-camo!

Thanks for that, by the way, long live President Tim Horton!

DoW

Other way around Dog. You were close though. We had to study the history of the CADPAT during our BMQ (First Digital Pattern to ever be issued! Woo!), and it's designed to mimic the sharp edges in nature. The problem with BDUs was that the blobs were too large and very easy to spot (Though still better than what we Canadians had before CADPAT - Good old solid Khaki Green NATO uniforms )

Another thing I just thought of - Acrylic Paint Pens! Still should stick to just painting the armour and doing the fatigues in a solid colour, but it should help

metallifan wrote:Other way around Dog. You were close though. We had to study the history of the CADPAT during our BMQ (First Digital Pattern to ever be issued! Woo!), and it's designed to mimic the sharp edges in nature. The problem with BDUs was that the blobs were too large and very easy to spot (Though still better than what we Canadians had before CADPAT - Good old solid Khaki Green NATO uniforms )

Hmm, I think I'll have to have a word with some of your cohorts then. There are a couple of Canadian liaison officers here who claim it was Canada's brainchild. Then again, they definitely don't say 'eh' enough to be truly trusted, so they may very well be agent provocateurs.

Only time will tell...

I think even solid Khaki Green beats out the Aussie desert camo, however. I can't look at one of them wearing it without smiling. They must think I'm an awfully friendly guy.

DoW

EDIT: Durrr, RTFP before replying! Ignore please!

Well Im going out to get a squad of fire warriors this weekend, Ill paint some of them up in both solid and digital and put pics up. And Ive seen good camo on IG, its beautiful, kinda what inspired me, except I prefer digi to old school.

be i have been taught the germans in world war 2 paved the way for digital camo. check out the ss camo uniforms. well this is what i was taught in the ADF


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"Digital camouflage (or "digicam") is a pattern devised by utilizing small micropatterns, as opposed to larger macropatterns for effective disruption. From 1978 to the early 1980s, the American 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in Europe used a digital camouflage pattern (dual-tex) on its vehicles. During 1979 and 1980, the Australian Army experimented with digital camouflage (dual-tex) on helicopters."

I've seen a couple of people try this before. You obviously won't be able to paint tiny, tiny squares like in the actual camo pattern, but it shouldn't look too bad. Here's a thread from ATT where someone used stippling to try and get the digital camo look:

http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13284&hilit=digital+camo

There is an airbrushing stencil you can get that is digital camo.

Short of that just go to someone with a plotter or laser cutter and make your own stencils.

Hope this helps:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/244791.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/244959.page

jp400 wrote:Hope this helps:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/244791.page

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/244959.page

Hmm i just look at the pic , it seems like it should be able to be achieved really fast via

1st primer spray = gray
2nd primer spray = white

Coincidentally i recently ran into a situation with my sentinels that forced me to spray white over a previous color.
and the first burst of the spray looked similar to the digi camo .

I can only see this working if you paint through a fine net (like the metal in a sive) and use that for squares.
It could look good, but whatever way you choose is going to be fiddly.

Ravenous D wrote:There is an airbrushing stencil you can get that is digital camo.

Short of that just go to someone with a plotter or laser cutter and make your own stencils.

Good point, a stencil would work well - at least for flat surfaces.

Digital camo look great IF you can paint it properly - I've seen it done a couple of times - but if done badly just looks a mess. I suggest doing a couple of test models before doing a whole army.

Somebody used the sponge to make digicamo. It's incredibly effective. If you do it right.

DogOfWar wrote:

metallifan wrote:Other way around Dog. You were close though. We had to study the history of the CADPAT during our BMQ (First Digital Pattern to ever be issued! Woo!), and it's designed to mimic the sharp edges in nature. The problem with BDUs was that the blobs were too large and very easy to spot (Though still better than what we Canadians had before CADPAT - Good old solid Khaki Green NATO uniforms )

Hmm, I think I'll have to have a word with some of your cohorts then. There are a couple of Canadian liaison officers here who claim it was Canada's brainchild. Then again, they definitely don't say 'eh' enough to be truly trusted, so they may very well be agent provocateurs.

Only time will tell...

I think even solid Khaki Green beats out the Aussie desert camo, however. I can't look at one of them wearing it without smiling. They must think I'm an awfully friendly guy.

We bought the original design from an Ex Marine Senior Officer. Canadian Military Researchers vastly improved on it though, and the initial design had hugely deviated from the original when it was unveiled for Army Personnel in '02 (Airfarce didn't get theirs until '04. HAH!)

The Marines and the US army kept a close eye on the effectiveness of CADPAT and toiled away at their own adaptations of what they concluded to be highly effective technology. MARPAT and UNIPAT were unveiled in '03

See? History can be fun if it's stuff that people actually care about


Also, just thought of a 3rd solution: Burst patterns. Not all Digital Patterns are small squares. In 40K this is very true. Digital Patterns in 40K have been known to take the shape of triangles and starbursts. Try a starburst pattern for the armour and Flektam on the uniform. This might help give you what you're aiming for, more or less.

There's a technique I saw where a guy used salt in some manner to block off small random areas on the model and created an amazing ACU-style look on a guardsmen squad. Not at all helpful in the technique, I know, but hopefully it'll spur someone on who knows it.

I read about that salt method for weathering tank tracks.


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Salt method described for weathering Star Wars models.

www.starwarsmodels.com/techwealth.html wrote:
The second technique for chipping paint is called the "salt technique". This is a much more accurate technique that allows you to chip without using a lot of paint and obscuring details. Basically what you do is airbrush your base color. This is the color you want to show through (usually a metallic color). When this is dry, slightly moisten it and place granules of salt where you want the chips. Let this dry thoroughly and then airbrush your top coat over that. Once the top coat is dry, you can rub off the salt and it will reveal some nice paint chips. This same technique can also be done using non-permanent rubber cement. I have even seen people use mustard!

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http://www.starwarsmodels.com/techweath.html

Have a look at the Kasrkin models for IG. They have large red...shapes on them, all polgons. They look quite good.