Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm trying something a bit different for my paint scheme.

With Tau's obvious cartoon and anime influences, I want to try to have a "cel-shaded" army. Big defined lines, bold colors.

So I decided for a bold Enchanted Blue / Blazing Orange combination.

For the first model I've painted in 9 years, I'm relatively happy with how it came out. There's definitly some line drift and some crappy painting, but it's not too terrible.



Started off with priming white, as that's what I was told was needed for oranges.

Then I washed Badab Black to bring out the lines. This was before I knew about the Foundation Paints, so in the future, it'll just be sprayed black.

The blue areas were done with 2 coats of Enchanted Blue. No washing, since it really didn't change the color. Blue is awesome to work with, since it just sticks.

The orange was more of a PITA. 3 coats down of Blazing Orange, then it was washed with Baal Red.

This's what I'd consider Tabletop quality. There's a ton I want to do to it, first and foremost is go over the lines with Chaos Black or a felt-tip pen and get those classic big lines you always see around objects. Then, I heard for a lighter sheen, thinning down silver extremely thin, then putting a layer of that down on the whole thing, so it catches light. I'd really want to test that before hand though.

As a side note, when I was emailing this to myself from my cell phone, my phone mispelled the name as the Fun Drone. At least my phone approves. :B

i like it, and i really liked how you put on a complimentary scheme! orange + blue = an eye popping mini

Nicely executed, but could be a bit much across an entire army?

Looks pretty good, but it looks a bit spider-man ish.

I like it. I think a slightly lighter orange would be better though, less red.

I would reconsider the painting scheme. Even with the best paint job, it will remind everyone of plastic toys and destroy the illusion of a realistic battlefield in my opinion. But maybe others see it differently.

I like to paint in a 'cartoony' style too!

Check out my gallery to see that you can pick bright, contrasting colours and make them look realistic with the right highlighting/shading.

The drone looks cool, but really does need some highlighting; maybe even going so far as to reach yellow on the raised parts of the orange bits and white on the blue bits

Thanks! It's heartening to see that the style is catching, I'm glad you guys like it. I'm actually trying to go away from the battlefield view, since I wanted something that would really stand out from the rest of the crowd.

I definitly need to touch it up, but I'm getting to the point where I just want to bloody play already Once I get the entire army to tabletop standards, then I'm going to go back and add in the detail and highlights.

J.Black wrote:I like to paint in a 'cartoony' style too!

Check out my gallery to see that you can pick bright, contrasting colours and make them look realistic with the right highlighting/shading.

The drone looks cool, but really does need some highlighting; maybe even going so far as to reach yellow on the raised parts of the orange bits and white on the blue bits

Man, that Crisis suit looks awesome. I really like how you split up the areas on the model into the different color schemes. I'll definitly have to add some highlights and the such now after seeing that

I personaly like it,blue and orange work well together and considering the "anime" feel of Tau I belive it works very well.
CadianXV mentioned that it may be a bit "much" when viewed across an entire army,and he has a point,I would suggest "flipping" the colors on various units/tanks so as not to overpower the tone of the army.
For example you could paint your fire warriors predomently blue with orange armour.

I'd stick with the Badab Black over undercoat instead of A black undercoat if I were you.

You can even get a cell-shaded look using watered down sunburst yellow...

Real life looks better than the photos, but this will give an idea. The depth of colour IRL is fantastic.

FITZZ wrote: I personaly like it,blue and orange work well together and considering the "anime" feel of Tau I belive it works very well.
CadianXV mentioned that it may be a bit "much" when viewed across an entire army,and he has a point,I would suggest "flipping" the colors on various units/tanks so as not to overpower the tone of the army.
For example you could paint your fire warriors predomently blue with orange armour.

Thanks.

I did plan on doing the cloth with the blue and orange armor on my fire warriors. My kroots are going to have very muted versions of the colors (mixed with one of the grays, probably shadow)

Hopefully highlighting will differentiate things enough. For right now I just want to get everything up to tabletop standards, cause I am bloody DYING for a game.

Fifty wrote:I'd stick with the Badab Black over undercoat instead of A black undercoat if I were you.

What's the difference between the badab black wash over white vs a black undercoat? It seems like the lines would have the same end result.

I am finding that I can paint a 50/50 layer of golden yellow/water over the badab black washed white undercoat. Two coats of that gives me a shaded yellow that is ready for highlighting. It may not look great in the photo above, but in real life it looks very good already, and is already table-top quality once other details have been painted, even if I did not do any further highlighting.

To paint yellow over the black undercoat, you'd have to use the foundation yellow, which is not such a bright colour, and lay it on quite thick, and still need to shade it in some way.

A black undercoat with any colour will result in more muted tones, and get rid of that cel-shaded, bright anime look that you have in that very first post.

Fifty wrote:I am finding that I can paint a 50/50 layer of golden yellow/water over the badab black washed white undercoat. Two coats of that gives me a shaded yellow that is ready for highlighting. It may not look great in the photo above, but in real life it looks very good already, and is already table-top quality once other details have been painted, even if I did not do any further highlighting.

To paint yellow over the black undercoat, you'd have to use the foundation yellow, which is not such a bright colour, and lay it on quite thick, and still need to shade it in some way.

A black undercoat with any colour will result in more muted tones, and get rid of that cel-shaded, bright anime look that you have in that very first post.

Ah, ok. That makes sense. Thanks!

I am experimenting now with using a foundation paint for the orange before I put on the Blazing Orange, so I haven't been able to see for myself the difference yet. I should be at the point where I can finish it up soon though.