\"Hive\" camouflage

[No Such Agency]

I just made an industrial/Underhive-type base for the Space Marine sniper I\'m about to paint. I want to paint him in an urban-type camo but I don\'t want to use a 20th century style camo like I used on my Imperial Guards. I also want him to be a little more visually exciting than the other sniper I did, who in retrospect seems rather dull...

So here\'s the question I put to you all: what kind of camo do you think would be effective in the grimy, metal and concrete world of a 40K city? Would it be purely abstract pattern or would it try to replicate the patterns of beams, rivets, and gratings of a grungy futuristic mega-city? Should I stick to grays/monochrome or incorporate browns, rust or even metallics?

 

[Chrispy]

Thing with camoflague is that it breaks up your outline, because most people intuitily know what a human looks like, even crouched, huddled up, etc.. Traditional urban camo has bee blueish grey for steel and concrete, but here in El Paso the concrete comes from stone that was in the desert, so it\'s very orange/yellow/sand colored, so people opt for desert type camo. I would say uphive would be more like urban camo, and it would get more dingy the further down you go, until ash waste is pure desert like camo.
In the movie \"Universal Soldier\" Kurt Russel used a type of camo for the junk planet he was on, and he managed to kill everyone just fine..
I believe any kind of basic camoflague is just parallel diagonal lines.

 

[airhead]

The trouble with doing camo right is the reverse of you shading/blending. When you paint up your face, you make it \"flat\", you darken the nose & cheekbones, lighten around the eyes then put in a few outline breakups.

And contrary to what holywood would have you believe (especially Chuck Norris) you have to darken or cover you hair and ears as well as your neck.

 

[No Such Agency]

When you paint up your face, you make it \"flat\", you darken the nose & cheekbones, lighten around the eyes then put in a few outline breakups.

Yeah, I remember my Reserve training - \"put the light green around your eyes, the dark on your cheeks, connect areas of your face in unusual ways until it doesn\'t look so much like a face\". No instructions on how to freakin\' get it OFF though lol

Thanks for the suggestions, I\'ll think about it for a bit, but maybe I\'ll go for a gray scheme with irregular diagonal dark (black & brown) rectangles. Maybe I\'ll mess around with Photoshop and some pics of soldiers too and see if I get any ideas. If anyone else has any suggestions please don\'t hesitate to post them!

 

[Sand Rat]

Depends upon the view of the future you hold and on how the fluff is written there NSA. Even today they are working on a vehicular cammo system that uses sensors on the back side of the vehicle to project the image on that side to the front of the vehicle rendering the vehicle \"invisible\". If you take that concept one step further, then I could see it applied to personal \"chameleon\" type suits, that would allow the wearer to blend completely with his or her surroundings, and thats how I would go.

 

[Nailpainter2003]

....How about some nice hot-pink or chartreuse to contrast nicley with dull greys and dreary monotone colors?....Oh sorry, we\'re talking camouflage.

Actually, one of the most difficult of tasks is to work in monchromatic colors. When you\'re limited to varying shades of one color, you really have to be good and your sniper is an awesome example of said talent.

Maybe to kick your next sniper up a notch, but still have him relatively invisible, make the surrounding colors a bit more exciting..add some sculpted foliage, nets, etc.....I also love your idea of a grungy futuristc city...to mirror things like rivots, beams and gratings. Whatever you decide, I\'m sure it will be great....AND, you will share the finished product with us? ???

Faye

 

[Trevor]

\"Proper\" camoflage looks bad on minis, because it breaks them up and makes them blend into the background, so just paint what looks cool. I think camo is one of the hardest things to get to look right AND good/cool at the same time.

 

[airhead]

I like the \"urbans\" on the imperial guards. I would think that the sniper\'s cloak would be more than a monochrome cloak? Either an urban print or tiger striped (old Viet Nam pattern by the Green Berets)

However, if I were a sniper, I would be using a Gilly suit. Any good with the greenstuff? Turn that cape into a gilly cape.

As to different colors, base him on a planet area that has red and yellow clays for bricks. The trouble is that snipers don\'t want to stand out. Maybe a mini-diarama where he is totaly invisible at a given angle? (the bridge in Indiana Jones or the commercial where the guys are part of the office?)

 

[Grizzix]

if you were going for a ghilli suit i might be able to help you but urban would be more difficult. . .you could try to paint the cloak(um, he has a cloak right?) like a pile of rubble. for ghilli i used a piece of mesh cloth, i think it is called toole kinda like the stuff that shower scrubbie things are made of and glued it over the mini it forms pretty well. then i painted it with wattered down glue. then i dipped him in flock and then paint to suit. hope this helps

 

[No Such Agency]

Thanks for all the replies. In response to some points, the model is the one on the left:

... so his cloak is unfortunately folded up on his back. Steelcult - I was interested in doing a \"thermoptic camo\"/Predator-style thing where he closely matched his background, but it\'s not a very good model to do that on, because it\'s cluttered. Something with cleaner lines would work better and show off the technique more, though camoing him with *similar* patterns might look interesting. I think it would actually be a first for CMON, I don\'t recall seeing any minis here with a chameleon-type paint job.

....How about some nice hot-pink or chartreuse to contrast nicley with dull greys and dreary monotone colors?....Oh sorry, we\'re talking camouflage.

Heh, depends on where he\'s trying to blend in. Maybe if he was camoflaged in Ibiza, or a rather unfashionable gay bar...

There\'s a very interesting article about snipers at Wikipedia. Includes some rather scary details about their tactics and methods... I was in the Army Reserve (Communications) and they told us we\'d be prime targets for sniping since it would disrupt comms. Apparently, during an actual battle we would not wear comms badges or unit-specific markings of any kind...

Anyway, all interesting ideas. I\'ll have to think about this... I\'d like to try the Ghillie suit idea some time, maybe on a regular Marine or IG with a forest base.

 

[airhead]

NSA,

What about some \"realtree\" camo that has hive pattern in it? Something from an HR Giger print (alien type stuff) like this: