So after lurking for quite awhile, I have decided to post some of my tau to get feedback on my non-traditional color scheme.

Everything still needs to be based yet, and some things need to be repainted, but here is what I have started, hopefully there will be more to come

My completely magnetized battlesuits, These three are pretty much done, and another three were just magnetized today.



Some old firewarriors that I had around and repainted for the army to fill it out until i build and convert the rest of my firewarriors.



Here is a WIP of the firewarriors which will fill out my cast in the future. Not just the Honorguard, Currently I have 6 built.



Tau sniper, One team done, and two more to go. The other two teams leaders will be in different poses.



here is my custom O'Shovah, soon to be painted. I origionally was going to do this for a contest and then never got it done.





Stealth Suits. I have 9 of these completely done, all XV 15s, as well as some of the XV25s yet to build.



Hammerhead, Although it is pretty close to being done the tanks are the one thing that I don't really like the scheme on, and so it will probably get changed yet. I have 3 hammerheads, and 3 devilfish



Pirahna's: All three of my pirhanas still need the pilots painted up and put in, otherwise they are pretty much done.



Finally the multitude of gun drones that i have, this is just a sample.



So what do you guys think. I am planning on doing the bases a dark volcanic ash with blue glowing crystals.

Tylermenz

That's going to look extremely nice, TM. I'm particularly interested to see how the Farsight conversion ends up. A question also for you about the Fire Warrior with the tabard: what did you use for the tabard? Is it green-stuffed, or is it a piece of kit?

Admin hat on: could you edit your profile and tell us whether or not you are a native English speaker, please. This is an important piece of information which greatly helps the moderators of ATT. A country of origin is also welcomed, but is not essential.

Thanks for your cooperation in this.

Admin hat off again.

E.

Most people I have been jointly viewing a thread with ever...



And I'm sure they will all agree it was well worth the visit too.

Looking pretty good and in all honesty I quite like the paint scheme on your hammer head. If I had to pick one thing to improve it, it would be to do something different than the matte black dorsal surfaces. Maybe instead of black making it solid blue instead?

I'm on that list!

Anyway, it IS well worth the visit, before I go to work. I have been thinking of getting some more tau as well, and your color scheme may just give me an idea on what I'm going to do.

Also, the Farsight model is really interesting, slightly mongol, perhaps because of the banner. And to repeat E's question, is the tabard greenstuffed?

okay I really love that blue, can i borrow your army scheme? or can you make a tutorial for the blues? (i would make it blue and cream color like your fire warriors.)

Thanks guys,

The way that i painted it was actually from a Altaioc Eldar army list that was in White Dwarf 319, heres the blue part of it

1. Stipple heavily with Regal blue
2. Stipple with Enchanted Blue
3. Stipple 75/25 mix Enchanted Blue and Skull White
4. Line armor panels 50/50 mix Enchanted Blue and Skull White. Glaze the raised areas with a thin layer of this mix. Paint under-suit
Chaos Black

I Plan on painting O'Shovah and my two tetras next so maybe I will do a tutorial with them if anyone wants it.

The Cream Color was actually a late addition, I origionally was going to go with black for the cloth, but decided to change it to the white because it added a lot of contrast to a lower contrast model.

The tabard is actually from the old dire avenger models...i think

Its a conversion from the Old French GW site for honor guard. Theres also a custom backpack made from O'shovahs antannae and the eversor assasin backpack. I ordered 12 back when the old bits order was still around, and am now going to have to cast my own for my fire warriors.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, and I will try to get some more pictures up in the next coming days if I manage to get some painting done. Otherwise it will be next week.

Now off to change my profile and eat cake
Tylermenz, out

So I finished doing the stippling on my O'Shovah conversion. The Pics are not that great, but they will have to do until I begin painting up the tetras.

So this is all over a chaos black undercoat.

Here is the first stipple of regal blue. I usually try to do this one pretty heavy as a lot of it will get covered up. Also, when the paint is first on it seems a lot lighter than it really is. once it dries it turns a lot darker and blends in with the black


Next is the enchanted blue cover. this is pretty much the same as before. As it the next layer. I try to do each layer a little bit lighter so that in the end all the colors really show through.





The Next step is to highlight the edges of the armor with the enchanted blue-white mix. Normally I have been highlighting each edge, but on this model I tried just to highlight the physical corners, and I think it worked out nicely and a little less cluttered.



The Wash is up next and pretty much just brings the colors together a little bit. I have one coat in the picture, although I think that i might do another and possibly a third to really get the effect.



So thats pretty much it, to finish it off just use a thin brush and watered down chaos black to go in the recesses which will have become blue from the wash.

Let me know what you think

Tylermenz

So i have a small update with some stuff that i got done today:

First up, I magnetized a bunch of weapons for my 3 newest suits. This worked a ton better once i got a 1/8 in. drill bit(my magnets are 1/8 in diameter). I got pretty much all of these done in about 30 minutes.


Next up my sniper team drone controllers. I didnt want the same pose on all of them so I did some different stuff taking a couple things from tael's sniper that was in white dwarf.




Next up is my pathfinders. I built 10 of them last night to round out my squad. I am anxious to try them out, especially the three snipers.


i got three of them converted up today. I wanted to have cloaks on them so that they are a little bit more camouflaged. I was going to use some GW bits, but since bits order is gone, I ended up using green stuff instead. I pretty much just rolled it out flat and shaped it how I wanted. In order to get it to dry in the right position I did need to have them glued on a paint pot so that their cloaks were going straight down.
heres the three of them together


and a closeup of one of them


I wanted the cloaks to be blowing in the wind to make it seem like they are moving and to still show the leg details, although this will not be the case on the more static poses where the cape will be pretty much draped over a shoulder. i still have some work to do on them, as I want to put some firewarrior symbols as clasps where the cloaks attach to their armor and possibly one on the cape itself to add a little bit of color to the model once its painted.

What do you guys think? I want to put an empty helmet somewhere on the standing sniper team leader, and i think that the pathfinder cloaks might be a little long.

Wow! Looking good man! I really like what you did with that first Sniper Drone Spotter. I may have to just buy that model to get the Firewarrior! As for your other standing Firewarrior... I don't know. I'm really not a fan of models without helmets, but maybe this might give you a little inspiration:





As for the Pathfinders, well done on that cape! It flows really well, but it is a bit too long. I'd say cut it to about mid calf. I don't know why, but I really love Pathfinders!

I have to say, I'm not a big fan of your paint style. It seems a little...messy? But I do see it working as a camo effect. That is just my personal opinion though. Looking forward to an update!

Oh man. Do not touch the cloaks! They are amazing. I have been trying to achieve a similar effect, only more kilt-style. Do you have any advice?

@Wolf16: That is the look i was going for on the sniper. I have since put on some equipment packs from a space marine sprew i found lying around, and a firewarrior shoulder pad.

@militant Jester: I guess the only advice i can give is to use some sort of get or lubricant with the gs so that you can roll it out flat and it won't stick to the surface.

So Lately I have been working on some crisis suits. The Pathfinders are off to the side right now until i have a day to do a bunch of gs on everything.

Heres the start of my next commander's jetpack.





Its going to be a fairly horizontal dynamic pose, so this jetpack will allow the weapons to still look like they could aim.

I also have finished 3 more crisis suits that still need to be greenstuffed, and am working on my first broadside. I will have two once I am done and this is turning out to be a fairly annoying part.

Heres the arm mounted railgun. I cut it down and shortened it a little to make it seem a little more realistic.



I am also buffing up all the armor on them since they should be bigger than a normal crisis.
Heres the torso and the legs.







Cracks still need to be greenstuffed, filed and then lines drawn in, but overall i think its coming alog nicely, even it if does take forever.

In that last picture you can also see my advanced stabilization system which i am coping from an old GW article, although i cant find the article....Which may be why it is quickly becoming extremely difficult, but i finally got it today.



And why is it so difficult you ask? Because it is removable and magnetized, yup.



The magnet sits in the center of the gyroscope and holds on to the suit pretty well. With the side bars its extremely stable and should be entirely removeable.

So what do you guys think? Any suggestions?

All right, that idea right there for the suit equipped with railgun idea has just been stolen. (Mind if I nab those pictures too) Now I know exactly how to make an all suit army. Thanks for such a wonderful idea.

I really want to see how this guy turns out. Great work. Keep it up!

Small update, I havent been able to do much modelling as of late since I have been busier than normal with school, but I decided to change a few things around on the broadside and got a lot of the gaps filled in.

heres the back where the ASS fits in, after 2 layers of gs I think its pretty good, although I will probably do another layer and cut it off with an xacto so it is perfectly smooth.


heres the front veiw of the body. The arms and legs were getting alittle to close for me since I have underslung the railguns instead of putting them on the side. To remedy this I put in three plates of plasticard in the body, reformed it alittle. i will also be making the armes a little bulkier and longer.



gs still needs to be done on the front

Last is a picture of the leg WiP, After getting the extra armor plating done I wanted to increase the size and legth of the leg as well. I still think that i am going to put one plate to make the angle a little longer, and a plate on each side to bulk out the structure. There will also most likely be 1-2 pistons.


So now a question.
How do you all do your lines (grooves in the armor) when working with plasticard? I tried an exacto, but it didn't work great.

Interesting work so far, I have to keep an eye out for your work.

To (hopefully) answer your question about panel lines:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=13920

So a small update as I have currently put aside my tau in order to work on a contest entry over at throne of skulls.

Here is the front and back of the Broadside I have been working on. I have added a banner, shortened the backpack for the eventual cables which will attach at the bottoms of the jet pack and the back end of the railgun.





Here is a close-up of the leg joint. I have legthened it as well as made it a bit thicker. I also tried to add some more support to the weak ankle joints with some pistons.



last is just a pic to show how large the battlesuit has gotten. This pic is with on of my normal crisis suits. The normal crisis suit is on the highest flight stand given in the box, while the broadside isn't even on its base yet which will ass some extra height. I would Compare it to a standing crisis but i don't have any (all mine are flying)



What do you guys think? I am not to sure about the pistons yet. I think I need some way to make them a bit more realistic.

Tylermenz

I'm liking how it looks. The pistons everywhere make it looks like some highly experimental xv8, and the extra plating on the front looks natural there. I'm horrible with plasticard. Tourette's Syndrome makes it hard to keep steady to glue the little bits together.

Anyhow, with the pistons, to make them look more real, you may want to try making them out of 2 plastic rods, with 1 inside the other.
Otherwise, if you don't want to pull them off, take a bit of green stuff, and use that to make half of each of the pistons a bit thicker, to achieve the same look.

This project is coming along nicely, excellent craftsmanship on the suit.

@ JT 2K5: reading your post was a total bang my head against the wall moment. For some reason I was thinking that I needed the outer tubes to be on both ends, not just one.... Also the plasticard armor is easier than you would think. I generally glue on a piece that is larger then the plate itself. once its dry I tak my clippers and clip it to the right size using the other armor plates as guides. Then use a X-acto to clean it up and greenstuff to patch anything up.

@Agentarrow: Wait till I post my deamon prince, the broadside has nothing on it. I really wish I could post it up online, but since it is for a contest I want to wait (even though it is technically not against the rules of the contest) until the voting is over.

Update on my Broadside, More pics can be found at my blog(link in sig)...

Late to the game on this thread but I have to say I absolutely love the cloaks on the pathfinders.

Not having worked with GS before would you say trying to make cloaks would be a good starting point or a really bad one? I would love to do something similar for my pathfinders but have never touched GS. I like the idea of showing movement and the possibility to wrap themselves with it and be somewhat more hidden if need be.

I am really looking forward to seeing those painted.