Marine sniper (camo style)

[Witzkatz]

Hello CMON!

I bought a box of marine snipers a few weeks ago. On the box, they are painted up all shiny in blue and white, but I thought that for scouts, for reconnaissance units, some camouflage would be nice. So, I started painting and so far I came up with this:











There are no washes (apart from armguards) applied or highlights done until now. The head needs to receive paint,too. I\'m thinking about painting his whole face in camo stripes to make him look even more special forces style.

However, my problem is: How to shade/highlight all that camo? After taking the photos, I tried badab black wash on the rifle and it came out real dark, in normal light the dark green and the black are almost looking the same.
Maybe I should try devlan mud on the coat and fatigues and see how that looks?

And the head is not glued on yet, maybe I need greenstuff to give him a throat/neck...without support it looks creepy.

Any other tips on this guy?
I\'d be glad to hear comments and critique of any kind, really

Thanks in advance,
Witzkatz

 

[Shadzar]

Nice camo pattern!

 

[james sequeira]

Armguards look really out of place at the moment.

 

[Witzkatz]

Thanks, Shadzar!

james sequeira: Yes, I realized that, later. I\'m thinking about making them black/dark grey or simply putting camo on them, too. What do you think?

And what colour would be nice for the skulls? Putting camo on them doesn\'t seem right, bright colours would look out of place, too...

 

[airhead]

you could go with near-black skulls with a olive drab armband ala the woodland pattern you are already using.

Highlighting and shadowing this is going to be tedious to do \'right\'. Each color needs to be highlighted and shadowed.

Too late now, but an undercoat zenthil primer (black primer in the shadow up to white primer on the hot spots), then painted over with the cammo might work if you kept your colors thin.

 

[Witzkatz]

Airhead: Yeah, olive armguards could work. Near-black skulls sound good, too, although I\'m also thinking about a very dulled down bone colour..but that might not really fit in there.

Yeah, I thought I would give myself a heap of work with the task of highlighting this guy afterwards...I just bought some white primer, so I guess the next sniper will get the zenthil primer technique tried on him.

For now, I thought about highlighting the DA green with snot green on the edges, the catachan green maybe with camo green (Maybe too bright?) and the black with...hm...adeptus battlegrey. ??? Those colours might be too bright...well, I guess I have to try it out.

Oh, and I might go for a devlan mud wash in the shadows...and try and keep it away from the high areas to keep the contrast between the camo colours.

 

[cassar]

re arm guards

to get contrast between the arm guards and the rest of the mini without losing them in all that camo try painting them at a different angle to the rest of the mini and to a smaller scale that way you get the camo effect plus it stands out too. i did a wip its on page 3 space marine scout biker that might give you some tips also on my gallery there is a predator with tiger stripe cam which demonstrates the effect i menioned above, hope it helps happy painting.

 

[Witzkatz]

Soo, I\'m finally back with a little bit of progress!

@cassar: Looked at your thread, that scout biker is amazing! Unfortunately, that\'s a bit above my level right now, I fear.

However, some pictures first!









I apologize for the quality, it\'s cloudy here and still don\'t have a nice bright lamp here. He\'s a bit brighter in real daylight. I painted some lenses - on the telescope and on his night vision goggles. With the NVGs I\'m quite content, not ideal, but it gets the job done, I guess. On the rifle, I\'m not so happy with it, looks too bright at the moment I think.

I also tried some highlighting on his gloves with snot green...quite extreme step from darkwashed dark angels green, but looks interesting I think.

However, my actual thinking about this guy is: Highlighting all that three-colour-camo by hand afterwards...well, I guess it\'s possible, but I\'m quite sure I lack the skill to pull it off at the moment.

Apart from that, I somehow like how he looks at the moment. He is this dark, roughly forest-looking blob from a distance, just like a sniper should be The highlights made his gloves rather flashy and I think that highlighting on rifle and coat would maybe get rid him of this \"in the shadow\" feel he has to me at the moment...he will be fielded next to quite flashy normal marines and I guess I\'d like that contrast.

...yeah, it sounds like an excuse not to highlight that guy properly, I know But at the moment that task really scares me...

...anyway, what do you think? How is he looking at the moment?


Some postscriptum thoughts: I guess his face could use some kind of further treatment, not sure what, though. And his energy cables from the rifle could at least use a slight dark-grey highlight I guess, otherwise it looks just primed.

 

[alextheartist]

You are really improving! Nice one on keeping going

 

[airhead]

bring the highligts up on the wristband skull. Then darken the one on the rifle.

****

Just a pet peeve of mine. Every lense in GW world has to glow? Prior to non-glare lenses, you\'d see a sniper take the sun cover off his scope, streatch a bit of black stocking over the end, then thread the sun cover back on. This would kill a lot of the glare of the scope.

But it just does not look as cool as glowy green or glowy red lenses.

 

[Witzkatz]

Thanks for the answers!

alextheartist: Thank you My main problem at the moment is my painting laziness, otherwise I would\'ve been able to complete more than five models up to now and would learn a bit faster. lol

airhead: Yeah, the skull looks a bit dull. I\'ll have to work on that - the rifle skull will receive some asurmen blue wash, I guess. Have to see how dark I can get it while keeping it looking metallic.

About your pet peeve: The NVG lenses are supposed to glow, yes, splinter cell style However, for the rifle telescope I was going for a look more like this: http://www.wanderfritzen.de/shop/images/Silva%20Fernglas%20Pocket_gross_t.jpg However, my orange/red turned out far too bright. I\'m not sure how to pull this off, maybe start over with Red Gore as base colour and verrry careful highlighting...

 

[freakinacage]

looks pretty good. the idea of space marines and stealth don\'t really go hand in hand if you ask me!

 

[Witzkatz]

I agree that the \"normal\" Space Marine is more like a knight, wearing flashy colours as a sign of his \"nobility\" and I like to paint my \"normal\" marines in bright colours. However, Space Marine Scouts are, fluff-wise, used for infiltration, scouting, reconnaisance, all this stuff that normal Space Marines don\'t want to do and are not supposed to do. I mean, those scouts wear camo-cloaks and all that. So I thought, let\'s go all the way and make them as sneaky as possible.

Furthermore, Captain Shrike and his guys fought a guerilla war on some backwater planet for a year. So, marines use stealth when the need to, I guess most of them just don\'t think they need it.

 

[cassar]

lenses

the bino lenses are coated there to improve the quality of the image almost like a type of polerising filter, the sniper ones dont usually come like that im afraid, on a lighter note they do break up the mini and give the eye something to look at. with regards to the whole camo/marines topic and at the risk of setting off a big debate in my opinion they are more than proffesional soldiers its more of a life time vocation and my take on the thing is that there would be no point having a sniper that even stevie wonder could see his only purpose would be target practice for the enemy. SO STICK WITH IT IGNORE THE SCEPTICS and happy painting.

P.S. there are only three colours used in my scouts camo pattern a blank bleach bone, then slightly toned down vomit brown then highlighting lines in both the previous colours done with rotting flesh used in that order. make sure if you play these boys that you remember where you put emlol

 

[Witzkatz]

cassar: Thanks for the heads-up about those lenses I just tought it looked cool, maybe I will try something like that for the binoculars of one of the other scouts that are still in the box.

Anyhow, some update pictures!





Biggest change: He is now standing in grass It\'s not perfectly based, but I think it\'s a huge improvement over that bare plastic base. I also did some highlights on his left boot, his pistol holster, his right armguard and on the power cables to the rifle. Furthermore, the lense of his telescope received a light coat of mechrite red, still leaving it bright but not blazing orange bright, if you know what I mean.
Ah, and the armguard skull got drybrushed with adeptus battlegrey.

For the moment, I\'m quite happy with that guy. I guess the base edge will get painted dark angels green and I\'ll write his name on it (Scout Silenos)...the battlegrey basecoat doesn\'t look that good with the grass together, I think.

So, tell me, how do you think he looks? Maybe I\'ll post him in the voting thingy after the last few touches...

 

[BPI]

Hi Witzkatz, I think camo is tricky to pull off, you need to decide one of 2 ways to go, I reckon. Bright, sharply defined patterns/colours so that he looks to be camo (by pattern rather than effect) from across the table. Or what you\'ve done here in a more \"realistic\" style which is obviously camo closeup but on the gaming table are going to be green/brown blobs.

Having typed that, perhaps a combination. Paint all of the camo pattern cloth in realistic tones/colours (all of the army surplus stuff I have is brighter than the mini looks now, the darkest patterns are like the shots in your first post, pre-wash btw) so that when he pulls his cloak over him he\'s hidden. But paint the rest of him in a brighter Heroic Mini style. The camo patterning will make him obviously a stealthy character on the games table while the brighter metals/ bright orange uniform beneath (!) will help visually tie the unit together & make them stand out from a few feet away.

I assume that you have a unit of these to plough through, looking forward to seeing more progress, :beer: B.

 

[Witzkatz]

Thanks for your answer, BPI! I think I understand what you mean. However, what is difficult to see on this guy, is, that is ceramite body armour on the torso is blue-metallic; the other scouts have much more open poses, I guess that will really stand out in comparison to the dark camo.
I guess I will try and paint the next guy with an open pose so one can see how much contrast the metal armour and the camouflage have. Maybe I\'ll even start today with the next guy!